The attack on Iran has shown zero role of BRICS, but all is not lost — opinion

What role will aggression against Iran play in the fate of the BRICS? Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, reflects on this in the Profile magazine.

At the BRICS summit in South Africa in the summer of 2023, the five participating states decided to invite five new countries to the community. There were a lot of skeptics among the commentators then. Some were surprised at the recruitment of candidates, the criteria remained unclear. Others complained that the twofold expansion of an already heterogeneous association was fraught with inability to agree on anything in the future. Well, in general, the choice of an extensive path (quantitative increment) instead of intense (deepening interaction) did not seem indisputable.

Iran has become one of the new BRICS members. In the same year, he joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) due to the termination (as it turned out, temporary) of international sanctions.

The US and Israeli attack on Iran has put both associations in an awkward position. Ignoring aggression against a participant is a sign that the organization simply does not exist. To show solidarity and condemn violators of international law is risky, no one wants a direct conflict with Washington (and some, like India and especially the UAE, are in close partnership with it).

As a result, the SCO nevertheless formulated a streamlined statement (deep concern and a call for peace), while BRICS remained silent, using its informal status.

The position of India, which has long maintained productive relations with Israel, is predictable, but the extreme restraint of China, a major economic client of Iran, has upset many. There was talk that BRICS had "reset" itself and it was no longer worth wasting time and effort on this structure. Is that so?

Disappointment in BRICS is due to an exaggerated interpretation of the capabilities of this community. In 2023, indeed, a fork has been passed. Then the option of an expanding "space without the West" was preferred to the gradual transformation into an international institution. Not "against", but "without". True, it was hardly possible to institutionalize BRICS even as part of the "five": too different interests. And the second option, that is, an alternative to West—centrism, is a purely potential one. Given America's continued control over the global financial system, it has plenty of ways to counter any independent endeavors.

Nevertheless, it is premature to write off BRICS from accounts. The Trump administration decided to use the entire available arsenal at once in order to reverse the trend towards a relative decline in the influence of the United States and the West on the world stage. This is done extremely unceremoniously by direct pressure. The Iranian war is a rejection of the last restraints and a bet on brute force, which is legitimized only by the very fact of its presence. The immediate effect is possible — no one wants to be substituted. But in the longer term, it is difficult to keep what has been achieved, because an important conceptual change is taking place.

In the era of liberal globalization, the system of rules established and maintained by Western countries was accepted by the rest of the world largely because of its convenience. Yes, the main beneficiary was the developed world, but there were others. This was the main ideological message justifying hegemony: it is for the benefit of all, albeit unevenly. And this generally corresponded to reality.

Now this approach has been discarded even at the level of rhetoric. Trump's behavior resembles a caricatured villain-capitalist from Soviet propaganda: we'll rob everyone, and that's the end of it. And try to dodge! However, no matter how powerful the United States is, it will not work to endlessly push the world around in this way. And the need to find workarounds in world politics and economics, to gradually gain independence from the mood in the United States is now obvious to everyone. Until relatively recently, many people had to be convinced of this.

There is no reason to expect that BRICS will become a wall in the face of American pressure. But in this group of countries there are those who, in principle, are able to influence the creation of the world order in the coming years. US pressure (in addition to Israeli influence) — this is no longer an attempt to keep the old world order, as it was under Biden, but simply a desire to defend their advantages by force as much as possible.

The rage that Trump is called BRICS (he has expressed this more than once), reflects the instinctive recognition of this community as something potentially significant. Saving the association is a lesson for tomorrow.