When Jim O’Neill coined the term BRICS in 2001, he had sanguine hopes that these economies representing the five states would dominate global financial growth by 2050. Since its inception, many scholars have attempted to trace BRICS as a formidable alternative to the G7, which is known as an elite club of the Global North. It is in this pervaded context Dr Shashi Tharoor, the flamboyant scholar- politician and public intellectual who lambasts the British in a more Anglicised English accent than the British delivered the 18th Sujatha Jayewardene memorial oration in Colombo on potential of BRICS to emerge as a new world order.
Showing his accustomed ability as a speaker Tharroor enchanted the audience with his stentorian voice, but the cardinal point that he addressed in his oration seems to have softly indicated the realpolitik that New Delhi reveres since the time of India’s foremost strategic thinker K. Subrahamanyam.
Like many scholars and analysts who assess the calibre of BRICS to alter the existing world order built upon the Western liberal ideals in the aftermath of the Cold War, Dr. Tharoor acknowledges that unjustness of the current global realm, in which global governance remains in the hands of few. The parameters developed and adopted by them contain binary realities as the ideals espoused by them such as human rights, and non-intervention have become double-edged swords.
Beyond what O Nell dreamed in creating the acronym, BRICS has certainly clung to a broader objective in reforming the world order. In a simple sense devoid of any international relations jargon, one can vociferate that the members of the BRICS do need equal positions at the head table of the global governance like the Western countries, if not they have no substitute except making their own.
Challenging the West’s hegemony
BRICS has salient potential to decisively challenge the West’s hegemony as BRICS owns 13 percent of the world’s GDP. China is the second largest economy and India is likely to overtake Japan to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, which elevates the BRICS to an embodiment of the larger chunk of the world economy. Besides its fervent economic capacity, the BRICS has three nations with Nuclear arsenals and the defence budgets of both China and India signify their gigantic positions.
Against this backdrop, not a single Western analyst can assess the strength of BRICS through the old lenses of post-Cold War liberal international order. It is not a mere conjecture that BRICS is on the path to develop a mechanism in making a multipolar world to challenge the West’s hegemony and Washington consensus. Thus, ignoring BRICS leads to ignoring the new turn of history.
However, beneath the greater depiction of BRICS as an emerging world order, Tharoor astutely analysed how Beijing’s long-term objectives could undermine the overarching objectives of the BRICS. The US-China trade war and China’s growing military presence in the Indian Ocean Region have heightened suspicion among many Western critics of China’s geopolitical intentions, which reached a culmination when Chinese soldiers killed 20 Indian soldiers on the disputed Himalayan border in 2020. In the exact words of Dr. Tharoor “Beijing tries to build an anti-Western front through BRICS”, which is a sheer anathema to the founding ideals of it.
All in all, BRICS seems to have reached an identity crisis regardless of its initial portrayal of the beacon of the Global South. In Tharoor’s view, a strong Indian presence will rejuvenate the BRICS as India’s ostensible recognition as a leader of the developing world, which has derived from the Nehruvian legacy.
But, the question looms before a serious analyst is how New Delhi would build its defensive strategic pillars in light of Beijing’s ever-growing “Grand Strategy”, where the Belt and Road Initiative has encircled the Indian Sub-Continent by creating a security dilemma for the policymakers in India. While engaging in macho-typed diplomacy against the West, China is keen to expand the membership of BRICS to more states such as Iran, UAE and Argentina.
If economic weight is a measure of power, this will be a potent group in fulfilling the idea of generating a different destiny for a world without the West’s hegemony. But, the admittance of new members to BRICS by making it BRICS + is again a puzzling phenomenon with the mutual hostilities existing among them, which can upset the apple cart. Iran’s admittance to BRICS will make a stir as it naturally paves the path for a new Sino-Russian and Iranian pact, which will further reduce India’s prominence in the BRICS.
The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
Also, it should be bear in mind India is the only state in BRICS which maintains a rapport with the West as it stands as an active member state of “The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), which has caused paranoia for China as Beijing considers it to be a detrimental threat for China strategic periphery. Also, India’s alliance with the I2Y2 group, established in 2022 under the partnership of the USA, UAE, and Israel is another indispensable factor, which may hinder New Delhi’s aspiration to be the epicentre of BRICS. The newly invited states to BRICS like Egypt, Ethiopia and Iran have affinity with both China and Russia than India regardless of New Delhi’s tactful diplomacy in those regions.
Under the guise of the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China has developed its links with many African countries and Beijing’s unorthodox mechanism of foreign aid without scrutinising internal factors such as human rights has attracted many African countries including Ethiopia towards Beijing’s orbit.
Amidst China’s economic galvanisation in Africa, Russia has aptly kept its place as a key player in both Africa and the Middle East. Moreover, Moscow and Teheran developed an unprecedented strategic alliance after Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which has bolstered any conspiracy narrative on the Iranian-Russia axis.
All these novel developments around BRICS are a sheer contrast to Tharoor’s optimism about India’s key role in this platform. In his celebrated work, “ PaxIndica” Tharoor argues India’s path to global governance should focus on a benign effort in making its foreign relations through India’s soft power. But in reality, many of the Indian strategists like Tharoor himself admire the realpolitik as the most pragmatic approach. Nonetheless, it is still early to assume how New Delhi would carve a niche for its supposed role in BRICS.
The Writer is a lecturer at the faculty of law, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University
