BRICS, at the conclusion of its summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, announced an expansion with the addition of six new member states — Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and UAE, will enhance Africa and Latin America’s representation, and showcases the great diversity of the member states’ domestic political systems, reported Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft on Thursday.
“The expansion — and the still-long waiting list of close to 20 states — is a demand signal for alternative structures for solving common challenges and furthering interests of Global South states, which are not being satisfied in the current global order,” noted the article authored by Sarang Shidore, Director of Studies and Senior Research Fellow at the institute.
Almost all Global South states in BRICS — old and new — are certainly not anti-American, with many of them being close U.S. partners and two having American troops stationed on their soil, but they want to evolve alternative geoeconomic structures that can fill the deep gaps and deficiencies in the current U.S.-led order, it said.
“White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, by pointing to the diversity of interests of its members in a recent press conference, seemed to dismiss BRICS’ significance. If so, that is a mistake,” it added, “The era of unipolarity is coming, or has already come, to an end.”
