With more than 20 leaders showing up in the Russian city of Kazan, this week’s Brics summit was a diplomatic success for Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Ukraine. It was also a display of the dynamism of the informal group, which now has nine member states and on Thursday added 13 new “partner countries” including Turkey, Indonesia and Malaysia.
The 43-page Kazan Declaration included a call to reform the United Nations and Bretton Woods institutions and a condemnation of the western sanctions regime. But the most important moment came on the sidelines of the summit with a public rapprochement between Xi Jinping and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi.
Before the meeting, China and India reached an agreement on how to patrol their disputed border in the Himalayas, which saw deadly clashes between their forces in June 2020. Relations between Beijing and New Delhi have been getting worse with the imposition of trade sanctions and the mutual expulsion of journalists and there are currently no scheduled flights between the two countries.
When Xi and Modi met on Wednesday, it was their first formal meeting for almost five years but they had plenty of warm words for one another.
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“China and India are each other’s development opportunity rather than threat, and co-operation partner rather than competitor,” Xi told the Indian prime minister.
He said that they should strengthen communication and co-operation, “properly handle divergences and differences” and shoulder their international responsibilities. Xi added that China and India could “set an example for developing countries to seek strength through unity and contribute to a multipolar world and democratisation of international relations”.
The official Chinese readout of the meeting said the two leaders agreed to handle China-India relations “from a strategic height and long-term perspective” and not to let specific differences affect their overall bilateral relations. Indian officials said after the meeting that the restoration of “peace and tranquillity” on the border would create space for a return to the normalisation of relations between the two countries.
A thaw in relations between the world’s two most populous countries promises economic benefits for both and Wednesday’s meeting follows pressure on Modi from Indian companies worried about being shut out of the Chinese market. It could also help both countries in their dealings with the United States after next month’s presidential election, regardless of the outcome.
It is further evidence that Washington’s efforts to isolate China within Asia have failed and it is a powerful reminder that India, which has moved closer to the US in recent years, has other options. Warmer relations between Beijing and New Delhi would also benefit Brics itself, which has operated in the shadow of the discord between its biggest members.
“Brics is an indicator of how profoundly the old world order is changing,” India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar told the summit.
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa last year invited four new countries to join: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Argentina was going to join but far-right president Javier Milei dropped the plan and Saudi Arabia is still considering whether to accept an invitation to join.
The Kazan Declaration reflects the grievances and aspirations shared by the disparate countries that are part of Brics. Top of the agenda is their demand for fairer representation in international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which are meeting in Washington this week.
The declaration calls for the elimination of “unlawful unilateral coercive measures”, including economic sanctions and secondary sanctions. Partly in response to sanctions, Brics countries trading with one another are encouraging the use of local currencies rather than the US dollar and are developing an alternative to the Swift cross-border payments system.
Although Brics includes Russia, China and Iran and wants to change the western-dominated international system, it is non-western rather than anti-western. Most of its members and partner countries such as Turkey pursue instead a foreign policy approach that has been identified in Latin America as active non-alignment.
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“Active non-alignment is not about neutrality or equidistance between great powers. Rather, it is dynamic. This means that on some issues (such as democracy or human rights), Latin American countries may take positions closer to the United States’, while on others (such as international trade) they may take positions closer to China’s. What countries will not do is side unequivocally with one or the other,” according to Jorge Heine and Thiago Rodrigues.
“This, of course, requires a highly calibrated diplomacy that evaluates each issue on its own merits and then decides how to respond. It is a much more exacting task than doing as one is told on every issue, as aligned countries are expected to do. But this position also lends developing nations greater leverage in their dealings with great powers.”