The 15 minutes of fame these Brics deserve from time to time in the Brazilian media is over. As usual, nothing useful happens to the paying audience. The rulers of the five countries come together somewhere (Russia didn’t want to go this time), do as their advisers tell them, and leave the world exactly where it was before they came together. Ultimately, the only practical effect of all this is basically to give geopolitics specialists another opportunity to speak at round tables after prime time, write articles for the press, and fill everyone’s patience. This time around, even the international studies professors who make a living talking about these things seem to think the Brics were bad. They left their meeting smaller than before the meeting.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the BRICS meeting in South Africa Photo: PHILL MAGAKOE / AFP
As far as I could tell, the main decision was to increase the number of members in the group believing that doing so would make the group stronger, like a club pushing for more members. The problem is who gets in. How can an international organization, of any kind or purpose, become stronger, for example, with the accession of Argentina or Iran? Argentina is in the process of judicial recovery and it is not known if there will be a recovery it is known that the country is still dependent on emergency financial support from the IMF, inflation has exceeded 115% in the last twelve months and The poverty rate is 40% of the population. None of Argentina’s problems can be solved by the Brics; So imagine there was a problem for the Brics States that could be solved by Argentina. Moreover, it’s not even clear if the Argentines themselves want to join the group. Iran is even more hopeless: Its “Revolutionary Guards” have been officially declared a terrorist organization by Europe and the USA. What can the Brics get out of it?
The organizational problem actually goes far beyond new membership. Chancellor Celso Amorim’s Brazil believes the Brics are a coalition of parties like the “PT base” united to defeat the United States, Europe and capitalism and which President Lula in his “World Agenda” as he says, will be supported by trading parliamentary amendments in the National Congress. Of course that’s none of that. China, Russia and India each pursue their own interests and have far more practical priorities than the Brics countries. They will invariably let Brazil and Lula talk to themselves that they are busy with important matters every time.