The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Can BRICS Disrupt the Current Global Order?

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

The BRICS – named after the five founding nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – started as a forum for the world's five largest emerging economies. Now, it's expanding into other parts of the globe and courting countries traditionally allied with the U.S. What is behind this impetus for expansion, and can it disrupt the current western-dominated global order? Steve Paikin asks: Kerry Buck, (Former Canadian Amb. to NATO), Rohinton Medhora, Professor of practice at McGill Univ.), and Seva Gunitsky, (Assoc. Professor of Political Science at the Univ. of Toronto).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The BRICS, named after the five founding nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, started as a forum for the world's five largest emerging economies. Now it's expanding into other parts of the globe and courting countries traditionally allied with the U.S. What is behind this impetus for expansion, and can it disrupt the current Western-dominated global order? Let's ask. In Quebec City, Quebec, Carrie Buck, she's former Canadian ambassador to NATO and a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa. And with us here in studio, Rohinton Madhora, professor of practice at McGill University

and a distinguished fellow at CG, the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Anne Sevignitsky, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Delighted to have you two back here in our studio and former Ambassador Buck, great to see you on the line from Quebec City. We're gonna do a little background here just to get everybody up to scratch on what the bricks are.

So I'll ask our director Sheldon Osmond to bring this up. The acronym was originally coined a long time ago actually. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill did this in 2001 in a research paper. He argued the growth of what was then called the BRIC countries, that was just Brazil, Russia, India, China, was poised to challenge the wealthy G7 economies. Fast forward to 2006. Brazil, Russia, India, China create the BRIC group and then South Africa joins in 2010 making it the BRICs.

Now Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are invited to become members effective January 1st of this year. The expanded group now has a combined population of about 3.5 billion people. That's almost half the world's inhabitants. And combined, their members' economies are worth more than $28.5 trillion, that's about 28% of the global economy. OK, Savit, you first. This year's BRICS Summit was hosted in Russia.

About three dozen countries attended. More than 20 represented by heads of state. So this is clearly a big deal now. We know the West has been trying to isolate Russia. Can we infer from this showing Russia doesn't feel very isolated right now? Well, that's certainly the message it wants to send. Putin loves the concept of BRICS. Russia loves BRICS because it can say, look,

we're not isolated, as you say. We have friends. And not only do we have friends, we have friends who are willing to stand up to the West together with us. So I think Putin would like a return to that kind of Cold War rhetoric of the West versus the rest. But a lot of it is just that rhetoric, optics.

In terms of substance, Russia is not leading anything. It's not the Cold War. It's not even the most important member of BRICS. China is arguably India. And it's become more reliant on those countries as a result of the 22nd invasion. So it's important to highlight that Russia's power is not grown as a result of this.

It's shrunk. But the one takeaway, I would say, from this meeting is that BRICS has really reached kind of a crossroads. Is it going to continue to be this kind of strategic hedging mechanism for countries that want to show that they're independent and powerful? Or is it going to turn into this real anti-American vehicle, which is what Russia and China seem to want?

I think a lot of the members are still hedging their bets, playing China and Russia on one hand versus the West on the other hand. And it's a balancing act. And I think it's a balancing act that's becoming increasingly hard. And they may have to make a choice in the near future. Kerry Buck, as you were watching what was emerging from Russia after the BRICS summit.

What's on your list of accomplishments from that event? Well, I agree that Russia sought to send a message to the world that they're not isolated, and I also agree that they failed in that. It's a small point, but it's a symbol. If you look at the declaration that came out of Kazan, it actually was very, very tepid on Ukraine. In a way it was weaker than the previous summit because now the summit declaration from Kazan talks about the purposes of the charter of the UN, which is code for territorial integrity. I should just mention parenthetically here, Kazan is the name of the city where this summit took place inside Russia.

