BRICS Member States Refuse To Join Putin In Fighting The West And Dollars
- 22.10.2024, 13:32
India does not want BRICS to become an "anti-American" organization.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's idea to turn BRICS into an anti-Western coalition that would undermine the "world order" and the hegemony of the dollar has not met with enthusiasm from key member countries.
India does not want to allow BRICS to become an "anti-American" organization dominated by Russia and China, Indian officials familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
That is why, according to the agency's interlocutors, New Delhi opposes further expansion of BRICS, which added six new countries last year and has asked to join dozens more, including global pariahs such as Myanmar and Afghanistan. India's position is shared by Brazil and South Africa, officials from these countries told Bloomberg.
The United Arab Emirates, which joined BRICS at the 2023 summit, “completely rejects” attempts to portray membership in the bloc as a sign that the Global South is in opposition to the West, a Bloomberg source said. The UAE has very good relations with Western countries, including the United States, another official said.
At the BRICS summit in Kazan starting Tuesday, which the Kremlin called “the most significant foreign policy event” ever held in Russia, Putin intends to offer his colleagues an alternative to the Western system of international payments. According to the Kremlin, it should link banks and central banks of member countries to conduct transactions bypassing the dollar, which Putin claimed was “shrinking” and losing trust due to US sanctions.
However, the meeting of BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors, which took place in Moscow on the eve of the summit, was ignored by the bloc members: China, India and South Africa sent their deputies and junior officials instead of ministers.
Even China, which has become Russia’s largest trading partner after the invasion of Ukraine, considers Putin’s idea of payments bypassing the dollar too ambitious, says Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University of China in Beijing: unlike Russia, other BRICS countries are not under Western sanctions and have no direct motivation to reshape the global financial order.
Back in 2022, Putin proposed that BRICS create its own reserve currency to end the “dictatorship” of the dollar, which still accounts for more than half of all payments in the world. He accused Western authorities of “irresponsible” macroeconomic policies, including “launching the printing press, uncontrolled emission and accumulation of unsecured debt.” But he failed to convince his BRICS colleagues. The project is “not mature” and the countries are “not ready” for it, Putin admitted at a meeting with journalists from the bloc countries on the eve of the opening of the summit.