The Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit has come and gone. Compared with the hype that preceded it in this country, the results appeared to be meagre. However, as participants in a Frontier Advisory-organised seminar pointed out (see story in this edition), given the reality of the group, the results were pretty good.

For the South African government, membership of Brics is enormously important, boosting the country’s international profile. It does not make South Africa stronger or more important, but it makes South Africa look stronger and more important. It increases the country’s status, and status is important in international affairs (although credibility is more important). However, for the other four members, the group is of minor importance. If Brics broke up tomorrow, it would have no effect whatsoever on their international status.

Because Brics is so psychologically important to South Africa, many in South Africa want Brics to be a global force.

Unfortunately, the result has been that too many members of the tripartite alliance (the African National Congress, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party), including some in government, as well as academics and journalists (these latter two categories to be grouped together as ‘commentators’ for the rest of this column) have created a fantasy Brics. Speeches and writings reveal that they want, expect and assume that Brics will become a mighty political alliance that will counter the West.

It has to be very strongly emphasised that Brics is a loose alignment with very limited objectives – its core focus is the reform of global financial governance structures, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Useful subsidiary activities have developed, particularly the promotion of pentagonal trade and the intent to develop scientific and technological cooperation. But that is all. Brics is not and never will be a political bloc. It is not, will not and cannot be an alliance.

During the aforementioned seminar, Indian High Commissioner to South Africa Virendra Gupta explicitly sought to make the attendees aware of the realities of Brics. “Brics is a somewhat disparate group,” he pointed out. “In political terms, it is not achieving very much. And it is not intended to achieve [much]. It’s not an issue. We can cooperate despite com- petition [between the Brics countries], because we are not ideologically driven. India has a strategic framework with the US. In living memory, China invaded India. There is a security threat from China. But China is India’s largest trading partner. We aim to optimise our relationship with China. India also has close relations with Japan.”

(The Chinese invasion of India was in 1962 and although the Chinese withdrew from a large part of the territory they seized, they have remained in occupation of the rest ever since. When Gupta mentioned this conflict, some in the audience laughed. I am puzzled as to why they found it funny. One possibility is that the news was such a shock to their ideological world views that they could not cope with it in any other way. But I am not a psychologist.)

“Brics is not an overarching body that can even presume to solve the many problems facing the world – social issues, gender issues,” he also pointed out. “Climate change – a very big issue. We can’t agree on it – can’t agree on one word – in Brics.”

As for Brics countering the West – forget it. “India would not support driving this organisation in an anti-West direction,” warned Gupta, who raised his voice for emphasis. And India is not alone in this. Brazilians perceive them- selves as Westerners and their country as part of the West. This is a basic fact that too many South African politicians and commentators appear totally ignorant of – or simply reject, because it does not fit their ideological preconceptions.

Brazil is, in fact, a treaty ally of the US, under the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed in Rio de Janeiro (and so often called the Rio Pact) in 1947. In the words of Article 3, paragraph 1, “an armed attack by any State against an American State shall be considered as an attack against all the American States and, consequently, each one of the said Contracting Parties undertakes to assist in meeting the attack in the exercise of the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations”. The Rio Pact predates the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It was Brazil that had the pact activated in 2001 in support of the US after the ‘9/11’ terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Brazil, of course, has serious disagreements with other Western countries on a range of matters – but most of these are about trade issues. As the West is not a monolithic bloc, serious disagreements between Western countries are not infre- quent. Again, these are usually about trade, including tariffs and subsidies. When push comes to shove, Brazil has always been, is and will be a Western country.

Thus, Brics has the potential to be a useful organisation, provided none of the member States try to turn it into a broader, more political-ideological alliance. Any attempt to do this will fracture the group and bring it to an end. Moreover, in South Africa, talking about Brics in unrealistic terms will only serve to exaggerate expectations, which will then inevitably be dashed – as happened, for many, at the Durban summit last month. This will, in turn, lead to the discrediting of the Brics con- cept in the country and the undervaluing of the real contribution it can make to the reform of the global financial governance system and the development of trade and mutual investment amongst the member countries.