Ray Hartley - BRICS loses its clout

BRICS is suffering an identity crisis — and its foreign ministers' gathering in New Delhi has done nothing to resolve it. In this interview with Irakli, Platform for African Democrats custodian Ray Hartley asks the defining question: "What is the point of BRICS?" He warns that the bloc has become little more than pageantry: "The summit in India will be high-profile — guards of honour, jets flying overhead, the full spectacle. And then at the end of it, there will be no serious results, because they simply can't agree on much." On BRICS claiming to represent the Global South, Hartley is blunt: "Two of these countries — China and Russia — are not really part of the Global South. China is one of the most developed economies in the world. And then you have the giant oil states: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran. These are super-rich countries with vast resources. They don't represent the Global South. They simply claim to." And while BRICS foreign ministers were exchanging pleasantries in New Delhi, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump were holding a bilateral summit — a contrast Hartley says speaks for itself: "It's really just a sideshow. It has no real-world effects — not economically in terms of trade or investment, and not politically either. It simply lacks coherence."