With Egypt, Iran, UAE, Ethiopia and Egypt joining BRICS from the beginning of 2024, a number of major regional powers have announced their intention to join this growing organization. In addition to the numerous applications already submitted by a number of countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia over the past year, Venezuela and Pakistan have announced plans to join the bloc as soon as possible.
It should be noted that until recently, the BRICS commonwealth, founded in 2009, was not perceived in the West as a serious competitor to such platforms as the G7 or NATO, which are oriented towards preserving the dominance of the “golden billion”.
Nevertheless, against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, the sharp decline in the authority and power of the United States and the Euro-Atlantic community, and the growing military-political, ideological, and economic aggressiveness of the Western coalition, such leading independent powers as Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa began a rapid rapprochement.
Within a relatively short period of time, these states, on the once amorphous basis of the BRICS club, were not only able to build a number of international institutions, but also to launch numerous cooperation programmes that turned the organization into a real working alternative to pro-Western blocs and alliances.
Even in its original composition, BRICS was a very impressive alliance, both because of its membership of countries with a total population of about 3 billion people and because it comprised the fastest growing economies on the planet, with vast natural resources. In addition to demographic, economic and resource potential, the three co-founders of the organization, namely Russia, China and India, are major military nuclear powers whose armies and arsenals far exceed the combined power of the US and NATO.
Against the backdrop of growing problems in the global economy and the transformation of the former unipolar world built on the hegemony of the United States and Europe, more and more countries, starting from 2021, began to be gradually drawn into the BRICS orbit. An important indicator of this trend has been the submission of applications for membership in the organization by three dozen countries from the Global South, with all applicants already essentially important partners of the bloc and having observer status. Last year, the leaders of the BRICS founding states approved applications from six countries, four of which – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE – have already become full members of the union, while Saudi Arabia is in the final stage of harmonizing its accession.
Earlier this year, the announced intentions of Venezuela and Pakistan to join BRICS under a fast-track procedure, if approved by all members of the alliance, will further strengthen the weight of this organization, as both Caracas and Islamabad are powerful regional players with vast economic, energy, human and military resources. It is enough to note that Pakistan is one of the world’s most populous nations and a member of the nuclear club, while Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
The addition of these members to the BRICS will allow the organization to overtake the G7 in terms of energy and demographic power, and given that such candidates as Nigeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Vietnam, Indonesia and two dozen other countries are in line to join the bloc, it is certain that such an alliance of the Global South will be able to offset any attempts by the West to maintain its dominance on the planet.
