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However—as is the case in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—the BRIC was not only a forum for Russia, but equally for China. In December 2010 South Africa became a member and China sent an invitation to South African President Jacob Zuma to participate in the 2011 BRIC summit in China. The aim was to broaden the BRIC into BRICS, this despite the fact that the size of the South African economy is only a quarter of Russia’s and its growth in 2011 would not exceed 3 percent. China especially, which, with South Africa, is the biggest investor on the African continent, seemed to profit from this enlargement of the BRIC.^[44] However, during the BRICS summit in the South African town of Durban on March 26 and 27, 2013, President Putin succeeded in forging a closer cooperation with his South African counterpart. Vladimir Putin and Jacob Zuma agreed to create a kind of platinum OPEC,^[45] and Putin offered South Africa help with the construction of a nuclear power plant. The two leaders also decided to build a strategic partnership and deepen cooperation in the military sphere, including joint exercises of the armed forces of the two countries. Plans were also announced to set up a joint production of the Ansat light purpose helicopter.^[46] The cherry on the cake was a declaration by both countries “not to participate in any treaties and agreements which have an aim to encroach on the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity or national security interests of the other party,”^[47] which can be read as a South African pledge to keep its distance from NATO. Another Russian hope: to build a BRICS development bank that would challenge the hegemony of the Western-dominated IMF and World Bank had to be postponed to the summit of 2014.

There are plans to enlarge the BRICS with other emerging economies. The main candidate is Indonesia. Its accession would transform the BRICS into BRIICS.^[48] Another candidate is Turkey. In fact there is a whole series of emerging economies that would qualify for membership. The list of potential new members includes Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, and Vietnam. However, as Martyn Davies, indicated, “There is a debate within the Brics as to whether to ‘deepen’ or ‘widen’ the grouping. While South Africa and Brazil are keen to expand the number of member countries, China and India prefer to consolidate. Russia is ambivalent.”^[49] The Russian ambivalence could be explained by the geopolitical rather than economic importance it ascribes to the grouping. It would certainly welcome an old ally, such as Vietnam, and possibly even Turkey, which is considered by the Kremlin to be an independent and critical NATO member. It would certainly be, however, reluctant to admit a close US ally, such as South Korea. All this cannot conceal the fact that the BRICS remain a highly artificial construct, and this will even be more so when the club expands. Ruchir Sharma wrote:

China apart, they have limited trade ties with one another, and they have few political or foreign policy interests in common. A problem with thinking in acronyms is that once one catches one, it tends to lock analysts into a worldview that may soon be outdated. In recent years, Russia’s economy and stock market have been among the weakest of the emerging markets, dominated by an oil-rich class of billionaires, whose assets equal 20 percent of GDP, by far the largest share held by the superrich in any major economy. Although deeply out of balance, Russia remains a member of the BRICS, if only because the term sounds better with an R.^[50]

Notes

1.

“Top Kremlin Aide Says Putin Is God’s Gift to Russia,” Reuters, July 8, 2011.

2.

Yevgenia Albats, The State within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia: Past, Present, and Future (New York: Farrar-Straus-Giroux, 1994), 325.

3.

Former Prime Minister Primakov, for instance, did not hide his disappointment. He wrote that after the war with Georgia in 2008, “Russian society was pained by the silence in the beginning from our CIS allies, and still more by that of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Quite certainly we have overestimated relations within the CIS and the CSTO.” (Evgueni Primakov, Le monde sans la Russie? À quoi conduit la myopie politique, with a preface by Hubert Védrine (Paris: Economica, 2009), 175.)

4.