BRIC Summit : An Assessment
Gunjan Singh
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
gunjsingh@gmail.com

Leaders of the four BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India and China, met in Yekaterinburg, Russia on 16 June 2009. This was the first BRIC Summit and Russia was the host country. Next year the summit is scheduled to take place in Brazil. The countries involved, particularly Russia, have given a lot of hype to this gathering, but looking at the outcome of the first meeting, one gets a little skeptical. The question is whether these disparate nations can come together and find a common solution to their various contending issues as well as their problems.

There are a number of issues that these countries need to cooperate on. The major issue is the question of leadership. Economically, China definitely looks like the obvious leader but Russia is not ready to play second fiddle. It has been sidelined to some extent in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Meanwhile there are issues with common grounds of interactions. India and Russia have had a long history of cooperation in the defence field. But Russia and Brazil are not on the negotiations on any front. If this cooperation has to build there is an urgent need for the involved countries to build increased cooperation amongst themselves.

Secondly, three of the major partners i.e. China, Russia and India, still have unsolved issues amongst themselves. While Russia and China did come to a settlement last October, of their 4300kms long border, after Russia returned 174 square kilometers of largely-uninhabited territory to China, the border issue is still alive between India and China. India is also greatly concerned with the increasing Chinese influence in its neighborhood.

The countries have asserted that they need to push for more influence in the existing economic institutions as they feel that the developing countries’ concerns are not fully taken care of. The need for this has increased following the ongoing economic downturn. There were also discussions for a more diversified economic system. The countries also came up with suggestions which hinted that they needed to trade amongst themselves in their respective currencies. China today is the largest trading partner for both Russia and India.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters in the Kremlin on 17 June 2009 “We agreed to take further steps in this direction, including, perhaps, by adjusting contracts and laws that already exist,” after talks with his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao. "There can be no successful global currency system if the financial instruments that are used are denominated in only one currency," Medvedev opined. "Today this is the case and the currency is the dollar."

It is obvious that this specific suggestion is going to make China very uncomfortable. Today China has the largest foreign reserves in US dollars. And if there is any attempt that undermines the value and importance of dollar as the prominent currency, it will definitely reduce the value of the existing Chinese reserves. China is the world's largest holder of U.S. Treasuries with US$767.9 billion, according to recent U.S. Treasury Department data, while Japan has US$686.7 billion.

In other developments Russia and China signed an agreement worth US$3 billion to cooperate on trade and investment in areas including light industries, high technology and energy. The two countries also signed oil deals worth a total of around US$100 billion, including US$25 billion in loans which Beijing gave to Moscow to finance construction of an oil pipeline from Russia to China and the supply of oil under a 20-year contract. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is scheduled to travel to Beijing in October 2009 to hammer out gas trade negotiations with Chinese officials. A Chinese loan for Gazprom may fund development of a pipeline from east Siberian oil fields to feed Eastern markets.

Though the countries have their differences, there are scholars who feel that this bloc can play a vital role in international politics. The importance of this should not be underestimated because of the fact that the world’s largest growing economies got together on the same platform and discussed their respective concerns. Secondly, as the debates around the climate change and Kyoto Protocol are still on, it is believed that the BRIC countries are the ones who will be most affected, and can and should play an essential role in the new developments. But the question remains whether these countries will be able to develop an alternate world order? Will they be able to reduce the level of US presence in their own region? BRIC has successfully taken its toddler steps and it will depend on the participating countries to develop it further.

Email :
Please leave your comments Input text you see on right:  (Case Sensitive)