SAFPI Policy Brief No 37
July 2013
BRICS long-term vision: The pygmy that gave rise to a giant
Francis A. Kornegay *
The pygmy elephant in the room of the Overseas
Research Foundation’s long-term vision (LTV)
initiative for BRICS is a little focused on acronym,
'RIC' – as in Russia-India-China. They form the
ministerial trilateral between the three Eurasian
giants for sustaining a dialogue on their bilateral
relationships within a sort of ‘strategic triangle.’
Hence: ‘pygmy elephant.’ It involves foreign
ministers, not heads-of-state. But it is a
pachyderm nonetheless, since this pygmy gave
birth to that giant called BRICS. Forget about
‘Jungle Jim’ of Wall Street fame, the Tarzan of
emerging market capitalism! Thus does RIC bear
greater scrutiny than it receives. This is because
within this triangle lay the contradictions that have
a direct bearing on the BRICS potential as a
vanguard emerging powers platform for
advancing the developing world’s global
governance priorities beyond a purely economic
agenda.
BRICS intelligentsia that has blossomed out of
the think-tank/academic fora and symposia, than
a concern at the official level of heads-of-state
and their sherpas. At official level such
geopolitical issues are off the table though there
no doubt are undercurrents beneath the surface
of diplomatic niceties.
The RIC precursor to BRICS
This is the inadvertent problematic ORF has
introduced into such a learned sanctum. This may
not have been their intention. But it is a good
thing nevertheless. Why? Because there are a
whole host of emerging power dynamics within
minilateral frameworks in need of honest and
open unpacking.
Of course it doesn’t take much erudition to
understand the real elephant caged within the
RIC chamber. It is the ambivalent relationship
between India and China full stop – the main
contradiction that, by extension, will determine
how far BRICS goes as well. There are SinoRussian issues but these pale beside China-India
issues and whether or not ‘Sino-India’ can
actually become ‘Chindia’ - which, in turn, will
determine the fate of BRICS and any long-term
vision that might emerge therefrom.
In placing things in perspective, it should be
stressed that at this point these concerns should
be more of a track 2 preoccupation amongst the
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BRICS is not considered an appropriate forum for
ironing out geopolitical issues. Which is why the
notion of BRICS assuming a global political
leadership role is more than a bit fanciful. RIC is
another matter. Therein lies the challenge to
BRICSters of academic/think-tank vintage. At this
level everything should be fair game. But if,
because of the differentially structured research
cultures of our five countries, this is constrained
due to diverse political cultures determining the
parameters of what is permissible at BRICS-track
2, then its value is called into question.
There is no reason why the overlap between
BRICS and IBSA academics and think-tankers
should not be openly addressing both BRICS and
IBSA – and RIC – within the same context. The
idea that either RIC or IBSA are beyond the pale
within a BRICS discourse among academics is a
preposterous notion if the intellectual integrity and
autonomy of these exercises are to be deemed
credible.
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SAFPI Policy Brief No 37
Of course this begs the question of how much
leeway the different academic delegations have in
relation to their political principles. If there is very
little leeway and/or it is unevenly balanced then
the outcome of a long-term vision exercise for
BRICS may be a waste of time. It should have
policy relevance where track 2 BRICSters are
able to interrogate and produce positions and
recommendations, not just on BRICS but more
broadly on IBSA and RIC as well.
The last sentence is a throwaway at least in
geopolitical terms, economically perhaps not.
South Africa’s giant coal-to-gas conglomerate,
Sasol, for example, has a major presence in
Uzbekistan. But unless one can contemplate
unlikely ‘peace support’ interventions by South
Africa and/or Brazil in the Fergana Valley, it is
hard to imagine how these two southern oceanic
powers could become entangled up north,
Eurasia way. But by the RIC forum, on the
sidelines
of
the
Shanghai
Cooperation
Organization (SCO) inviting in Brazil to make a
geopolitical statement out of what had been a
catchy Wall Street acronym, the strained and
apparently futile three-way discourse within RIC
did transform into something more positive.
Tripartite synergy?
This is not to imply that there should actually be a
merger between BRICS and IBSA or that this
should even be advocated. These two grouping
must remain independent given the differences in
their minilateral utility for their respective
members
at
the
heads-of-state
level.
