An acronym in search of a role

Wealth may produce market power and even soft power. But it does not necessarily generate geopolitical heft. Rich Japan and Germany deliberately adopted a “big Switzerland” policy of hiding their light under a bushel for decades. Even now, they throw their weight about reluctantly.

But there are several reasons for thinking that the BRICs might be different. Germany and Japan had a golf-sized American security umbrella for shelter. But international institutions are now in flux. Robert Hormats, America’s under-secretary of state for economic affairs, compares the 2010s to the late 1940s: “The post-war period was so different from the pre-war one that it needed new institutions. The turn of the 21st century is similar, especially after the financial crisis.” He argues that “you can’t go back to having the system run by a few rich economies. Our big challenge is to work out how large emerging economies integral to the financial and trading system take some responsibility for maintaining it.”

One reason the BRICs matter is that the world’s most important country thinks they do, and is willing to rope them into decision-making. America’s means of doing this is the G20. It pushed for the group’s expansion to include the BRICs and declared the club the chief forum for dealing with international economic issues. The BRICs and the original group of seven rich countries (G7) form natural blocks within the G20. So far, the clearest expression of a coherent BRIC agenda—for reform of the international financial system and more domestic stimulus programmes—came on the eve of a G20 meeting in 2008.

A second reason why the BRICs matter is that all four giants have reasons for creating a new club of their own. China’s leaders know their time has come. They want to enhance their own influence and reduce America’s. But at the same time their leaders hew to Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should adopt a low profile and never take the lead.”

The BRICs, which the Chinese calls jinzhuan siguo, or four golden brick nations, are a way to square that circle. By teaming up with others (which are anyway attractive as raw-materials suppliers), China can hide its national demands behind a multilateral façade. And a meeting of the BRICs looks slightly more like a collection of equals than do most gatherings involving China (though China’s economy is still larger than those of the other three combined). China sees climate-change diplomacy as a way of boosting its soft power, and as part of its bilateral relationship with America (its stubborn behaviour in Copenhagen notwithstanding). But it does not want to break with the rest of the developing world on climate issues. Co-ordination with other “emerging” polluters helps it to succeed on all these fronts.

This balancing act applies to the other BRICs. All want to soften the impact of China’s rise. The BRIC forum is an alternative to what they all (perhaps even China itself) regard as a nightmare: a G2 of America and China. They all also want, in the words of Brazil’s foreign minister, “to increase, if only at the margin, the degree of multipolarity in the world”.

India has been profoundly disappointed by traditional multilateral diplomacy. Years of pushing for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council have got it nowhere. The BRICs can hardly be worse. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been trying to expand Brazil’s diplomatic influence beyond Latin America. The BRICs help him fulfil these geopolitical ambitions. (Whether Lula’s successors will share his taste for the world stage is an open question: at the moment, both likely successors seem more concerned about domestic matters.) As for Russia, association with some of the most dynamic economies in the world may perhaps divert some attention away from its own decline. More important for Russia, as for all the others, the BRICs are a way of telling America that the largest developing countries have their own options and that not all roads lead to Washington.

Because of this, some members of America’s Congress look on the BRICs with trepidation. The main focus of their concern is China’s currency. But there are other reasons why the BRICs might damage the global economic system, rather than buttress it. They might, for example, undermine the role of the IMF and World Bank, abandon attempts to expand free trade or even just ride roughshod over aid conditions in poor countries. But Mr Hormats thinks they will not. “They understand,” he argues, “that the openness and smooth functioning of the system is vital to them and so far there has been very little evidence that they want to change it dramatically.” When world output was plummeting last year, the BRICs’ economic stimulus programmes did a lot to stabilise it. And on the question of reforming the international financial institutions, America and the BRICs find themselves on the same side.