At the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg on August 24, 2023, the bloc’s five members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — announced the invitation of six new countries — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Effective January 1, 2024, BRICS countries will represent almost half the world’s population.
While BRICS has struggled to make concrete achievements, the momentum may now be shifting. This expansion would have the BRICS overtake the G7 in total gross domestic product, with BRICS economies growing at higher demographic and economic rates than G7 members.
The BRICS expansion could help reduce tensions among the BRICS’s Middle Eastern countries, but could also provoke the United States and NATO, given the admission of Iran and the current membership of Russia and China.
A growing number of countries have expressed interest in joining the BRICS group. Yet there are internal disagreements about how the group should move forward. China and Russia have pushed for a quick expansion of BRICS to strengthen their geopolitical influence, while India has expressed concern about admitting many new members too quickly.
India’s concern has much to do with its historic, bitter border disputes with China, as well as the current strength of India’s bilateral relationship with the United States. India’s contribution in keeping BRICS from becoming outwardly anti-Western only strengthens the country’s geopolitical importance for the United States – US President Joe Biden quite literally pulled out the red carpet for India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his June 2023 visit to the White House. READ MORE...
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