Furthermore, there exist a measure of
complementarity between them, including the RIC
tri-ministerial, so that an open or tacitly
‘confederated’
relationship
might
be
contemplated, especially if the RIC forum could
be elevated to a heads-of-state level. At the track
2 level, there should be sufficient autonomy for
placing such long-term vision options on the
table. That said, what does the limitations of
BRICS say about the RIC problematic and
especially its Sino-Indian dynamic?
Here, Prof. Sahni is on to something, not just in
how the ‘B’ in RIC may have facilitated more of a
Sino-Russian discourse (which, in fact, was
already in play within the SCO), but how it has
brought China and India into more regular
dialogue. More on this later, because Prof. Sahni
avoids this angle. About South Africa joining
BRIC, he has this to say: “China’s invitation to
South Africa to join the BRICS Summit at Sanya
in 2011 was an initiative that was welcomed by
the other three countries; indeed, it could be said
that they had virtually no choice in the matter.”(2)
Given the fact that RIC is actually the precursor to
BRICS, an interesting reflection has been offered
by Prof. Varun Sahni of Jawaharlal Nehru
University: “It may make a lot of economic and
political sense for Brazil and South Africa to bring
China and Russia into regular dialogue. It may
also be in the interest of China and Russia for the
BRICS to be strengthened. However, Brazil and
South Africa must be willing to get entangled in
the complex geopolitics of Eurasia.”(1)
In fact, they did have a choice in the matter which
South African President Jacob Zuma did much to
shape through a tireless BRIC diplomacy leading
up to Sanya.
The invitation was by consensus with Beijing only
credited with a titular role as the rotational host
though the bilateral closeness between Beijing
and Tshwane certainly helped. The fact of the
matter is that South Africa never should have
been excluded from Yekaterinburg in the first
place as the quartet at this meeting effectively
ended the ‘Outreach Five’ caucus that had
Much to dissect here in arriving at a clearer
understanding of RIC-BRICS-IBSA dynamics.
2
The views expressed in news articles and research reports selected for inclusion in the various SAFPI news feeds do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) or its sponsors. OSF-SA is also not responsible for any
errors of fact contained in the articles.
SAFPI Policy Brief No 37
become an emerging powers staple at G8
summits with South Africa being among the five
(along with Mexico). It was South Africa’s
exclusion ‘at the creation’ that inspired this author
to pen a ‘Global Insight’ titled ‘Will a BRIC Fall on
IBSA.’ South Africa’s exclusion sparked debate
about whether or not it should even clamour for
membership, pursuing instead an independent
and more manifestly pan-Africanist path in
navigating relations with the BRIC quartet.
Indo-Pacific radiating west toward the eastern
and southern African littoral on the one hand and
east toward the ASEAN Australasian-Pacific.
While it navigates a northern Eurasian agenda via
the RIC ministerial, its undeveloped leveraging
asset is the IBSA potential for elaborating a global
South transoceanic governance architecture
complemented by links being forged in the AsiaPacific with Japan and Australia. Suggestions
appearing in the Indian press that it should
abandon IBSA because it has been made
redundant by BRICS and/or that it must make a
zero-sum choice regarding either of them on the
one hand and Australian initiatives on the other
are suspect in terms of Delhi’s aspirational great
power leadership potential.
South Africa’s absence ‘at the creation’ sent a
disturbing signal accentuating the prospects of
Africa’s – not just South Africa’s
–
marginalization. This actually threatened to delegitimize BRIC at a time when every BRIC
except Russia was mounting a major scramble for
Africa’s resources, competitively entering South
Africa’s geoeconomic space. This ‘space’ is now
taking off to boot! In the circumstance of Africa
not being home to an equivalent aspiring great
power megastate, South Africa, as the continent’s
premier economy had to be accepted into BRIC,
both for itself and for Africa. This is a uniqueness
to South Africa’s membership in BRICS that has
only sunk in with difficulty.
Because of India’s unenviable geopolitical
encirclement in South Asia (thanks to Britain’s
decolonizing partitioning of the Raj triggering an
ongoing civil war of partition with a Pakistan allied
to China), Delhi has to pursue a multi-axial
strategy that is both Afro-Asian, via IBSA, and
‘Look East’, toward the Asia-Pacific. If China
imagines Delhi pursuing a counter-encirclement
containment strategy through such ‘Look East’
linkages, perhaps it has only itself to blame for
the humiliating denialist strategy it employs in
keeping India out of the SCO and out of the UN
Security Council. BRICS is purely one among
several means-to-an-end for Beijing, which is just
as pleased in carving out a tacit ‘G2’ arrangement
with Washington as it is in countering the US-led
G8 ‘caucus’ within the G20 at the head of a
BRICS+6 ‘caucus.’
