Some Basics
First, the following excerpts from a recent paper by the Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) provide some useful basic information:
“The countries that comprise BRICS—which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and now five new members—are an informal grouping of emerging economies hoping to increase their sway in the global order. Established in 2009, BRICS was founded on the premise that international institutions were overly dominated by Western powers and had ceased to serve developing countries. The bloc has sought to coordinate its members’ economic and diplomatic policies, found new financial institutions, and reduce dependence on the U.S. dollar.
“…The ten BRICS countries now comprise more than a quarter of the global economy and almost half of the world’s population. … Russia hosted the first official BRIC summit in 2009, and South Africa joined a year later by invitation from China, forming the five-country grouping that would persist for more than a decade…The next wave of expansion came at the 2023 BRICS summit, with invitations extended to six newcomers: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). All accepted except Argentina, after its newly elected President Javier Milei pledged to turn the country in a pro-West direction, saying that it would not “ally with communists.” Saudi Arabia has reportedly accepted the membership, but has delayed officially joining without giving detailed further explanation. (Pepe Escobar today assesses that Saudi Arabia is “over the wall” into BRICS but that this may not be official until next year).
“…The BRICS heads of state convene annually, with each country taking a one-year chairmanship to set priorities and host a summit. The bloc relies on consensus-based decision-making and is largely informal: it has no defining charter, secretariat, or common funds.
A few thematic areas underscore its priorities:
Advocate for greater representation in global organizations.
Coordinate economic policy. The bloc’s annual foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows more than quadrupled from 2001 to 2021, though they have slowed in recent years.
Reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar. Increasingly disgruntled over the domination of the dollar in global transactions, which exposes them to Western sanctions, BRICS leaders have long advocated for de-dollarization in favor of increased trade in local currencies or even a potential common BRICS currency.
Create an alternative finance system. The group’s New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) are meant to mimic the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), respectively. BRICS members hope that alternative lending institutions can invigorate South-South cooperation and reduce dependence on traditional funding sources”.
BRICS expansion: Issues of Inclusivity and Exclusivity
At the Kazan summit this week, the existing full membership of BRICS agreed to welcome a new tranche, not of full members as such, but of “partners” who one day might proceed to full membership. The newly expanded BRICS will include Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
While it is understandable that the emerging new global network needs a lot of time to focus on its policies and procedures, I can see difficulties. First, I suspect there are many issues of constitutionality, as it were, of structure and procedures that have still be determined, even as BRICS begins to establish policies and institutions of global significance such as experimental payment systems and commodity exchanges. Secondly, the existing membership and partnership structures contains odd bed-fellows that do not align neatly across the critical neoliberal divide that separates the collective West from the Global South. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey would be prime examples of this. Turkey is a member of NATO, and plans to use its role in the BRICS as leverage in negotiations with its NATO partners.
It is problematic to my mind that original members have the power to exclude potential news members. Brazil made a bad choice of Argentina just ahead of an election which brought South America’s latest madman, Milei, to power, who rejected the invitation for membership that Brazil had initiated. Now, Brazil is denying partnership to a very obviously relevant candidate, Venezuela. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has shown increasing ambiguity as to Venezuela. He did not accept the result of July’s election that confirmed President Maduro in power. Brazil is hosting the summit of the G20 next month. The G20 could be seen as a rival to the BRICS. BRICS excludes central members of the Washington consensus, whereas the G20 embraces countries from inside and outside of the Washington consensus.
Maduro has called Brazil’s rejection of Venezuelan candidacy a “hostile act,” especially as it comes at the same time as Silva’s condemnation of the USA’s continuing and crippling sanctions on Cuba. Silva is demonstrating a surprising and troubling degree of naivety and hypocrisy on the Venezuelan question.
Brazil takes on the presidency of the BRICS next year; its ambivalence on Western-Global South divisions and its otherwise laudable preoccupation with the COP30 Climate conference scheduled for 2025 in Belem, may distract it from BRICS matters and slow down BRICS progress.