Okay, Rohindra, your sort of prime takeaway from the BRICS get-together. So I saw three things, Steve. First, there's more to BRICS than Russia. So I think the analysis and focus on Russia was in some ways wishful thinking. There was a lot more done. And so my second point, BRICS continues to widen and deepen. There are more members in BRICS. It is covering more and more topics. This year, for example, there was a grain exchange announced, and so it's fleshing out

its institutional underpinnings. And third, summits are also important for what happens on the sidelines. And there was the first time in five years meeting between Prime Minister Modi and Premier Xi. And I'd say where BRICS goes and where global affairs go depend a lot on the China-India relationship. And if it gets warm, which it isn't right now, then that is something to look out for as well. I'm going to come back to that because that clearly was an important thing. I actually want to ask you about who wasn't there because Saudi Arabia was invited to

join BRICS, MBS, right, Mohammed bin Salman was noticeably absent from there. What do you read into that? Saudi Arabia is in a tough position on this one. On the one hand, it has very ambitious plans to diversify away from oil and has huge investment requirements that even its own massive reserves cannot fund. And so in the BRICS, it has countries that are massive investors.

They bring technology, and they don't ask a lot of questions about human rights and politics and so on. Saudi Arabia has an asset that's declining and the thirsty countries are in the bricks and so there's a market assurance for its current product. That's the pro. On the con side, Saudi Arabia is very much reliant on the US for a range of relationships. 75% of its arms come from the US and so it is worried that it would be seen as having crossed a line.

And so a traditionally cautious bureaucracy and decision-making structure is going to hedge at least until the US elections, because if Trump wins, and we might get into that, then Saudi Arabia might not want to be that brazen about joining BRICS. Gotcha. Kerry Buck, I want to ask you about Turkey. Turkey is a NATO country. Turkey is the first NATO country seeking BRICS membership. What do we read into that?

Well, there are a number of factors pulling Turkey towards the BRICS. President Erdogan of Turkey has had a relatively good relationship with Vladimir Putin for years, certainly better than all other NATO leaders except for Hungary's Orban. Turkey refused to impose sanctions on Russia. Energy trade has spiked. They rely on energy supply from Russia. But it wasn't just about Russia. Turkey, China has also been seeing a rapprochement over the last while. Their foreign minister visited China in June. So this is all part of a gradual push by President Erdogan to diversify Turkey's foreign policy portfolio and reduce their dependence on the West, particularly, but not only in the defense

sector. So they're trying to play both sides, but there are also a number of push factors. I think that there's no world in which Turkey will in the foreseeable future seek to leave the West. They're still talking about their accession to the EU and in one way, maybe their invitation and attendance at the BRICS summit was, you know, means of pressuring the EU into accelerating accession talks. Maybe it was to increase leverage with the US. But NATO, the EU are both very important Western groupings, very important to Turkey.

And so they'll be walking that very difficult balancing act between the West and the Brits, as will most, I would say, most other members of the Brits. Okay, Seva, it does sound like Turkey's trying to have a foot in both camps though. Is that okay? Well, it's kind of an extension of Turkey's foreign policy over the past decade or more, where it's trying to diversify its foreign policy and make connections outside the West, but it still wants to maintain connections with the West. And Erdogan is also chafing against what he sees as Western hegemony. He shares that in common with other BRICS members.

But I think this is a good way for Turkey to get a measure of global clout and to remind the West, hey, I'm important, pay attention to me. This is something that you need to keep your eye on. Can you imagine any other NATO countries being interested in joining the BRICS? It would be very difficult to imagine at this point. I mean, you know the Fredric Jameson quote, it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. I think it's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine something like of capitalism. I think it's easier to imagine the end of the world

than to imagine something like Canada in BRICS or something like that. Not necessarily Canada, but I mean, there's a lot of countries in NATO, and is it on anybody's agenda? It's hard to see that at this point. I think it partly depends on the outcome of the election as well, how brazen countries want to be

in terms of joining BRICS. Well, since we're not gonna know the outcome of the American election, not next Tuesday night for sure, might take a little longer than that, we shall see. Okay, Rohinton, how about this, when the BRICS was founded, or were founded, I guess it was intended to pose an economic challenge to the West, but it now looks like it's trying to pose a political challenge as well. Talk to us about the implications of that agenda. So the two go hand in hand everywhere and all the time. As an economist I can say that. When the BRICS were formed and had their first summit in 2009 it was in

