On the last day of their summit in Johannesburg, this Thursday (24), the Brics, a group of emerging economies formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, surprised by announcing that, from the beginning of 2024, should double its number of members: Argentina, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran will join the group.
The Brics, which in practice never evolved into a cohesive and efficient group of countries, already carried an internal dispute, with China and India claiming territories on the border between the two countries. With the new members, other disputes will also be at the heart of the bloc, threatening its future.
Argentina will be joined by Iran in the group, which participated in the major attacks on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and on the Associação Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in 1994, which left 29 and 85 dead, respectively.
On Thursday, center-right Argentine presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich said that record would lead to an Argentine withdrawal from the BRICS if she is elected in October.
Libertarian candidate Javier Milei, who won the primaries on the 13th, expressed the same position, stating that the “geopolitical alignment” of his eventual government will be “with the United States and Israel”.
Iran also has differences with another new member of the BRICS, Saudi Arabia. Despite having announced in March the reestablishment of diplomatic relations after seven years of broken ties (an agreement that took place with the mediation of China), the two countries have a history of proxy conflicts in the Middle East. The most recent is the war in Yemen – whose ceasefire, in force since April last year, is sometimes disrespected.
Uncertainty also hangs over another agreement, which aims to resolve a conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia, also novices of the Brics. The two countries have been locked in a diplomatic dispute for several years (which came close to devolving into war at times) over a large Ethiopian dam being built on the Blue Nile River, with Egyptians expressing concerns about their water security.
In July, Egypt and Ethiopia agreed to settle the dispute within four months, a move that was seen as a major step forward but, given years of tensions, has an uncertain outcome.
To complicate relations between future members of the BRICS, on Monday (21) the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report that accused the Saudi border guard of shooting dead hundreds of Ethiopian migrants on the border with Yemen.
Riyadh denied the accusation on Thursday and blamed alleged “armed groups” – which it did not identify – according to the official Saudi news agency SPA.
And it is necessary to consider that this list does not take into account economic disputes – India, for example, which stole the position of the most populous country in the world from the Chinese this year, is withdrawing more and more investments from China due to the interference of the dictatorship of Xi Jinping on the local economy.
In an interview with Radio France International (RFI), Michael Dillon, professor of history at King’s College London, said that the expansion of the Brics, a bloc that, “after all these years, is still an organization that is in the process of evolving and definition of what it will do”, recalls the Bandung Conference, held by Asian and African countries in 1955.
At the meeting, China put a lot of pressure on behalf of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement, also proposing an alternative to the geopolitical world order of the moment – exactly the argument for the expansion of the Brics now.
“Well, the results weren’t very productive then and I’m not convinced they will be now, because of the internal conflicts between the member countries. And I think some of the new members are just going to bring new conflict,” Dillon said. (With EFE Agency)
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