Since the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, which almost doubled the number of member countries from the original five (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), further enlargement has stalled.

Argentina, which was also invited in 2023, declined to join. Saudi Arabia, another 2023 invitee, has not acted on the offer to become a member either. Its de-facto ruler, crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, was among the notable absentees in Kazan.

And Kazakhstan, Russia’s largest neighbour in Central Asia, decided not to join shortly before the summit. This drew Russia’s ire, resulting in a prompt ban on imports of a range of agricultural products from Kazakhstan in retaliation.

While invitees have declined the opportunity to join BRICS, a long list of applicants have not been offered membership. According to a statement by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, at a meeting of senior BRICS security officials in September, 34 countries have expressed an interest in closer relations with BRICS in some form.

This appears to be a substantial increase in interest in BRICS membership compared to a year ago, when South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, listed 23 applicants ahead of the 2023 summit.

But the fact that, since then, only six invitations have been extended – and four accepted – indicates that formal enlargement of the organization, at least for now, has been stymied by the inability of current members to forge consensus over the next round of expansion and the reluctance on the part of some invitees to be associated with the organization.

The summit declaration may offer little of substance. But there were a number of bilateral meetings before and in the margins of the gathering that are more indicative of the direction of BRICS. Perhaps most importantly, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, and China’s president, Xi Jinping, held their first face-to-face discussion in five years.

This is a remarkable change from just a few months ago, when tensions between New Delhi and Beijing were intense enough for Modi to cancel his participation in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Astana, Kazakhstan. Yet, with a deal now reached over their countries’ longstanding border dispute, the two most populous and, in terms of GDP, economically most powerful members of BRICS have an opportunity to rebuild their fraught relations.

Related: Russia’s proposed grain exchange for BRICS countries may take years to launch

A warming of relations between China and India could generate more momentum for BRICS to deliver on its ambitious agenda to develop, and ultimately implement, a vision for a new global order. Implicit in this would be a shift of leadership in BRICS from China and Russia to China and India, and with it, potentially a change from an anti-Western to a non-Western agenda.

This is, of course, something that exercises Putin. He acknowledged as much when he referred to the Global South and Global East in his remarks at the summit’s opening meeting. He also emphasized that it was important “to maintain balance and ensure that the effectiveness of BRICS mechanisms is not diminished”.

In his own bilateral meetings before and during the summit, Putin drove home the point that, despite Western efforts, Russia was far from isolated on the world stage. One-to-one meetings with Xi, Modi, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the president of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, gave Putin the chance to push his own vision of BRICS as a counterpoint to the US-led West.

This may be a view shared in the Global East – Russia, China and Iran, as well as non-BRICS members North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. But many in the Global South – particularly India and Brazil – are unlikely to go all in with this agenda. They will focus on benefiting from their BRICS membership as much as possible while maintaining close ties with the West.

India is the most significant player in BRICS when it comes to balancing between East and West. NATO member Turkey is the equivalent on the outside. The country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, travelled to Kazan and did not shy away from an hour-long meeting with his “dear friend” Putin.

The relationship between Moscow and Ankara is fractious and complex across a wide range of crises from the South Caucasus, to Syria, Libya and Sudan. Yet, on perhaps the most divisive issue of all, Russian aggression towards Ukraine, Turkey has consistently maintained opened channels of communication with Russia and remains the only NATO power able to do so.

The fact that there has been relatively little public pressure from official sources in the West on Erdoğan to stop is probably a reflection that such communication channels are still valued in the West. This, and NATO’s continued cooperation with India, point to a hedging strategy by the West. India cooperates with the US, Australia and Japan – the so-called Quad group of nations – on security in the Indo-Pacific, and it has maintained political dialogue with NATO since 2019.

Turkey and India may not see eye-to-eye with the West on all issues. But neither do they with the Global East camp inside BRICS, and especially not with Russia. If nothing else, this limits the ability of BRICS to forge a coherent agenda, deepen integration and ultimately mount a credible challenge to the existing order.

Relying on India and Turkey to do the West’s bidding in undermining BRICS, however, is not a credible long-term strategy. BRICS may have achieved little as an organization, but the Kazan summit declaration indicates that its key players continue to harbour aspirations for more.

However, as the flailing expansion drive of the organization indicates, there is also an internal battle in BRICS over its future direction. This, in turn, creates space and time for the West to exercise more positive and constructive influence in the ongoing process of reshaping the international order.