the aftermath of the global financial crisis. There was a sense that that sort of Western view of how globalization works had failed massively. And so the BRICS, to be sure, were an intellectual and political statement. I would say that the economic weaponization of sanctions has led to that sort of connection between politics and economics. Therefore, the BRICS has been paying a lot of attention to things like having its own infrastructure bank to rival the World Bank, a payment system to rival the IMF, a payment system also to substitute for SWIFT from which Russia was frozen out. And so there's the grain exchange to safeguard food supplies if there's further sanctions. So there's a sense that not only do we disagree with the West, but we have to build the plumbing

to make sure that that means something. And that's what we're seeing is a slow and quite boring process of institution building, which might take years. Seder, should the West feel threatened by this economic push by the Ricks? Well, it started basically as an ideological alliance, but you're right that it's taking on economic elements. Now, right now it's not a coherent body. Being a member of BRICS doesn't preclude you

from joining any other security or economic organization. So it's not a coherent block in that Cold War sense. But at the same time, it can still lead to chipping away at the US-led border, just as serving as a focal point for ideologies that don't follow the West. But still, I think we have to stress that there's a gap between how Russia presents BRICS, which is this unified, powerful force, and the reality, which is that these are countries that are trying to get the best deals with each other, that have tensions with each other,

and that really have very little in common with each other other than a shared dislike of the West. Kerry Buck, I guess we, this may be a silly question, but it wouldn't be the first time I asked one on this program, and that is, if you want to go to the European Union headquarters, you know where to go. If you want to go to the international

criminal court headquarters, you know where to go. There's a building, NATO headquarters, there's a building, There's a place. Does BRICS have a capital? Do they have a building? Do they have a headquarters? Well, they don't, but neither does the G7. So I don't think that's the kiss of death for the BRICS, to be honest.

What it is is it's an ideological grouping that is starting to get a little more mature on the economic cooperation front, much, much slower in maturing on the front of political cooperation. And I don't think the BRICS will turn into a block. I think that it'll be one of many fora that most of the middle powers, aside from China and Russia that belong to the BRICS, will choose to align itself with but not completely. It'll still play in the G20. It'll still focus on the UN,

ASEAN, et cetera, et cetera. So why not? I think three reasons. Apart from Russia and to a lesser extent, China members aren't interested in a direct conflict with the West. As I said, a lot of the middle powers depend on the West for security guarantees, for instance. Political interests of the BRICS members coincide only to a degree. So the Kazan Declaration, it mimics a G7 declaration, but you see on geopolitical issues, it's very, very thin. They'll find areas where they can agree and use pretty tough language like Gaza, but other issues you won't find that kind of agreement. So kind of a thinner slice of coinciding interest

when you compare it and contrast it to G7, for instance. And then last year, when the BRICS had a choice between deepening their cooperation amongst groups that maybe is more like-minded or expanding, that shows expansion instead. So you get a bigger bricks with a louder voice to critique the Western-led order, but I don't think we're going to be seeing them offering a solid alternate model of global governance that's sufficiently attractive to induce middle powers to align completely with China and Russia.

Oh, Rohinton, let me pick up on that angle with you. You know, obviously, if an organization has fewer countries in it that are like-minded, it's easier to run. If they're going to expand the BRICS into potentially three dozen different countries, which are presumably more different from one another than the originals, does that make it a tougher organization to run and therefore less threatening to us? Absolutely. By the way, the G7 is not monolithic in the way countries approach economic policy and their worldview either. But in the case of the BRICS, it reflects the multipolarity in which we live.

If we're going to talk about multipolarity, then we have to accept that even within blocks, there's going to be different ways of looking at the world. If the BRICS expands and even half of those 30 countries lined up come in, it softens the image of the BRICS as this monolithic China-led Russia beholden group that just wants to poke the US in the eye. That's not what the BRICS is about. And if the BRICS expands, it gives the West an opportunity to actually pick and choose

from different positions that the BRICS folks might be espousing. Okay. Seva, let me get you on that as well. Is a bigger BRICS something to be less feared by the West? I think in some ways a rapid expansion of BRICS would be the best thing for the West because it really would water it down in a way, sort of a new non-aligned movement rather than this rabid anti-American vehicle. So in that sense I think it would change its image to, again, not something that's explicitly

anti-Western but as an alternative that other countries might find appealing. Do you think the BRICS have currently upset the present world order in that, I was going to say that we enjoy right now, but there's not a lot of enjoying going on out there. But take a hit at that anyway. Well, by themselves, I don't think the BRICS can do much. But I think it's a harbinger of things to come.

