How Should the West Respond to the BRICS?

Leslie Elliott Armijo argues that the West should view the BRICS as part of an inevitable process of global power rebalancing.

On October 22-24, the BRICS, a multilateral club composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, sent their leaders to Kazan, Russia for the group’s 16th annual summit. Also in attendance were four new member states, senior leaders from over 30 additional nations, and UN Secretary General António Guterres. Russian President Vladimir Putin, prevented from attending last year’s BRICS Johannesburg summit in person due to an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC), proclaimed the ample turnout an endorsement of himself and Russian policies.

Among the attendees were Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a newly-inducted full member of the club, and BRICS aspirant Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Meanwhile, young North Korean conscripts on their way to fight in Ukraine headed West across Siberia, widening the war and provoking US President Biden to remove restraints on Ukraine’s use of US-supplied missiles to hit Russia. Although the BRICS+ summit made few headlines in Anglophone North America, and only slightly more in Europe and Japan, some in the West’s foreign policy community have expressed alarm at the growth of this coalition.

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Photo by Engin Akyurt