JIM O'NEILL
This month, Russian President Vladimir Putin will host the 2024 BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit. It will be the first annual meeting to include the four new members – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates – that joined last year, and many other countries also reportedly will participate. But what will come of it?
The BRICs were originally an acronym that I used (in 2001) to describe what I saw as the world’s key emerging economies. But former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Lafer, had the idea of building on my coinage, and the BRICs turned themselves into a political club, adding South Africa in 2009.
Putin undoubtedly will use this year’s summit to signal to the world that he is not as isolated as Western governments want him to be. It is an ideal occasion for him and other leaders to promote a vision of a world that the United States does not lead. But it is worth noting that two other countries that were expected to join the expanded BRICS have not done so. After originally accepting the invitation, Argentina reversed course following Javier Milei’s election as president in 2023; and Saudi Arabia still has not decided what it will do.
One can guess why the Kingdom would be reluctant to join. It still prizes its defense and security alliance with the US, and those ties will grow even stronger if it ever normalizes relations with Israel. More to the point, it is not clear what the Saudis, or any others, stand to gain from BRICS membership.
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