I think it's a symptom of a global order in which everybody is expecting the end of American unipolarity. And some people are expecting it eagerly and waiting for it. Others are cautiously sort of hedging their bets. But I think that's the general consensus. And in the sense that even if it does nothing but provide photo ops for people like Putin, that still serves its purpose.

Even by existing, it serves as a challenge to the West in some sense. Whether it can mount a credible challenge in the future, I think depends on a lot of these factors that we talked about. Kerry Buck, your opinion on that as well. Have the bricks already upset the current global order? I think the creation of the bricks is a symptom rather than a cause. I think that disruption of the global order has been underway for a few decades, to be frank. It is part of a natural evolution of the global order that was built with a much smaller group of countries following World War II, much more like-minded group of countries, but not the West. Technically, it was a bit broader than the West.

But now there are a lot more countries seeking to have their voices heard at tables that are more equitable. And so it's almost growing pains as the world tries to incorporate almost, you know, half again, the number of states in different levels of development into global architecture, into global governance. So that's the most benign version of why the world is being disrupted. It's not all bad. There's a less benign version in that you'll see a lot of the countries now seeking to join the BRICS are quite critical of double standards of the West. And Gaza is a bit of a

case in point, you'll see the language in the Russian hosted BRICS declaration on Gaza is pretty strong. So I think the West needs to take the concerns of those countries who feel they're left out of the global order, that it's inequitable seriously. So what do they do? Revitalize the G20. Do more on reaching out to those in between states. do more on reaching out to those in-between states. Don't just French shore, but reach out to those in-between states that might tip towards autocracy, make your model more attractive to them by reaching out.

That requires reinvesting in diplomacy. And on the other side of the coin, Rohinton, if you're a member of the BRICS right now, and you want to further disrupt the international order, what are you doing? You know, there's a quote from Gramsci about how, we know what's ending, but we can't visualize what's being created. And we're in that stage in global affairs

where we kind of know that the post-war, Western-led consensus is frayed, but we have several different ways forward. And so what De Briggs is doing, whether deliberately or by accident, I'd say deliberately, is posing the challenge, creating counterpoints to what we've taken for granted, such as the bank and the fund and SWIFT, and saying, well, look, if that doesn't happen, this does happen. What I really hope happens here is that the G7 and the BRICS come together in the G20. The G20 still remains our only serious operating system to manage globalization.

I see BRICS and G7 as marshalling stations where different views are brought together and then they are thrashed out eventually at the G20. If that doesn't happen, then we're back in a world of blocks with nothing at the center. But given the kinds of problems we face like climate change and pandemics, we can't deal with those regionally and by disagreeing with each other all the time. There has to be a way that people who don't see eye to eye talk to each other, and that's the G20. Samuel, let me get you on that as well. If the BRICs want to further destabilize

the current international world order, what should they do? Well, what they have now is not a coherent black book, but a coherent message. And the message resonates with a lot of the world, because they look at the so-called liberal world order, the US-led order, and they see things like Gaza and they see there should be an alternative to this. Now, it's not clear what the alternative is.

For as much as all the BRICS members complain about the current system and they complain about the dollars, the global currency, there's no consensus on what to do about it. So I think this is going to be an incremental, long-term process where the members slowly, gradually work out their differences and figure out how to work together. But a lot of it also depends on the state of the U.S. If the U.S. is in visible decline, then that galvanizes the entire movement and takes it to a whole new level of importance.

