Expanding BRICS Helps Xi and Putin Challenge the West
Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang in a photo released by Russian state media on June 19.
Russia and China may be under pressure in Europe and the US, but it’s a different story in Asia.
Separate trips this week by President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Li Qiang were a reminder that many nations still welcome closer ties with Moscow and Beijing.
Putin’s biggest accomplishment may have been securing more extensive military cooperation with North Korea, where he made his first visit in 24 years. His stop in Vietnam was important too. Hanoi upgraded its relationship with Washington last year in a victory for the Joe Biden administration, but ties with Moscow are deeper and more historic.
Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have all weighed becoming members of the economic bloc co-founded decades ago by Brazil, Russia, India and China and which now includes other “Global South” nations such as South Africa and Iran.
For Putin and Li, the interest in BRICS shows their success at pushing back at attempts by the US and its allies to isolate them more broadly over Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s military posturing in Asia.
The bloc is attractive to those seeking an alternative to US or Western-led institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, which pushed austerity measures blamed by some in the region for deepening the hardship caused by the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.
And BRICS does control a multilateral lender in the Shanghai-based New Development Bank that has loaned almost $33 billion to its members for new projects including infrastructure.
Whether those seeking to join the group will be able to tap that finance remains to be seen. Regardless, it’s clear that BRICS is gaining ground as a hedge against the West.— Philip Heijmans