Despite its growing popularity amongst diplomats, the ‘BRIC’ idea has been, since its inception, an economic matter. Symptomatic to this is the main source and major defendant of the classification, Goldman Sachs, as well as the title of Jim O’Neill’s original 2001 paper: “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs.” In its simplest understanding, this term was to represent the four main emerging markets that, as the agency repeatedly argued since then, are set to overtake the current richest countries in the world. However, from a purely financial and market-driven definition, the BRIC has grown to represent a somewhat solid reality in much international politics lingo. The EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht, for instance, has just stated how the Union’s trade agenda is to progressively shift its focus towards BRIC countries in the years to come. Arguably, the concept, and thus by proxy the four aggregated within it, has a quite substantial amount of ‘soft power’ in world affairs: as a recent report by Bloomberg Businessweek stressed, investors in the $48 billion iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM) have half of their money weighted in BRIC stocks. Conscious of this rising aggregate prominence, the four have made some attempts to come to a coordinated geopolitical clout, as they met in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in June 2009. Yet, how politically powerful is the BRIC idea as a whole?
More fundamentally, we should not forget how the BRIC idea is an exogenous quadrilateral process more or less imposed (or at least prompted if one has to factor in the previous existence of diplomatic dialogue amongst the four) by the success of Goldman Sachs’ definition, and the relative strength of its follow-up reports. What this means in practice, is that BRIC should not be mistaken for ASEAN or even the EU. While the four now hold some sporadic quadrilateral talks, these have not been developed upon a common communitarian spirit but rather out of convenience for the comprehensive reach and international clout of the ‘bloc’. Here the commonplace political logic that the BRIC, for its economic and diplomatic roots, represents a textbook case of neoliberal internationalism might result a little too shaky. Certainly, these countries came officially together in 2009 for their cooperation yields greater international advantages than their singular agency and, certainly, their alignment bases are chiefly political-economic. However, there might be far more 21st century savvy realism underpinning the BRIC than many commentators give away.
Politically, the BRIC is a substantially more fragile entity than the widespread lingo on this rising bloc assumes. As MIT political scientist Michael A. Glosny pointed out in a December 2009 Polity article on this theme, “the space for future BRIC cooperation is limited by fundamental differences amongst the BRICs.” The relation with the United States, as Glosny reminds us, is a key driver of what the four might do in both economic and political terms – and the BRICs are certainly far away from a coherent quadrilateral position on this. Moreover, intra-BRIC competition and substantial internal differences amongst their political systems and traditions are also core determinants of a weak unity. This, moreover, needs to be paired with domestic challenges of sizable proportion: Brazil’s economic, policing and corruption problems, China’s widely-criticized political freedom problems, Russia’s hostility towards external investors and India’s large internal ethnic clashes all delineate a very difficult map towards a stable set of foundations for the quartet.
The four, in this sense, might be far more inclined to set up a very loose long-term bond for the “prudent pursuit of their national interest” (as Hans Morgenthau would have said), then to evolve in a constrictive framework such as ASEAN. Suggestive of this are the recent calls from both within and outside the quartet for new members to join the BRIC. NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, for instance, has argued that Indonesia should join the bloc to replace Russia, whose relationship with America is shifty at best. Equal also came in favor of other emerging countries such as South Africa or Mexico, as well as developed but often underestimated regional powerhouses such as South Korea. At the same time, several commentators and policymakers have alternatively picked ‘winners’ and ‘drivers’ of the group, thus furthering more adversarial takes to intra-BRIC relations. Many, not least the influential magazine the Economist, sided with Brazil as representative of “the steadiest of the BRIC” for its democratic political and economic scenario. Others, epitomized by David Rothkopf on the pages of Foreign Policy, have indicated China as the natural leader of emerging global leaders that without the PRC are nothing but a BRI(e)—a “bland, soft cheese that is primarily known for the wine that goes with it.”
Overall, the BRIC’s arguable international role as a coherent whole, domestic challenges, and insecure cooperation are all tantamount to the fragility of the bloc. Grouping four that George Kennan once called “monster countries” due to their huge size in both geographic and demographic terms, the BRIC is at the moment more of a financial driver, and perhaps an hopeful international diplomatic reality. The real value of the definition is not so much in its financial labeling, but more in its capacity of self-fulfilling prophecy: a situation that, once defined as real, becomes real in its consequences. As a political institution, not just as a forum for economic discussion, the BRIC can truly move (as the four stated in their fairly loose statement in 2009) towards a more equitable and multipolar world. In this sense, the title of Goldman Sachs’ 2003 report on this quartet’s path to 2050, “Dreaming with BRICs” acquires a renewed political sense.