Kerry, do you see the BRICS turning into a political and security alliance against NATO anytime soon? No, I don't. I really don't. I don't see it. As I said earlier, I don't see enough political or commonality on geopolitical issues to bring them together, just to pronounce on geopolitical threats, but whether they'd ever morph into something that is equal to the treaty based defense guarantee that NATO is guided by? No, not at all. And then some of the newer BRICS members also have deep, deep security relationships with the U S I don't see them wanting to trade that in, trade in

U S hegemony for falling under Chinese hegemony either. So I don't see it. What I see is a creation of another forum, a forum that will become more powerful, where countries can choose not just it, but choose to use it when they want to on certain issues. Then they'll bounce back to G20, bounce back to the UN. It's part of a more multifaceted world of different, minilateral, multilateral groupings where they can choose to cooperate on issues with their partners of choice. And those partners of choice will shift, depending what the issue is.

So it's another, to use a bad pun, it's another brick in the wall, but it's not... I was wondering which one of you was going to go there first, and to let the record show it wasn't me. Okay. Rohinton, I want to circle back to that point you made many minutes ago, which was this was the first face-to-face meeting in five years between Modi and Xi, India and China.

How significant? Depends what happens next. Brick in the wall part two. But if India and China learn to get along better, then Russia is further marginalized in bricks and in global affairs more broadly. The whole business about French shoring and seeing building up India as a bulwark against China starts looking

different and you now have a real view of two successful developing countries which Russia is not. Coming together and facing the West in ways that look different to the West. On the one hand you have India which has always been comfortable, prickly but comfortable to deal with and then you have China which has been prickly and uncomfortable to deal with. If those two cooperate, then the nature of BRICS changes, the nature of G20 changes, and I'd say the G7 might get serious about expanding in ways that it hasn't seriously

considered so far, including bringing in India. Okay, with a few minutes to go here, let us talk about the elephant of the room, and that is the American election. Seva, if Harris wins, the effect on Bricks will be X. If Trump wins, it will be Y. What's X and Y? Well, to put it simply, if Harris wins, then Bricks will have a much harder time. If Trump wins, that really galvanizes the anti-Western global movement, because as we know, he's sympathetic to certain leaders of Bricks countries. The authoritarian ones.

Yes, oddly enough. That's right. So it's easy to laugh about where Bricks comes from, that it was at this Goldman Sachs product. But we have to think about the League of Nations. That also rose as a dream of a few lawyers at the turn of the 20th century. So I think we do have to pay attention to what it could become in the future, especially if the election shows the rest of the world that maybe the model of liberal democracy in the US is not the model that we want to follow and that there are plausible and

appealing alternatives that are now rising. Historically that's a path toward away from democracy and towards other regime types. Kerry Buck, the outcome of the US election affects this how? Trump increases the unpredictability of the US as a partner for the West. He also takes a more extreme form of isolationism than any US president, I think, to date. So where does that leave? The fact that he likes autocrats is a bad signal, a very bad signal for the West. Will he become more attractive to those middle powers in the BRICS?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure if US instability and unpredictably actually helps those powers in the BRICS? I'm not sure. I'm not sure if US instability and unpredictably actually helps those members of the BRICS who rely in the US for some security guarantees. So I think the best answer is some chaos, but I also think we're not close to a world where the US and the EU are going to stop being major economic and geopolitical powers for the immediate future. So there'll be an incremental shift. There'll be bad messaging, bad theater around it. Will there be structural changes quickly away from the G7 towards BRICS? I don't think so.

Okay, let me hold you there because I've got 30 seconds seconds left I want to hear Rohinton on this as well. I'd say that a Trump victory means more for the G7 than it means for BRICS. I'd be more worried about the G7, never mind the BRICS. Second, whoever wins there's this slow dynamism in BRICS of institution building which we talked about a few minutes ago. That will continue. Now its speed might change here and there but I'd say the new development bank, the counterpoint to the IMF, counterpoint to payment system, cooperation on commodities is going to continue whoever wins. Because Kamala Harris really has echoed a lot of the anti-China rhetoric that's going on in the US. Trump is most crude about it, but Biden and Harris have

not been that different on that one. And so if I'm China, I'm not seeing much difference. And so if I'm in the BRICS, I'm not seeing much difference there either. Mr. Director, can I get a three shot here so that I can thank all of our guests for a splendid discussion tonight on TVO? Savva Gnitsky from the University of Toronto, Rohinton Madora from CG and McGill, Kerry Buck, former Canadian ambassador to NATO, now University of Ottawa. Thanks so much, you three.

Thank you.