Iran: the biggest concern for the US
For the United States, the most worrisome aspect of the projected expansion of the BRICS is the landing of Iran in the group. The Islamic republic is seeking membership as a way out of the isolation imposed by Washington-led Western sanctions over its controversial nuclear program and suppression of protest protests.
Among the new BRICS members are three countries with historically difficult relations with Iran: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
The tensions also divide the “original” BRICS. China has a difficult relationship with India, which has recently had a rapprochement with the United States.
Although the BRICS declaration supports a reform of the UN Security Council, a top priority for India and Brazil, which are not permanent members, few expect China and Russia, which have veto rights within that body, to They want to dilute their power for the benefit of other nations.
Henry Tugendhat, an economist at the American Institute of Peace, argued that China, by promoting this expansion, inadvertently made the BRICS an even less cohesive group, more akin to the G20 than the more diligent G7, the club of the world’s largest democratic economies. planet, which shares fundamental principles.
The members of the G20, on the other hand, do not “align themselves on many issues”, he remarked.
Among the future members of the BRICS there are not, strikingly, countries from South Asia, at a time when China multiplies the fronts of maritime disputes in that region.
Colleen Cottle, a former CIA analyst now at the Atlantic Council, told AFP that for China the BRICS expansion has “more to do with the rhetoric” of showing developing countries coming to their camp, and not with specific joint work plans.
Even so, according to the analyst, the decision shows a demand for changes.
The United States needs a more effective strategy than its approach of working with like-minded countries, and it cannot limit itself to trying to replicate the Chinese approach of contributing infrastructure in developing nations.
“You need the whole ‘package’: the articulated long-term vision and the concrete funds to back it up,” he concluded.
With information from AFP and Reuters