Page 28 - bne_May magazine 2023_20230503 BRICS

28 I Cover story bne May 2023
Putin and Xi Jinping in the form of Russian nesting dolls in a gift shop in Moscow. / www.shutterstock.com
currencies. Indian refineries last month started settling their import bill in rubles not dollars.
Oil, arms, nuclear power, commodities and trade. This is the cement Russia
is using to build up the BRICS bloc
and a programme China is happy to participate in.
When Lula joined the throngs of touring diplomats arriving in Beijing he signed joint investment projects and showed solidarity with the increasingly united BRICS front.
Like many, Lula would like to see the destructive showdown end, and made
a point of flying on for a short tour
of Europe after his Chinese trip was over. At the same time, he is hoping to increase Brazil’s standing as the leading economy in South America by raising his international profile. But in statements to the press, Lula made it clear he agrees with the BRICS basic premise: the EMs need to have more sway in international affairs and the US has too much.
Many countries in Africa and
Latin America, long ignored by the international community, have willingly flocked to the BRICS bloc. The 15th BRICS summit is due to be held in South Africa in August, where it will discuss taking in 17 new members from Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, among other things. The US applied to attend the event and was refused.
Many of the new would be members, including Venezuela and Iran, have already been on the receiving end of US sanctions and even bombing runs, while most of the others still bear a grudge
for the “vaccine apartheid”, when the West not only withheld supplies of its own coronavirus vaccines, but actively put pressure on South American governments to refuse Russia’s offer to sell its highly effective Sputnik V vaccine cheaply.
The Middle East is another region where relations with the US have rapidly soured since the so-called shale revolution made the US a net exporter of oil in direct competition with the Middle East.
into signing up to its sanctions on the Russian regime.
The reaction of the biggest EMs
has been to actively start building institutions to counter this US-led pressure. While on tour in Brazil in
the middle of April, Lavrov noted that Brazil takes the presidency of the G20 next year, "and we will chair BRICS," Lavrov said. "In terms of co-ordinating our foreign policy activities, this creates a good opportunity to see how we could take advantage of a situation where
all BRICS members are also part of the G20 to ensure mutual benefits," Lavrov emphasised.
China’s President Xi Jinping has taken
a similar line, and travelled to Moscow in March in an ostentatious show of support for President Putin that was
an open challenge to the US’ claim to lead on the international stage. Xi’s parting words to Putin were: “Right now there are changes the likes of which
we haven't seen for 100 years – and we are the ones driving these changes together.”
The catalyst of the Ukraine crisis has put steel in the political will to break the
www.bne.eu
US hegemony. EM countries are now actively building non-Western dependent multinational institutions and rapidly de-dollarising, amongst other things. As the biggest and most powerful of all the BRICS – its GDP is twice the size of all the other four combined – Beijing has become the epicentre of this change and has drawn in an endless string of leaders from both developed and developing worlds in the last months.
French President Emmanuel Macron toured Africa before going to Beijing with President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen
to argue his case. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was also there a week later, followed by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Relations with India have also blossomed since the war started, with India going from nothing to one of Russia’s biggest buyers of oil together with China. And India is ramping up the purchase of all sorts of commodities from Russia as well as major investments in industry and the new Kudankulam nuclear power plant (NPP). Delhi has also joined the drive to get out of the dollar and settle its international trade in local