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| Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrive for an informal dinner during the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, on Tuesday. (Aleksey Nikolskyi/BRICS-RUSSIA2024.RU/Reuters) |
For the hosts, the goal of the BRICS summit is clear. Russia, which has borne the brunt of expansive Western sanctions amid the country’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, has been eager to showcase how the embattled Kremlin is not, in fact, isolated. In the southern city of Kazan, Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed delegations from the bloc’s member states of the BRICS bloc and dozens of other countries, saying Russia would champion “common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each other’s interests” in league with nations from the “Global South.” But earlier this year, Putin was more blunt about Russia’s stewardship of this year’s confab. The BRICS, he said, was engaged in an effort that would defeat the “classic colonialism” of a U.S.-led world order. Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also frequently touts a Beijing-coordinated alternative to Western “hegemony,” hailed his nation’s close ties to Russia as a bulwark in an uncertain age. Both Russia and China see the BRICS as an institution that can help them organize a coalition of non-Western states to tacitly hedge against and confront a hostile West. At last year’s summit, Xi — in a dig at perceived U.S. bullying — said the BRICS do not “succumb to external pressure, or act as vassals of others,” nor do they believe that might makes right on the world stage. It was a conspicuous claim, given Russia’s blatant violations of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. “The world is going through changes unseen in a hundred years, the international situation is intertwined with chaos,” Xi said alongside Putin on Tuesday. “But I firmly believe that the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations, and great countries’ responsibility to their people will not change.” The bloc’s origin story is only worth raising for the irony that it seems to represent. It was conjured more than two decades ago as an analytic device by a British economist at Goldman Sachs — a totemic institution of American capitalism — to lump together some major non-Western economies that seemed poised to take off on the world stage (Brazil, Russia, India and China were the original four). Those nations were joined by South Africa in 2010, and much more recently, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, with Turkey and a handful of others waiting in the wings. The bloc already represents almost 50 percent of humanity and may soon reflect a global majority. |
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South African President Cyril Ramaphosa talks to Modi before at the BRICS Summit on Tuesday. (Mikhail Metzel/Reuters) |
Yet the grouping is still weaker than the sum of its parts. Much divides its major players, from the political systems of their governments to their geographies to their geopolitical and economic interests. They differ in principle and approach on hot-button global issues like the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and are not wholly aligned on some of the broader ambitions floated by leaders in the bloc, including weaning international trade off its dependence on the U.S. dollar and blunting the unique threat posed by U.S. sanctions. Countries like Brazil and India may subscribe to the overarching philosophy of the BRICS as an institution that can help shape the new “multipolar” world in an age of waning U.S. and Western influence, but they are not interested in subscribing to an anti-Western alliance. Both were originally skeptical of China and Russia’s push to expand the bloc, seeing it as an implicit attempt to dilute their own clout. Some analysts in both countries argue they may be better off quitting the enterprise all together. “For us, the United States is by far the most important partner in terms of our future growth and technologies and access to technologies, and therefore, we don’t want a situation where BRICS become the focal point of conflict with the West on the economic political fronts,” Kanwal Sibal, former foreign secretary in India and former ambassador to Russia, told my colleagues in an interview. “So while we are in there, we would like to have more cooperation within BRICS and work on a positive agenda for the form of the international system in a cooperative mode, rather than in a confrontational mode,” Sibal said. “Otherwise the BRICS will move in a direction which would become pronouncedly anti-Western.” Some analysts contend that Russia’s wielding of the bloc as an anti-Western cudgel risks undermining it altogether. “Russia is using an analysis that often starts correctly — identifying some grievance and frustrations of how African countries have been dealt with by global powers. But this narrative is sometimes overstretched when Russia presents itself as an alternative,” Gustavo de Carvalho, an analyst focusing on BRICS with the South African Institute of International Affairs, told The Washington Post. Yet at a time of considerable dysfunction in the world’s major multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the BRICS format has led to more concrete cooperation between smaller sets of states that find themselves under its umbrella. “Member countries have also sewn invisible but hugely important ties through constant mid-level meetings to deepen relations on trade and investment, diplomacy, law, finance, and more. At heart is the idea that emerging economies can’t emerge unless they nudge the leviathan out of the sun,” Foreign Policy’s Keith Johnson noted. “The animating ideas behind BRICS — reformed global governance and greater political and financial sovereignty — are still today just broad enough to harbor the whole sprawling membership.” “For all its flaws and checkered actors, the growing BRICS is among the many necessary correctives to an out-of-balance world,” wrote Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute think tank in Washington. “It cannot replace a flailing U.N. system. But the persistence and growth of BRICS demonstrates that, while fragmentation may dominate today’s headlines, the impulse for collective action, however uneven and fitful, remains very much alive.” More the reason why, Alexander Gabuev and Oliver Stuenkel argued in Foreign Affairs, the United States and other Western powers should take the bloc more seriously — and work to redress some of its grievances. “Wealthy countries can also be better problem solvers for poorer countries, including by sharing technology and assisting with the green transition,” they wrote. “And the West should make more genuine efforts to democratize the global order, such as by doing away with the anachronistic tradition that only Europeans head the IMF and only U.S. citizens lead the World Bank.” |
