The next BRICS Summit will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 6 and 7, and President Gabriel Boric has confirmed his attendance. In fact—to paraphrase the title of Pink Floyd’s 1979 song Another Brick in the Wall— the country has been invited to join and be another “brick.” The question that remains is whether or not it is in Chile’s best interest to join this group of countries that was formalized in 2010 between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and which has since been known as BRICS.
From five countries with economies that were entering the global market, there are now 11 members with the addition of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Iran, and Indonesia. Together, they represent almost 55% of the world’s population, 42.2% of GDP, and 44% ofthe oil supply. They have a bank created in 2014, the New Development Bank, with capital already contributed by the five founding partners of $50 billion and subscribed for a total of $100 billion. Its objective is to finance large infrastructure and sustainable development projects.
It is a group with diverse ideological interests: a communist power, a couple of religious dictatorships, a military dictatorship, some authoritarian regimes, and three democracies. The BRICS are undoubtedly a response and a challenge to the G-7, made up of the economies of Germany, Canada, the United States, France, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, which share a high degree of ideological homogeneity and democratic political systems. There is also a group of ideologically diverse countries, including Colombia, which are waiting and hoping to join the BRICS as new “bricks.”
Global geopolitics is undergoing major transformations with the arrival of President Donald Trump, which has been reflected in a weakening of the already faltering world order, the multilateral system, and international law. United Nations resolutions are not being complied with, humanitarian law is being violated, treaties such as trade agreements are not being respected, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is virtually paralyzed.
Added to this are the displays of “hard power” by the United States, not only with tariffs but also with warnings to governments: to Panama over the canal and to Denmark over Greenland, among others. In this context of global uncertainty, Chile is being invited to become another “brick” in the BRICS. Decisions of this nature must be based on cold analysis or calculations of interests based on the national interest of the country. Of the 11 member states, Chile already has free trade agreements or FTAs in force with China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates. Of course, it also has FTAs with all the G-7 countries, but the United States has unilaterally broken the agreements by applying tariffs on Chilean exports. This may be temporary, but that is not known because what characterizes the world today is uncertainty.
For the Washington administration, the BRICS includes the new “axis of evil” formed by China and Iran, because Russia is clearly no longer part of it for President Trump. In addition, the group has diversified ideologically with the entry of permanent US allies such as the Gulf autocracies. On the other hand, Brazil, under President Lula da Silva, has earned the enmity of the governments of Venezuela and Nicaragua because full membership of the BRICS is by consensus, and Lula vetoed both countries.
In this ideological diversification, Chile could contribute to diversity and benefit by opening up our participation in global associations, and with a powerful investment bank that could be very useful, regardless of who governs Chile next year. However, a cold analysis shows us that historically Chile has been firmly aligned, from a defense standpoint, with the United States, the countries of the European Union, and Israel, and also culturally with the first two.
