Ray Hartley - BRICS loses its clout

BRICS is suffering an identity crisis — and its foreign ministers' gathering in New Delhi has done nothing to resolve it. In this interview with Irakli, Platform for African Democrats custodian Ray Hartley asks the defining question: "What is the point of BRICS?" He warns that the bloc has become little more than pageantry: "The summit in India will be high-profile — guards of honour, jets flying overhead, the full spectacle. And then at the end of it, there will be no serious results, because they simply can't agree on much." On BRICS claiming to represent the Global South, Hartley is blunt: "Two of these countries — China and Russia — are not really part of the Global South. China is one of the most developed economies in the world. And then you have the giant oil states: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran. These are super-rich countries with vast resources. They don't represent the Global South. They simply claim to." And while BRICS foreign ministers were exchanging pleasantries in New Delhi, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump were holding a bilateral summit — a contrast Hartley says speaks for itself: "It's really just a sideshow. It has no real-world effects — not economically in terms of trade or investment, and not politically either. It simply lacks coherence.".Listen here.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Irakli (00:01.264) Foreign ministers from the BRICS nations just wrapped a high-profile gathering in New Delhi, and Ray Hartley, who is a custodian for the Platform for African Democrats, mentions how this has produced almost nothing worth remembering in his latest piece available on BizNews.com. Welcome, Ray.Ray (00:20.674) Hi, thanks for having me on.Irakli (00:23.772) So the diplomats agreed on 63 points covering everything from food security to nuclear medicine to AI. But you mentioned in your article that this is riddled with contradictions.Ray (00:36.278) Yeah, I mean, I think the real question is what is the point of BRICS? Because it's been around now for a while. It's sort of, you know, what is it? Is it a forum of economic, or some sort of economic relationship between these various countries? They try to boost each other's economic growth and performance, and open trade and that kind of thing? Is it a political platform? Does it have an agenda? Is it trying to reshape the global world order in a particular way? You know, it's all very unclear. And I think part of the problem is that, you know, BRICS consists of countries that are of such different — they're different in every possible way you can imagine, you know, from vastly populous countries like China, the world's second largest economy, through to South Africa, a much smaller population and economically, by far and away, the weakest in the group. Some of them are autocracies, some are democracies. You know, some of them have populist regimes. And it's all become very kind of unclear, you know, as to what the purpose of this body is. So this meeting of foreign ministers came at a time when, you know, some of these BRICS countries are at war with each other, literally. You know, I think Iran and the UAE and Saudi Arabia are on opposite sides of this conflict in the Middle East at the moment. And Iranian missiles are raining down on the UAE. So you know, and that's the biggest issue of the day, is this Iran confrontation and how it should be resolved. And BRICS has got nothing to say on that.Irakli (02:43.3) It's the elephant in the room, isn't it? Nothing meaningful was said about the US-Iran conflict. But I mean, while the BRICS foreign ministers were comparing notes in New Delhi, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump were holding a bilateral summit. In your view, what does this say about the nature of multilateralism and these summits in today's age, in the Trump era?Ray (03:15.502) Yes, it was a summit of foreign ministers, so you wouldn't have expected Xi to be there. But I think if you just compare these engagements, for China, it's quite clear what's important to them is kind of sorting out their bilateral relationship with the US. And that's not really something that BRICS is going to help them with. If anything, BRICS could be an obstacle to that because it includes Iran, for example. So it's just a sideshow, really. It doesn't really have any real-world effects economically for any of the countries, trade-wise, investment-wise, and even politically, no. It lacks that kind of coherence.Irakli (04:11.452) When BRICS has drifted from economic ambition into a platform for airing grievances almost against Western-led nations, how, to your point around its effectiveness and these expensive engagements in which foreign ministers are kind of signing on and having an agenda that is a 63-point plan without much commitment — going forward with the meeting later this year, what are your expectations in terms of where BRICS is going in terms of its direction and its impact?Ray (04:55.926) Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's going to really find its way out of this morass of contradictory interests. So I think that, you know, it's become a sort of really a sort of pageantry, you know. So the summit in India will be high profile. There'll be guards of honour that everyone will inspect. There'll be jets flying overhead. There'll be the summit meeting. And then at the end of it, there's unlikely to be any serious results because they can't really agree on much. I mean, I think, you know, if you take, for example, the very important thing of the reform of the UN, which I think some sort of reform is due. I mean, it's been many, many decades since the UN was formed. The UN has become pretty ineffective. I mean, it's not really there when it comes to solving the conflict in the Middle East. It can't really do anything about Russia and Ukraine. So, you know, the need for a sort of more muscular, multilateral body like the United Nations is probably there. But what you see is that BRICS is sort of projecting itself as the fourth — you know, bringing the voice of what it calls the Global South to the UN. And this is, in fact, you know, it's just really — it's dishonest, to put it blankly. I mean, firstly, two of these countries are not really part of the Global South: China and Russia. China is, as I said earlier, the second most developed economy in the world. So, and then you've got these giant oil states in the Gulf, the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Iranians. And, you know, they don't really represent the Global South. They're super-rich countries with vast resources. So it's not really a voice for the Global South either, which it tries to project itself as. So I think it's got a serious identity problem, and I think this will persist until it starts looking at reaching some sort of economic arrangement, trade arrangements, looking at things like that and getting away from the high-level political stuff where there is no common ground.Irakli (07:38.268) This is BizNews. Please take a look at the article on our website on BRICS losing its clout. Thank you.Ray (07:49.4) Thank you.

Ray Hartley - BRICS loses its clout

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