| Fighting in northern Gaza has ebbed and flowed over the past year. After a period of relative calm over the summer, the Israeli military launched a major offensive on Oct. 6, encircling Jabalya and hitting targets in what it said is an effort to root out Hamas militants and destroy military infrastructure. At the al-Awda Hospital in Jabalya, medical staff, about 120 in total, are sleeping at the hospital, sharing meager plates of rice with patients and their families. Israel had ordered the doctors at Awda and two other hospitals to evacuate days earlier. But some have refused to leave. (Khalil Ramzi Alkahlut/Anadolu/Getty Image) |
| · India and China have reached an agreement on patrolling their disputed border, a senior Indian official said Monday, marking a major thaw four years after bloody clashes between the nations’ border guards tanked bilateral relations and reshaped geopolitics in Asia. The announcement came shortly before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping were scheduled to arrive in Russia to attend the BRICS summit, which begins Tuesday. · Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel on Tuesday to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on increasing aid to the Gaza Strip, as U.S. officials warned that Israeli actions were causing conditions there to rapidly deteriorate. Blinken, in his hours-long meeting with Netanyahu, “emphasized the need for Israel to take additional steps to increase and sustain the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and ensure that assistance reaches civilians throughout Gaza,” a State Department spokesman said. · The FBI announced Tuesday that it is investigating an alleged leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents, days after assessments containing information about Israel’s potential plans for a retaliatory attack on Iran were published on an Iran-linked Telegram account. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that it is unclear whether the documents were made public through a leak or a hack. · A razor-thin majority of Moldovans voted in favor of eventually joining the European Union, preliminary results showed Monday, after President Maia Sandu said the referendum had been marred by “unprecedented” pro-Russian interference. For Sandu, the vote was a culmination of her four-year-long presidency in the small former Soviet country situated between Romania and Ukraine that has been locked in a decades-long battle over its political direction, torn between Moscow and the West. |
| By Amy Gardner, Patrick Marley, Colby Itkowitz and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | | |
By Hannah Knowles and Toluse Olorunnipa | | |
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| By the Editorial Board | The Washington Post | | |
By Anne Applebaum | The Atlantic | | |
By Lee Hockstader | The Washington Post | | |
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| Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, 21 Oct. 2024. (Presidential Press Service /EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) |
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is projecting careful confidence over the Western reception to his proposed “victory plan,” including his hopes for an eventual invitation to join NATO. But he says that decision will ultimately depend on the U.S. position, which probably won’t be announced until after November’s presidential election. Ukraine has framed an invitation to join NATO as a key security guarantee for both Ukraine and Europe — and one of the only ways to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from continuing the war to annex the country. “Today, we see the consensus of the majority of the allied countries and the restrained position of a few countries,” he said in a conversation with journalists that was embargoed until Tuesday. “We will work with it.” Zelensky said Monday that after Ukraine agreed in 1994 to give up its nuclear weapons, it should have received a NATO invitation in return. Instead, he said, “all we got was a full-scale war and a lot of casualties, so we have only one way out today.” “That’s why we need NATO,” he added, “because we don’t have weapons that can stop Putin.” As part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was heir to a portion of its massive nuclear arsenal. Kyiv gave it up in return for commitments to its territorial sovereignty by Britain, Russia and the United States. Zelensky, who recently returned from trips to the United States and Europe to promote his plan to force Russia to end the war, said that France has expressed support for Ukraine’s NATO bid and that “the British will support us, and we believe the Italians will.” Germany is “skeptical” about Ukraine joining NATO and is “afraid” of the topic, so it will probably take significant work to convince Berlin, he said. The German decision is likely to depend strongly on Washington’s position, and will in turn influence countries such as Hungary and Slovakia. Washington’s announcing a major policy decision on the matter now would “probably be inappropriate,” he said. "I think they don’t want additional risks.” — By Siobhán O'Grady Read on: Zelensky sees NATO momentum on Ukraine joining, but not yet from U.S. |
|  (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
By Juliet Eilperin, Carolyn Van Houten and Alice Li |
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