Brics+ in the Context of a Struggle for a New Global Order

The 15th BRICS summit meeting, held in Johannesburg in late August 2023, agreed to invite six countries to become members of the partnership: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. By February 2024, five of these countries had joined Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in the bloc. The statement from the BRICS summit indicated that further admissions will be considered in the near future. What significance should be read into these developments? In some quarters there has been hype about the expansion of BRICS as a new anti-imperialist front. However, while some of the existing and new members have an anti-imperialist stance, in varying degrees, this is not remotely the case with others. Indeed, BRICS+ is clearly a disparate group both economically and politically. Moreover, some of its members have been involved in relatively serious regional tensions — India and China, Ethiopia and Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Whatever its uneven nature, with 36 per cent of global GDP, 45 per cent of the world’s population and (with the membership of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UEA) a considerably enhanced presence in a region historically dominated by the United States, the significance of BRICS+ cannot be ignored.