How a changing and expanding bloc benefits India

For years, Western critics viewed BRICS as a relatively unimportant entity.

But last week, at its annual summit in Russia, the group triumphantly showed how far it has come.

Top leaders from 36 countries, along with the UN Secretary-General, attended the three-day event, and the BRICS officially welcomed four new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Further membership expansions may soon follow. The Brics had previously added only one new member – South Africa in 2010 – since their creation (as Bric indicates) in 2006.

There is a growing buzz around the BRICS, which have long presented themselves as an alternative to Western-led models of global governance. Today, it is becoming increasingly important and influential as it capitalizes on growing discontent with Western policies and financial structures.

Ironically, India – perhaps the most Westernized Brics member – is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the group's evolution and expansion.

India has deep ties with most of the new Brics members. Egypt is a growing trade and security partner in the Middle East. The United Arab Emirates (along with Saudi Arabia, which has been offered to join the BRICS but has not yet officially joined) is overall one of India's most important partners. India's relationship with Ethiopia is one of the longest and closest in Africa.

The original Brics members also continue to provide important benefits to India.

Delhi can leverage BRICS to signal its continued commitment to its close friend Russia, despite Western efforts to isolate it. And working with its BRICS rival China is helping India in its slow, cautious efforts to ease tensions with Beijing, particularly on the heels of a border patrol deal announced by Delhi on the eve of the summit. This announcement likely gave Prime Minister Narendra Modi the diplomatic and political space to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the summit.

Additionally, BRICS allows India to advance its core foreign policy principle of strategic autonomy, whereby it aims to balance its relations with a wide range of geopolitical actors, without formally allying with any of them. between them.

Delhi maintains important partnerships, both bilateral and multilateral, within and outside the West. In this sense, its presence in an increasingly solid Bric and its relations with its members can be balanced by its participation in a revitalized Indo-Pacific Quad and its close ties with the United States and other Western powers.

More broadly, the Brics priorities are those of India.

The joint statement issued after the recent summit trumpets the same principles and goals that Delhi articulates in its own public messages and policy documents: engaging with the Global South (a key outreach goal for Delhi), promoting multilateralism and multipolarity, advocate for UN reform. Delhi is keen on a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and is critical of the Western sanctions regime (which impacts Delhi's trade with Russia and infrastructure projects with Iran).

And yet, all this may appear to be a problem for India.

As BRICS gains momentum, welcomes new members and sparks global discontent, the group appears poised to begin implementing its long-held vision – emphatically articulated by Beijing and Moscow – of serving as a counter- attack on the West.

Additionally, new Brics members include Iran and, perhaps later, Belarus and Cuba – suggesting the future possibility of a purely anti-Western tilt.

Even as India seeks to balance its ties with the Western and non-Western world, it would not want to be part of an arrangement perceived as overtly anti-Western.

But in reality, these fears are unfounded.

The BRICS are not an anti-Western entity. Apart from Iran, all new members maintain close ties with the West. Moreover, the many countries considered as possible future members do not exactly constitute an anti-West bloc; they include NATO member Turkey and Vietnam, a key US trading partner.

And even if BRICS gained more anti-Western members, the group would likely struggle to implement the kind of initiatives that could pose a real threat to the West.

The joint statement issued after the recent summit identified a series of projects, including an international payments system that would counter the US dollar and evade Western sanctions.

But here, a long-standing criticism of the BRICS – that they fail to accomplish meaningful things – continues to loom large. On the one hand, BRICS plans to reduce dependence on the US dollar are unlikely to be viable, as the economies of many member states cannot afford to cope.

Furthermore, early Brics states often struggled to agree, and cohesion and consensus will be even more difficult to achieve with expanded membership.

India may get along well with most Brics members, but many new members do not get along well with each other.

Iran has problems with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, and relations between Egypt and Ethiopia are strained.

One might hope that the recent easing of tensions between China and India bodes well for the BRICS.

But let's be clear: despite the recent border agreement, relations between India and China remain very tense.

A broader border dispute, intensifying bilateral competition in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region, and China's close alliance with Pakistan rule out the possibility of détente in the near future.

Brics offers the best of all worlds in Delhi today. This allows India to work with some of its closest friends in a growing organization that espouses principles it holds dear, from multilateralism to openness to the Global South.

This gives India an opportunity to establish greater balance in its relations with the West and non-Western states, at a time when Delhi's relations with the United States and its Western allies (at notable exception of Canada) reached new heights.

At the same time, the Brics' continuing struggles to achieve more internal cohesion and to do more on a concrete level ensure that the group is unlikely to pose a major threat to the West, let alone becomes an anti-Western giant – neither. what India would like.

The most likely outcome of the recent summit, as the joint declaration suggests, is a BRICS commitment to partner on a series of low-hanging, non-controversial initiatives focused on climate change, higher education, public health and science. technology, among others.

Such cooperation would involve member states working with each other, not against the West – an ideal arrangement for India.

These collaborations in resolutely safe spaces would also demonstrate that the ascendancy of the Brics need not make the West uncomfortable. And it would offer some reassurance after the group's closely watched summit in Russia likely attracted some nervous attention in Western capitals.

Michael Kugelman is director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.

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