Can Sino-India become ‘Chindia’?
But back to the RIC dimension of BRICS: if this
quintet is to gain momentum and, in the process,
formulate a ‘long-term vision,’ Sino-India will have
to gravitate closer to ‘Chindia.’ A transparent
tripartite synergy between RIC-BRICS-IBSA will
also need careful nurturing. Indeed, what stands
out in this trinity is the letter ‘I.’ Just as South
Africa is the ‘Gondwanan pivot’ in the IndoAtlantic southern hemisphere, India occupies a
central though complicated straddle position
between global North and South.
In fact, Beijing’s ‘carrot and stick’ ambivalence
toward India is motivated by its ambition to be
greater Asia’s sole superpower. Because of
China’s short-sighted aversion to a power-sharing
understanding with India, it plays into neo-cold
war strategies that Washington ought to abandon,
like bypassing the SCO in pursuing a regional
cooperative security transition in Afghanistan.
It occupies the southern-most point of an IndoEuropean geocultural Eurasian corridor linking
aspirational ‘Silk Road’ communications with an
3
The views expressed in news articles and research reports selected for inclusion in the various SAFPI news feeds do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) or its sponsors. OSF-SA is also not responsible for any
errors of fact contained in the articles.
SAFPI Policy Brief No 37
Were India and Pakistan members of the SCO,
the US and NATO would have accommodated
the SCO in stabilizing the Hindu-Kush which, in
turn, might work in favour of an Indo-Pak
rapprochement as well.
track 2 engagements which avoid concentrating
the minds of the political principals.
But ORF’s BRICS-LTV begs a lot of these
questions and therefore serves as a fitting point of
departure for taking BRICS track 2 discourses to
a more dynamic level of cross-cultural intellectual
engagement.
This would also be to America’s benefit instead of
its ‘divide and rule’ cherry-picking tendencies to
maneuver bilaterally. Northern Eurasia is a
landscape of competitive regionalisms in need of
harmonizing. Beijing’s strategic spitefulness of
India results in lose-lose for everyone. But just as
it is unlikely that South Africa and Brazil should
become entangled in Eurasian geopolitics via
BRICS, does India really want to become
entangled in the Sino-Japanese geopolitics of the
Asia-Pacific?
Footnotes
1. “India’s Perspective on the BRICS: Enthusiastic,
elusive and still evolving,” by Varun Sahni in a
forthcoming publication on BRICS.
2. Ibid.
As the second coming of Shinzo of the
Quadrilateral searches for a Strategic Diamond in
Tokyo’s face-off with Beijing, the spectre of Delhi
being drawn into a more overt Sino-containment
strategy cannot be ignored. What this means is
India being caught in the cross-fire of rival
nationalisms between China and Japan,
something that has already forced the Obama
administration into recalibrating its Asian ‘pivot’
strategy. Indeed, a revisiting of Shinzo Abe’s
Quadrilateral was a recommendation that
emerged out ORF’s partnership with the Heritage
Foundation conference on the future of US-Indian
relations in April in Washington. This would
definitely have debatable implications for any
BRICS long-term visionary global political
leadership aspirations.
* Francis A. Kornegay Jr. is a senior research
fellow at the Institute for Global Dialogue and
a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars.
This analysis is a companion piece to Longterm visioning for BRICS - and IBSA?, by
Francis A Kornegay, SAFPI Brief 36, June
2013.
The geopolitical-economics of individual BRICS
cannot be abstracted from the overall
transforming of the global strategic landscape in
its different multi-regional polarities. This is the
matrix that BRICS (and IBSA) academics and
think-tankers need to tackle head-on instead of
the academic politeness that currently passes for
4
The views expressed in news articles and research reports selected for inclusion in the various SAFPI news feeds do not necessarily
reflect the views of the Open Society Foundation for South Africa (OSF-SA) or its sponsors. OSF-SA is also not responsible for any
errors of fact contained in the articles.