Following this last BRICS summit in Johannesburg on August 22 to 24, 2023, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), decided to welcome from January 2024, six new members: Iran, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. These new members therefore officially join the group of emerging countries which wants to gain influence in the world.

It is a new world order that Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa dream of imposing, with the support of some forty emerging countries invited to their summit in Johannesburg.

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Some forty countries had applied for membership or expressed an interest. According to the leaders of the "Club of Five", which produces a quarter of the world's wealth and brings together 42% of the world's population, this enthusiasm shows the growing influence of emerging countries on the world stage.

The question of the expansion of the group was the priority of this 15th summit. A heterogeneous alliance of geographically distant countries and economies with uneven growth, the BRICS had to agree on the strategic choice of new entrants.

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China, a heavyweight accounting for around 70% of the group's GDP, was clearly in favor of expansion. The BRICS reaffirmed their "non-aligned" position at the summit, at a time when divisions have been accentuated by the conflict in Ukraine.

The BRICS are not a military alliance. Nor do they form a united economic and trade bloc. It is against Western domination that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have found, since their first summit in 2011, most of their convergence. Indeed, all these countries have one thing in common, they have all been confronted with European and American imperialism during their history. And all of them are essential in their geopolitical zones of influence.

Image credit © by Getty Image, Flag of Egypt.

As a reminder, tired of waiting for the United States Congress to authorize the reform of the IMF which would give them a representation more in line with the weight they have acquired in the world economy, the BRICS are creating the embryo of a parallel system which presents itself as an alternative to that whose foundations were laid during the Second World War, at a time when the balances were very different from those of today.

The United States has said that it does not see the BRICS as future "geopolitical rivals", ensuring that it wants to maintain "solid relations" with Brazil, India and South Africa.

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It was in 2022 that the curves crossed between the G7, the club of the 7 most industrialized countries on the planet (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Italy, Japan and United Kingdom) and the emerging countries of the BRICS which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

This last group, according to data from the British institute Acorn Macro Consulting, now weighs 31.5% of the world's GDP in purchasing power parity when the G7 represents "only" 30.7% of the wealth created on the planet. At the beginning of the 1990s, the group of former industrial champions still represented 45% of the world's wealth, three times more than the BRICS which barely exceeded 15%. And the gap should continue to widen. The relative weight of the G7 should, according to Acorn, continue to decline and fall well below 30% by the end of the decade, while that of the BRICS should, according to these same forecasts, come close to 35%.

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Everything seems to indicate that the G20 forum, in which the weight of the industrialized countries is preponderant, will be challenged by this new body. As the BRICS grow, the G20 also seeks to represent emerging countries…. Clearly, competition reigns between these two blocs…