Your TV channels make it seem like the most consequential gathering of world leaders, after the G-20 summit in 2023, is once again taking place in New Delhi. There’s also an extra edge to the ‘josh’ this time.
See, those exaggerated pictures with bright-coloured backgrounds and warlike drumroll showing Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin together. The barely understated message is: the trinity has joined hands against the ‘evil West’. Or to put Donald Trump ‘in his place’.All governments, especially strongman-led, use summiteering for image-building. The Modi government has turned it into an art form. But, with BRICS, the elements don’t come together given its composition, balance, and contradictions.
The three strongmen in this breathless buildup share more contradictions than congruence. Each has a different worldview, as also a different adversary. Russia is China’s ally—dependent, too, to some extent. India sees China as an existential adversary. And China sees the other two as so weak that it can determine the rules of the game, and be the umpire; first, second and third.The rude fact is that BRICS is the most irrelevant of all such groupings. We know what NATO stands for, or is supposed to stand for. You can count others. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is the closest one would come to BRICS. But here, Chinese domination is almost formal. The SCO is China’s multilateral organisation. That’s why we say even SCO has a purpose, whether we like it or not. Even something as inconsequential as the 57-nation OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) has at least one glue, Islam. Of course, you haven’t seen it weighing in on so many crises and wars within the Islamic world, the ongoing Gulf Arab states versus Iran, and so on.
