The reality is that BRICS is a voluntary network of countries that share the goal of accelerating financial multipolarity processes in order to facilitate global governance reform for giving the World Majority more influence. It is not, nor has it ever been, a security or political bloc.
Andrew Korybko
Bloomberg published a piece last week about how “Iran War Shows BRICS Limits as India Pushed to Choose Sides”,
which shows that it still hasn’t figured out what BRICS is really
about. This is clear from the false premise upon which their article is
built, namely the supposed importance of BRICS issuing a joint statement
about the Third Gulf War
and the perception that “BRICS risks becoming irrelevant if it doesn’t
engage with the defining issues of the moment.” Nothing could be further
from the truth.
For starters, BRICS isn’t a security
bloc tasked with addressing “the defining issues of the moment”, unlike
what an unnamed source within the group was quoted above as suggesting.
In fact, “Russia’s BRICS Sherpa Debunked Speculation About It Turning Into A Security Bloc”
just last month. The reality is that BRICS is a voluntary network of
countries that share the goal of accelerating financial multipolarity
processes in order to facilitate global governance reform for giving the World Majority more influence.
As was explained here
in September 2024, “BRICS can be compared to a Zoom conference: members
actively participate in talks on this subject, partners observe their
discussions in real time, and everyone else with an interest in them
hears about the outcome afterwards.” That year’s BRICS Summit and the
next one didn’t achieve anything of tangible significance at all
for this reason, and that was fine with all of its members since some
of them are rival pairs who are unlikely to agree on anything
meaningful.
This segues into the next point about how
BRICS was destined to deadlock in the event of conflicts involving its
members just like how the current one involves Iran and the UAE
or if future conflicts develop between China and India or Egypt and
Ethiopia. Precisely because BRICS isn’t a security bloc, nor even a
political one, its statements on such conflicts don’t matter. It did
release statements about the Gaza War and the 12-Day War, which Bloomberg mentioned, but they were purely symbolic.
The
third point is that India isn’t “pushed to choose sides”. Pezeshkian
did call upon BRICS to play a role in stopping the conflict during his
recent call with Modi, whose country serves as this year’s rotating
chair, but that was analyzed here as an attempt to possibly kickstart Delhi-mediated talks. The Iranian Foreign Minister recently said that India is among several “friendly nations” allowed to transit the Strait of Hormuz, thus further debunking Pepe Escobar’s already discredited claim that India “betrayed” Iran.
Likewise, the US also isn’t “pushing” India “to choose sides”, but has instead temporarily waived sanctions on both Russian and Iranian
oil so that India (among others) can purchase them to help stabilize
the global market. Both sides in the conflict are therefore content with
India balancing between them and aren’t “pushing” it in any way to
commit to them. To be sure, they’d each be delighted if it did so, but
neither expects that. Iran also appears to have tempered its hopes about
BRICS as explained.
Reflecting on the insight shared in
this analysis, the only reason why Bloomberg wrote about this
unnewsworthy subject is due to the false premise that continues to
proliferate about BRICS supposedly being a security or political bloc,
ergo the interest in why it hasn’t supported Iran. Astute observers who
understand what BRICS is really about, however, wouldn’t have expected
it to do so. With time, the rest of the global public might also wise up
to this, but some might still remain delusional and in denial.