Russia and Algeria
Algeria has been accorded partnership status. There had been earlier indications by Russian foreign minister Lavrov that it might not be. Russia and Algeria have had very cordial relations since the days of the Soviet Union.
An article by Ali Nooreddine for Fanack explains some recent turbulence in these relations concerning Africa, especially in Libya and the African Sahel region. When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov angered the Algerian regime by excluding Algeria from BRICS membership, something which Algeris had fully expected.
“Lavrov justified the selection of new members by citing specific criteria for BRICS expansion, including “the weight and prestige of the country and its positions on the international scene,” implying that Algeria did not meet these standards”.
The anger was compounded by BRICS acceptance, as we have seen, of countries more aligned with the West, and Algeria suspected that special Russian interests were at play. In Libya, Algeria had consistently advocated for the withdrawal of foreign armed groups, particularly the Russian “Wagner” group.
Algeria’s very sensible priority has been to secure a peace process that would lead to the establishment of new, legitimate Libyan institutions to unify the country’s existing divided authorities. As a neighbor of Libya, Algeria is understandably concerned, particularly with the influx of refugees across its eastern borders and the activity of cross-border armed groups. Algeria supports the UN-backed government of Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh in Tripoli. Russia’s Wagner group, by contrast is a supporter of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, once, perhaps still, a CIA asset who led rebel forces against the Tripoli government and has long divided the country.
“Russian companies gained rights to invest in several oil fields in eastern Libya. This partnership has allowed Russia to expand its influence in North Africa, often at the expense of Western countries’ influence. The contradictions between Algeria and Russia in Libya peaked in the summer of 2021, when Haftar attempted to expand into western Libya and close the border with Algeria. This escalation occurred shortly after Tebboune highlighted Algeria’s role in preventing Tripoli from falling to Haftar. Haftar’s actions confirmed the Tebboune regime’s fears about the security crises in Libya, especially concerning the activities of irregular armed groups opposing constitutional institutions.…Haftar’s forces have played a role in supporting the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan and intervened in armed activities in Chad. Therefore, Algeria is understandably worried about the expansion of these armed groups, which could intersect with separatist movements and tribal groups present in southern Algeria, turning the issue into a national security crisis for the Algerian army”.
In Mali, Algeria helped mediate the 2015 peace agreement signed in 2015 between the former Malian government and Tuareg rebels in the north. The 2020 coup in Mali initiated a reversal to a military strategy against the Tuareg separatists, causing alarm in Algeria, which feared renewed conflict near its southern borders. Since the withdrawal of the French from Mali, Russia’s Wagner became the primary supporter of the Malian army’s activities in the north, in exchange for access to Mali’s natural resources.
“Algeria viewed this Russian intervention as destabilizing, especially since it contradicted prior agreements aimed at quelling tensions in the north”.
Algeria has demanded Wagner’s withdrawal and the cessation of Russian support for military actions against Tuareg separatists. Politically, Algeria has condemned foreign militias profiting from Africa’s wealth instead of investing in development. Yet:
“Russia remains the primary suplioer of arms to the Algerian military, accounting for 72.63 per cent of its arms imports, including military aircraft, tanks, and missiles.Consequently, Algeria relies heavily on Russian military technology to maintain and upgrade its equipment and secure necessary spare parts. Conversely, Algeria is Russia’s third-largest arms buyer, highlighting the partnership’s importance for Russian President Vladimir Putin, especially amid economic sanctions imposed on Russia. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Algeria has maintained a neutral and balanced stance, even voting against the United Nations General Assembly resolution that called for suspending Russia’s membership in the Human Rights Council in April 2022.
“Both countries are keen to preserve their existing cooperation frameworks, including joint military exercises and trade and investment agreements. Algeria is particularly focused on maintaining its foreign policy openness to the East to mitigate Western pressures while continuing partnerships and cooperation with Western countries”.
