It’s time to bid farewell to the Brics. Rolling China, India, Brazil and Russia into a clever acronym once offered an easy description of the redistribution of global power. But slotting rising states into neat categories betrays a western-centric world view that now obscures more than it illuminates.
For one thing, they are not all the same. United by impressive economic growth rates, the Brics are divided by politics: two authoritarian regimes sit alongside two democracies. Even then, Beijing and Moscow look uncomfortable bedfellows. Points of stress (think of Russia’s emptying and resource-rich east) are easier to identify than coincidences of strategic interest.
Corralled by a set of economic indicators, the group excludes other important players. What about Indonesia and Mexico, or for that matter, Argentina or Vietnam? True, the Brics sometimes hold meetings, but the absence from the original formulation of the entire African continent has obliged them to give South Africa a seat at the table.