The Global East may be beyond reach, but there is still a massive opportunity to reengage with the Global South.

—Stefan Wolff is a professor of international security at the University of Birmingham

The post Opinion: BRICS summit shows determination for a new world order – but internal rifts will buy the West some time appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

This much was evident from the mixed reception Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, received when he visited the U.S. and Canada in late September. Meanwhile, tensions in Europe over Ukrainian support have flared again.

With the Ukrainian counteroffensive still not living up to perhaps inflated expectations, we are beginning to see the first serious signs of a fraying consensus in the West when it comes to backing Ukraine for as long as it takes.

Addressing the UN general assembly in New York, Zelenskyy made a passionate appeal to fellow world leaders to uphold international law and order and support his country. While there remains widespread backing for the principles of sovereign equality and territorial integrity, it gets fuzzier when it comes to how to end the war.

There are two camps. Many western leaders follow Ukraine’s line that the country’s territorial integrity must be restored first. Others, including many nations in the global South, emphasize dialogue and an early cessation of violence.

The following morning’s UN Security Council open debate on the war in Ukraine featured a predictable clash between Zelenskyy and the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who presented very different accounts of causes and dynamics of the war.

But before the debate could conclude, the Security Council turned its attention to the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, a clear indication that Ukraine is not the only urgent issue on the global agenda.

Zelenskyy went on to secure another military aid package worth US$325 million from the U.S., directly allocated by U.S. president Joe Biden under the so-called presidential drawdown authority.

A further US$24 billion, subject to congressional approval, is more problematic.

The Republican House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, would not commit to putting a bill on the legislative schedule to that effect before the end of the year. McCarthy also kept the Ukrainian president from addressing a joint session of the House and the Senate, another sign of growing Republican resistance to the Biden administration’s enthusiastic support of Ukraine.

In Canada, however, Zelenskyy received a universally warm reception and left with a military aid package worth C$650 million.

Meanwhile, in Europe, three of Kyiv’s neighbours inside the EU – Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – defied the end of a ban on Ukrainian grain imports. Poland went one step further and put a temporary halt on any weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

This was decried by Zelenskyy in his speech before the UN general assembly as “political theatre” and a gift for Moscow.

The grain dispute between Poland and Ukraine has been simmering for some time. Importantly, it foreshadows other potential obstacles in Ukraine’s path to EU membership.

Some of these barriers are potentially within Ukraine itself.

Accession negotiations will not be opened before a positive recommendation from the commission on Kyiv’s progress concerning seven conditions set in June 2022. This decision is expected before the end of 2023.

Once accession talks start, the interests of individual EU member states will play a greater role in determining the speed at which Ukraine can progress. The current spat with Poland is but one indication of potential trouble ahead, albeit in the particularly sensitive area of the EU’s common agricultural policy. This will be deeply affected if Ukraine – a global agricultural superpower – joins.

Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, clearly wants to be seen to be protecting his country’s farmers from Ukrainian exporters, particularly in the run-up to a parliamentary election next month.

But this is also about leadership and the potential challenge that Ukrainian EU membership would pose to Poland’s ambitions to be the main voice of the bloc’s eastern members.

Such an open attack on Zelenskyy and his policies significantly shifts the dial in what is considered acceptable criticism of the highly charismatic Ukrainian president. It comes in the wake of growing Western unease about the course and cost of the war.

This is not to say that Ukraine has not made progress since its offensive began just before the summer. In late September, Ukraine made further gains in its south and launched a spectacular attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea fleet in occupied Crimea.

But Ukraine’s recent successes are almost certainly not enough to dispel the growing sense that the war is becoming a lasting stalemate.

Until now, Western support has underwritten Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself. But it has done no more than that and is not sufficient to enable a Ukrainian victory.

If this support begins to weaken, the prevention of a Ukrainian defeat can no longer be taken as a given. Nor could it be argued that this was merely a defeat for Ukraine.

It would also mean that the Western alliance did not have the stamina to prevail against Russia.

– This article first appeared in the Conversation, by Reuters.

The post Comment: Mixed signals among Kyiv’s allies hint at growing conflict fatigue appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.

Xi met more than 20 heads of government earlier in 2022 at the Beijing Winter Olympics, but most of these did not represent democracies.