Other BRICS Tensions
In an article today for Global Research Peter Koenig (Koenig) cites the Oil & Gas Journal (OGJ), for the news that Kazakhstan, which was invited by Russia to join the BRICS, made a last-minute decision not to join. Russia retaliated by banning imports of a range of agricultural products from Kazakhstan. Koenig speculated that Kazakhstan may have come under pressure from Western oil customers. Kazakhstan has crude oil reserves of 30 billion barrels, 12th largest in the world, just behind the United States.
There is good news that at Kazan, meetings between Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi confirmed progress between the two countries in settling their border disputes. CNN recently reported that India and China had reached an agreement on military disengagement along their disputed border.
Georgia
One might wonder about the future possibities for Georgia to join the BRICS, in the light of the results of the recent elections that have confirmed that pro-Russian Georgian Dream remains in power but in the dangerous context of the country’s largely figurehead President opposing the outcome of the election and claiming, as tends to be typical of Western-inspired regime-change conflicts, that the election was fraudulent. For the World Socialist Web Site, Andrea Peters (Peters) notes:
“The country’s president is laying the groundwork for overthrowing the re-elected ruling party. As Brian Whitmore, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted Monday in a comment on the organization’s website, “Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary election has entered its ‘Maidan’ phase.” Drawing a comparison between what is unfolding in Tbilisi now and the right-wing coup that brought to power the current regime in Kiev, he observed, “This weekend’s deeply flawed election was just the opening bell.””
“…The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose 529 poll watchers observed the balloting, is playing a leading role in bolstering the opposition’s claims, as is the White House and the EU as a whole, all of which are demanding an investigation into the outcome.
The grounds for their demands are shaky. According to French Senator and Special Coordinator for the OSCE Pascal Alliard, the Georgian parliamentary election was flawed because of “imbalances in financial resources” and a “divisive campaign atmosphere”—in other words, the party that won had more money. It used its domination of the media to promote itself, and there are sharp political divisions in the population. He could not indicate, however, why any of these things—features of every modern election in every capitalist society—would make the outcome questionable.
Similarly, Antonio López-Istúriz White, the head of the European Parliament delegation that monitored the Georgian election, criticized the outcome because “during the electoral campaign, the ruling party used anti-Western and hostile rhetoric, targeting Georgia’s democratic partners, in particular the European Union, its politicians and diplomats, promoted Russian disinformation, manipulation and conspiracy theories.”
In essence, according to him, if the United States, the EU or NATO are criticized in any political process in any country, it makes that process—whether it be an election, media coverage or anything else—illegitimate.
Despite what is clearly a gathering campaign on the part of the Western-backed opposition to seize power in Tbilisi on the basis of accusations of election fraud, little evidence has been presented to substantiate the claims. There have been only statements of foreign election observers hostile to the ruling party and videos circulating on social media that show people forcefully shoving ballots into boxes in some unspecified location on an unidentified date in support of an unnamed candidate.
And even if these incidents and other alleged reports of people being pressured into voting one way or another, paid to cast a ballot, or otherwise intimidated turn out to be true, there is no reason to assume that vote rigging was solely, or even primarily, carried out on behalf of the ruling party. The opposition’s backers in Washington are masters at overturning democratic elections and have worked systematically over the years to create in Georgia an extensive network of pro-Western, non-governmental organizations, democratic-advocacy networks, press outlets and the like with the sole purpose of securing American and European interests in the south Caucasus”.
West Asia
BRICS is heavily implicated in the West Asian crisis over Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, of citizens in southern Lebanon, and Israel’s constant struggles and aggressions against enemies or perceived enemies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. Iran and, through Iran, Russia, are directly implicated. (Pepe Escobar today told Napolitano that he expects the strategic partnerhsip agreement between Russia and Iran to be signed later this week).
China has a major interest in access to Iranian oil. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria all have major interests in regional stability. These may ultimately prove either fragmentary or consolidating pressures on BRICS.
