South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said after a visit to Riyadh that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reinforced his country’s intention to acquire the BRICS. This is not the first wish of this kind – Argentina and Iran learned about the same in the spring. I would like to immediately begin to come up with more and more complex abbreviations for the expanding association, but not in them in happiness. The revival around the BRICS is a sign of changes and disruptions in the world.

The group of countries proposed by BRIC is an artificial construct invented at the dawn of this supposed investment company by the analyst Goldman Sachs Jim O’Neill for applied purposes. Investors had to “sell” growing markets, so they used a successful marketing move (in English, BRIC is consonant with the word “brick”, such bricks of success are dreamed of). With the light hand of O’Neill, the assembly considered for a long time the entire visible economic prism. But it was precisely such a prism of a real convergence of “letters” that did not mean that the countries are very different, far from each other, they are not needed in the general framework for intensifying economic cooperation, everything is possible at the bilateral level. As expected, the ups were followed by downs.

The concept would have remained a fun episode had it not been rethought. Since 2006, BRIC/BRICS has been a format for regular meetings at the ministerial level, and then at the highest political level. Due to the emergence of the emergence of a community (it is necessary to call – a purely informal one), a criterion was formed by itself.

This can be not only political independence (there is no need to focus on external opinion), but also the economic potential for its implementation. There are not many such states in the world. In the Western community, this is only the United States, other countries, even the most developed ones, voluntarily limit their political sovereign control due to participation in alliances and integration unions.

By itself, the fact of a mechanical “unification of sovereigns” did not give any new quality. Efforts to stimulate economic connectivity within the BRICS have faltered. The idea of ​​developing a group in a formalized “Group of Seven” has a stormy response from the majority of non-attackers – connection with the West plays the primary role of counteraction for all “letters”.

The situation has changed along with the whole world situation. The events of 2022, initiated by Moscow, clearly divided the world into the western part, which rallied against Russia, and the rest, who took a wait-and-see attitude. The West will use all the pressure sensor in its arsenal, seeking to punish Russia and it will be read to everyone else, as disobedience is punished. The result was rather unexpected. All other, primarily large countries entering the BRICS, either predetermine their role in the world, and not only distanced themselves from the unification of the Western Kansk campaign, but actually rejected it, despite the fact that this carries risks of influence on the measure from outside USA and their allies.

And the point here is not to support the actions of Russia, but precisely in the rejection of a form of pressure from outside. Since pressure is systemic and related to device interaction, countermeasures require significant changes. It was then that it became clear that BRICS has potential. This rather vague grouping is better than anyone for those who are interested in alternative schemes for an international order. The full sovereignty mentioned above (political independence and economic viability) is a necessity for this very alternative.

Participation in the BRICS is becoming familiar belonging to a world that is emerging outside of former Western dominance. It doesn’t have to be about confrontation.

Much more valuable is the ability to bypass Western institutions, to reduce the risks of interacting with them. Building balance paths for the development of financial, economic and trade cooperation not through the mediation of Western instruments.

Riyadh’s desire is quite remarkable. A country that has control over the availability of material resources and requires regulation of universal pricing may have the opportunity for itself to behave much more independently, and the choice of the most comfortable partners who do not bind close interaction with a number of conditions is not directly related to the matter.

A centralized international system, in which there is an obvious hegemon, in case of occurrence, as it were, the completion of the thread of the Ukrainian battle. This means that the variety of formats will be highly demanded. New developments are revealed to the BRICS perspective. The British author of the acronym could hardly have imagined such a thing twenty years ago, but life is sometimes generous with undertakings that seemed like insignificant arabesques.

Russian newspaper