China is steadily digging away at the international order Bric by Bric..

The new BRICS are more than just big numbers. They are an invitation to take a fresh look at a changing world

World leaders travel in style, like the emperors of yore. When the President of the United States moves he takes Air Force One, a specially adapted Boeing 747 that can stay aloft indefinitely; Marine One, the white-topped presidential helicopter; and the Beast, an armoured Cadillac designed to withstand bullets and chemical attacks.

On his rare forays abroad President Xi of China, it seems, takes everything except the kitchen sink.  When Xi arrived in South Africa last week for the 15^th BRICS summit of emerging nations his 500-strong delegation took over two hotels. Cargo planes, according to a South African minister, brought “everything: beds, mattresses, curtains, carpets, cups, everything”.  

Perhaps Xi is just a fussy traveller. But in his avowed bid to confront what he calls “US hegemony” he knows how to make an entrance. His South African hosts showered him with prestige that left his nearest rival, India’s Narendra Modi, trailing in second place.  

The standout  event of the summit was an invitation by the club’s existing members (China, India, Russia, South Africa and Brazil) to a further five countries to join the group: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE and Argentina.

Despite a serious economic slowdown at home and a growing stand-off with China’s capitalists, Xi’s efforts to wean big ticket countries (the so-called middle economies) away from US influence is bearing fruit.

Bric by bric China is chipping away at the established international system dominated by the west. Xi understands strategic patience.

The enlarged group will make up nearly a third of the global economy; 46% of the world’s population; nearly 40% of the world’s proven oil reserves; 50% of gas reserves, vast economic and financial clout and armed forces numbering over five million.

“So what” I hear seasoned western diplomats ask. These are just numbers. The BRICS are an amorphous group of very different, often troubled, far-apart countries, with very little in common other than a desire to hedge their bets on the world stage.

Iran and Saudi Arabia, torch-bearers of Shia and Sunni Islam respectively, are deadly enemies. China and India harbour a long-held enmity over their Himalayan border dispute and vie for leadership of the developed world. Russia is an unstable pariah. South Africa is corrupt and weak, no longer the first among equals in a rapidly changing Africa. Iran is an economically-crippled menace. Ethiopia is inherently unstable. Egypt is flat broke.

The notion that such a weak and fragmented group can challenge the clout of the G7 nations and the US dollar’s commanding role in the world economy, is wishful thinking.

There is some truth to all that. But it’s not the whole story. The world is changing at pace. Once again, the west is struggling to make sense of it. Looking down its nose at countries it once ruled, it’s in danger of missing the wood for the trees.

Wind back to the early 1960s. The world then was genuinely bi-polar. Russia and the US faced off across the Iron Curtain. The Korean war, the first and, so far, the only armed conflict between communist east and capitalist west, had ended.

Suddenly the west was faced with a handful of powerful figures who, ungratefully it was felt, resolutely refused to take sides in the benevolent American-dominated new world order.

Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Indonesia’s mercurial president Sukarno, President Tito of the former Yugoslavia and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah – all consequential figures in history- formed the Non-Aligned Movement.

Anyone who wasn’t with the US was against it. The pugnacious US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles labelled the non-aligned movement “immoral”. President Harry Truman referred to Nehru as a “commie.” But of course he was not. He was first and foremost a nationalist just like the others.

This mischaracterisation of the non-aligned movement proved to be a costly mistake. It became, if not exactly a self-fulfilling prophecy then a genuine barrier to tackling successive crises as well as a fillip to the Soviets.  All the Non-Aligned nations, without exception, turned to Moscow or Beijing or both for help.

US relations with India have improved greatly. And yet India, despite Modi’s stated wish to make relations with America a cornerstone of his foreign policy, has remained studiously impartial over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This is partly expediency. But it also reflects India’s traditional view that there should exist corridors of impartiality in the world order.

The dramatic end of the Soviet Union more than 30 years ago has been succeeded not by a uni-polar or even a bi-polar world but a constellation of constantly evolving poles.

Another example of the slow loosening of America and the west’s grip over emerging nations is Saudi Arabia, Washington’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East and now a BRICS member. The world’s largest oil exporter has long wanted its own civil nuclear industry.

However with Iran beavering away at its nuclear capability, Washington baulks at the idea of allowing the Saudis unlimited uranium enriching capacity.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is said to be considering rival bids from China, Russia and France to kick off Saudi’s nuclear industry. This may be playing both ends against the middle especially when the US is pressing Riyadh to sign a peace deal with Israel.

But it’s an example of the new elasticity in world affairs and the fact that the liberal west can no longer take anything for granted.

It's worth asking if the new BRICS will make the world safer. That’s an impossible question to answer. But if the club can get Iran and Saudi Arabia, at war by proxy in the Yemen, in the same room it’s worth a shot.

Back in 2001 when economist Lord O’Neil coined the acronym BRICS for middle-ranking economies it was a brand without a product. Today it’s something rather more substantial, a loose economic club with plenty of political elbow room.

We can choose to view the BRICS as a trojan horse for Chinese ambitions with a dash of anti-colonialism. Or a mere talking shop. But as Nehru wisely remarked at a press conference in London in 1957 in response to accusations of infidelity to the west: “Friendships are not monogamous.”

That suggests a respectful, watching brief: more clear-eyed analysis by our diplomats and a little less cockiness.