These interests are ever more frequently threatened, existentially, as occurred last Saturday when Israel launched its much anticipated strikes on Iran. I have yet to see firm confirmation of the assertions made yesterday by veteran intelligence expert Alastair Crooke, and noted by me in my post yesterday, that the Israeli strike consisted not of the three waves that had been widely reported, but of only one wave and that the attack plan, already limited by a leak of US intelligence on the original plan, was, in essence, aborted by the identification of an unknown air defense system over Tehran that may have been a Russian S-400 system possibly modified to take down Israeli F-35 stealth fighters.
These points were made by Crooke early yesterday morning US east coast time, but seem to have been denied or rejected by Scott Ritter later in the day, although it is not clear whether Ritter was fully aware of Crooke’s account. Ritter, instead, seemed to adhere to the mainstream view, and calculated that the extent of damage caused by Israel was somewhere between negligible (Iran’s position) and grave (Israel’s position).
In his broadcast at around the same time yesterday Alex Mercouris does not seem to have picked up on this controversy but instead placed on the table the idea that recent remarks by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamanei that had been widely interpreted as pacific in nature were in fact indicating that Iran has taken the decision, or is about to take the deicision, to develop a nuclear weapon. For myself, I don’t think this is at all unlikely, and I cannot believe that intelligence agencies in the region are so reckless as to discount this possibility or its likelihood in their military calculations.
For Mercouris this seemed to be just a matter of Iran picking up from or reigniting a weapons program that he believes was ongoing up to 2003. I consider his narrative is very controversial, as there are many sources of disagreement as to whether there really was such a program, or that, if it existed, the program was anything more than an accumulation of relevant research.
The idea that the progam, such as it was, was an Iranian response to the perceived threat of Saddam Hussein is interesting, but Hussein definitely had no such program after Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and I dont find it at all likely that Iran would still be worrying about Hussein in the late 1990s. Besides which, there is the question of Khomeini’s fatwa against nuclear weapons, which should have prohibited any such activity whereas, now, the issue is being openly discussed in terms of whether it is allowable within the terms of the fatwa provided a distinction is made between development of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear weapons.
We should note that Iraq has protested to the UN that Israel flouted international law in flying over Iraqi airspace (not just flying over, I would add, but using Iraqi airspace as the site from which to launch what Ritter claims were up to 40 missiles). It appears that Jordan did give permission but I await further confirmation.
Ritter did confirm Crooke’s assessment of Israel’s lack of progress in its invasion of southern Lebanon where its forces are coming into direct contact with hightly prepared and able Hezbollah opposition. And Hezbollah continues to bombard northern Israel, making it difficult to believe that the region’s 60,000 evacuated civilians are going to return any time soon. Tensions are building in Tel Aviv as to whether Netanyahu will dismiss his defense minister Yoav Gallant.
A Future for US Hegemony?
This from the RAND’s review of the Commisson on the National Defense Strategy (RAND)
The Commission finds that, in many ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor. China’s overall annual spending on defense is estimated at as much as $711 billion, and the Chinese government in March 2024 announced an increase in annual defense spending of 7.2 percent. Russia will devote 29 percent of its federal budget this year on national defense as it continues to reconstitute its military and economy after its failed initial invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia possesses considerable strategic, space, and cyber capabilities and under Vladimir Putin seeks a return to its global leadership role of the Cold War. China and Russia’s “no-limits” partnership, formed in February 2022 just days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has only deepened and broadened to include a military and economic partnership with Iran and North Korea, each of which presents its own significant threat to U.S. interests. This new alignment of nations opposed to U.S. interests creates a real risk, if not likelihood, that conflict anywhere could become a multitheater or global war. China (and, to a lesser extent, Russia) is fusing military, diplomatic, and industrial strength to expand power worldwide and coerce its neighbors. The United States needs a similarly integrated approach to match, deter, and overcome theirs, which we describe as all elements of national power. The NDS and the 2022 National Security Strategy promote the concept of “integrated deterrence,” but neither one presents a plan for implementing this approach, and there are few indications that the U.S. government is consistently integrating tools of national security power.