BRICS is basically two things:
- An investment bank
- A payment system which is an alternative to SWIFT
BRICS was founded in 2009 just after Russia invaded Georgia. The entire purpose of BRICS is to give Russia a way to move around European and American sanctions because of their military endeavors in Europe.
BRICS comprises 10 countries in the world along with 9 partners. But this is already misleading. Thailand and Brazil have mutual protection pacts with the United States, and Brazil trades more with the US and Europe then with China. So it’s an odd pairing.
India is an odd addition given their tumultuous relationship with China.
Malaysia is also an odd member given how they trade more with the US, Japan, and Taiwan than they do with China.
Most of these countries are fully in the global economy already, so BRICS gives them little to no economic benefit.
Comprising only 23% of the global economy and having a GDP per capita of only around $5100, BRICS is not a major world power if the free world were to flex our muscles.
One interesting argument is that India argued a reason they joined BRICS is because they were upset they were not invited to join the G7. Let’s analyze this.
Every country in the G7 is a rich democratic country with excellent scores on corruption from Transparency International, and top marks from the World Wide Governance Indicators.
When we filter out all countries in the world to find potential additions to the G7, we would want added members to also be trillion dollar economies, and have better democracy and corruption scores than our worst member, in order to keep the group as a serious forum for discussing issues with countries with the weight to have input in such a meeting. The only country with a trillion dollar economy and a larger GDP per capita than the poorest member of the G7 is Australia. If Australia joined, they would be the smallest economy in the group.
Every country with a larger population than the G7’s smallest member and a larger GDP per capita than our poorest member is already a member. There are no good candidates to add in to the G7.
So instead of forming a group which seems to be for helping Russia get around sanctions which are in place because of their invasions, India should work on cracking down on corruption, improving their economy, and then they will almost certainly be invited to join the G7.
All in all, BRICS is a money laundering front meant to counteract US sanctions on Russia all wrapped up in paper saying its anti-colonialism.
If Russia were to stop invading other countries so their economy did not need to be sanctioned BRICS would likely cease to exist.