The visit of Michel, a senior European politician, focused attention on western attitudes to China’s increasingly assertive geopolitical stance. And it highlights deep divisions in the West over how to deal with Beijing.

The first divide is transatlantic. It’s true that U.S. president Joe Biden took a more conciliatory tone at his recent meeting with Xi at the G20 summit in Indonesia. But Washington is generally taking a much more hawkish approach to China than the major EU members, especially France and Germany.

The most recent U.S. national security strategy, released at the end of October, characterizes China as “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” It makes “maintaining an enduring competitive edge over the PRC” a U.S. priority.

By contrast, Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, speaking at the European Parliament Nov. 22, put the EU’s emphasis on cooperation with China. Noting differences with China, including on democracy, human rights, and multilateralism, Borrell also said “China is becoming increasingly assertive and developing an increasingly vigorous competition.”

But, crucially, he closed his speech by saying “the United States are our most important ally but, in some cases, we will not be in the same position or on the same approach towards China.”

[RELATED] China, top global user, eyes pesticide cuts

While the U.S. has started to increase pressure on EU allies to align more closely with its hard line on China, Europeans have been pushing back. There have been reports about Dutch concerns over new U.S. export restrictions to China. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who was to meet Biden in Washington on Dec. 1, was expected to raise EU-China relations in their discussions.

Perhaps most importantly, during German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s recent visit to China, the emphasis was much more on economic cooperation than on political competition.

Yet it would be too simplistic to assume there is a clear dividing line that runs through the Atlantic. Within the EU, there are clear differences over how to approach China, and they are difficult to paper over.

For example, the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, signed to much fanfare and criticism in December 2020, remains to be ratified.

Lithuania, one of the smallest EU members, allowed Taiwan to open a trade office in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, using the name Taiwan rather than the more commonly used name of its capital, Taipei.

This caused a major row with China, which considered this a departure from the One China policy. It also put the EU in a difficult spot between standing up for one of its member states and maintaining its long-professed official policy that recognizes Taiwan as part of China.

Scholz’s trip to Beijing was also not without controversy. Several leaders reportedly raised concerns over the possibility of separate deals with China that could undermine EU unity. Moreover, a French proposal of a joint Macron-Scholz trip to China to signal EU unity was apparently rejected by Scholz, who favoured a German-only political and business delegation.

A third dividing line exists within countries where political and business leaders are often at odds among themselves and with each other over which approach to take to China.

Take the example of the U.K. In a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London, a traditional venue for U.K. leaders to lay out their foreign policy priorities, the U.K.’s current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, advocated an approach of “robust pragmatism” towards China. This seeks to strike a balance between hardliners in his own party who seek a tougher approach to China and the interests of many businesses trading with China.

Similar debates are happening in Germany. The government is debating new rules on private sector links with China that aim to incentivize German companies to seek markets elsewhere and decrease their dependency on China. In response, the chief executive of German car manufacturer Mercedes-Benz, Ola Källenius, said it was “absolutely inconceivable” to back out of the Chinese market.

This stance is likely to be shared by Volkswagen and BMW, as well as chemicals giant BASF, who together with Mercedes accounted for more than one-third of all European foreign direct investment in China between 2018 and 2021.

The German coalition government is also far from united on China. The Green party, which holds both the economics and foreign affairs briefs in Scholz’s cabinet, is far more reluctant to give China the benefit of the doubt.

Buoyed by U.S. pressure and intelligence reports on China’s potential for subversion, the Greens have won some key arguments of late. This has led the German government to ban Chinese investment in two chip makers and reduced the Chinese stake in the port of Hamburg.

Against this background, it is unlikely that Michel’s trip will ultimately lead to any fundamental change in EU-China relations. The lowest common denominator between the two economic giants remains stability in their trade relations.

This is as important for China as it is for the EU, neither of which can afford further shocks to volatile domestic and global economies. Nor can they give up on trying to work out approaches to other critical challenges such as climate change and the war in Ukraine and its implications for global food and energy prices.

The current primacy of economic concerns, however, cannot forever disguise the fundamental political differences between the EU and China. Brussels will eventually need to face up to them, no matter how much it might prefer a business-as-usual relationship with Beijing.

– Stefan Wolf is professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

The post Comment: Western leaders divided over relationship with China appeared first on Manitoba Co-operator.