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On the Fragility of BRICs
February 7, 2011
Despite its growing popularity amongst diplomats, the ‘BRIC’ idea has been, since its inception, an economic matter. Symptomatic to this is the main source and major defendant of the classification, Goldman Sachs, as well as the title of Jim O’Neill’s original 2001 paper: “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs.” In its simplest understanding, this term was to represent the four main emerging markets that, as the agency repeatedly argued since then, are set to overtake the current richest countries in the world. However, from a purely financial and market-driven definition, the BRIC has grown to represent a somewhat solid reality in much international politics lingo. The EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht, for instance, has just stated how the Union’s trade agenda is to progressively shift its focus towards BRIC countries in the years to come. Arguably, the concept, and thus by proxy the four aggregated within it, has a quite substantial amount of ‘soft power’ in world affairs: as a recent report by Bloomberg Businessweek stressed, investors in the $48 billion iShares MSCI Emerging Markets Index Fund (EEM) have half of their money weighted in BRIC stocks. Conscious of this rising aggregate prominence, the four have made some attempts to come to a coordinated geopolitical clout, as they met in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in June 2009. Yet, how politically powerful is the BRIC idea as a whole?
More fundamentally, we should not forget how the BRIC idea is an exogenous quadrilateral process more or less imposed (or at least prompted if one has to factor in the previous existence of diplomatic dialogue amongst the four) by the success of Goldman Sachs’ definition, and the relative strength of its follow-up reports. What this means in practice, is that BRIC should not be mistaken for ASEAN or even the EU. While the four now hold some sporadic quadrilateral talks, these have not been developed upon a common communitarian spirit but rather out of convenience for the comprehensive reach and international clout of the ‘bloc’. Here the commonplace political logic that the BRIC, for its economic and diplomatic roots, represents a textbook case of neoliberal internationalism might result a little too shaky. Certainly, these countries came officially together in 2009 for their cooperation yields greater international advantages than their singular agency and, certainly, their alignment bases are chiefly political-economic. However, there might be far more 21st century savvy realism underpinning the BRIC than many commentators give away.
Politically, the BRIC is a substantially more fragile entity than the widespread lingo on this rising bloc assumes. As MIT political scientist Michael A. Glosny pointed out in a December 2009 Polity article on this theme, “the space for future BRIC cooperation is limited by fundamental differences amongst the BRICs.” The relation with the United States, as Glosny reminds us, is a key driver of what the four might do in both economic and political terms – and the BRICs are certainly far away from a coherent quadrilateral position on this. Moreover, intra-BRIC competition and substantial internal differences amongst their political systems and traditions are also core determinants of a weak unity. This, moreover, needs to be paired with domestic challenges of sizable proportion: Brazil’s economic, policing and corruption problems, China’s widely-criticized political freedom problems, Russia’s hostility towards external investors and India’s large internal ethnic clashes all delineate a very difficult map towards a stable set of foundations for the quartet.
The four, in this sense, might be far more inclined to set up a very loose long-term bond for the “prudent pursuit of their national interest” (as Hans Morgenthau would have said), then to evolve in a constrictive framework such as ASEAN. Suggestive of this are the recent calls from both within and outside the quartet for new members to join the BRIC. NYU economist Nouriel Roubini, for instance, has argued that Indonesia should join the bloc to replace Russia, whose relationship with America is shifty at best. Equal also came in favor of other emerging countries such as South Africa or Mexico, as well as developed but often underestimated regional powerhouses such as South Korea. At the same time, several commentators and policymakers have alternatively picked ‘winners’ and ‘drivers’ of the group, thus furthering more adversarial takes to intra-BRIC relations. Many, not least the influential magazine the Economist, sided with Brazil as representative of “the steadiest of the BRIC” for its democratic political and economic scenario. Others, epitomized by David Rothkopf on the pages of Foreign Policy, have indicated China as the natural leader of emerging global leaders that without the PRC are nothing but a BRI(e)—a “bland, soft cheese that is primarily known for the wine that goes with it.”
Overall, the BRIC’s arguable international role as a coherent whole, domestic challenges, and insecure cooperation are all tantamount to the fragility of the bloc. Grouping four that George Kennan once called “monster countries” due to their huge size in both geographic and demographic terms, the BRIC is at the moment more of a financial driver, and perhaps an hopeful international diplomatic reality. The real value of the definition is not so much in its financial labeling, but more in its capacity of self-fulfilling prophecy: a situation that, once defined as real, becomes real in its consequences. As a political institution, not just as a forum for economic discussion, the BRIC can truly move (as the four stated in their fairly loose statement in 2009) towards a more equitable and multipolar world. In this sense, the title of Goldman Sachs’ 2003 report on this quartet’s path to 2050, “Dreaming with BRICs” acquires a renewed political sense.
