Can somebody explain what’s the big deal with this rivalry? Like people are saying that BRICS has already passed up the G7 in (insert certain metric here) and that’s before they add on all these new countries. Like why can’t the G7 just add another dozen european/asian countries, Australia, etc.? Why is everybody going crazy?
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There isn’t a rivalry (not yet, anyway). The G7 is a group of the world’s large, wealthy, and democratic countries. Because of how powerful these countries are, decisions made by them together can have a large impact on the rest of the world.
BRICS is a group of large, but developing, countries. The term BRIC (without the “S”) was created in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs economist to describe a group of countries who he thought would see huge economic growth and dominate the world starting in 2050 or so. A few years later, these countries decided to start having formal meetings.
Recently, the leader of China said he wants BRICS to become a new G7: a small group of powerful countries that can influence the world by working together.
(My opinion below)
It’s unlikely that BRICS will get there anytime soon. Their economies didn’t grow as much as predicted in the early 2000s and American power (economic and political) hasn’t declined as much as people predicted. Also, the G7’s members have a lot in common and have similar goals and ideals. The BRICS, especially if they add the six new members will be much more diverse, making it more difficult for them to act as one.
Looking at the list of largest economies, the G7 has 1-3-4-6-7-8-9 while BRICS has 2-5-10-11-39 (I think SA has a lot of natural resources).
It’s natural that the two groups would be compared. Any “rivalry” is overblown. They are just trade alliances. The countries in each group are too far apart for their economies to merge. Everyone has to trade with both groups. If a trade war develops, this can be revisited, but for now it’s just hype surrounding the meetings that they have.
The G7 is not a formal organization formed by treaty or agreement. It consists of Japan, France, UK, Italy, Germany, US and Canada. It was formed around 1975 and represents the major industrial powers of the time. For a short while Russia was added but they were expelled after the first Crimean invasion in 2014. The G7 is (or was) primarily about economies and, at the time, represented the largest economies of the world (excluding Russia)
There is a larger grouping called the G20 which includes countries like Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Africa etc. (note that the original BRICS countries are in the G20)
BRICs is a term coined by Goldman Sachs around 2000 that informally groups certain “fast” or influential economies that were expected to grow rapidly. More recently they’re sort of becoming a lightning rod for the non-G7 and sometimes termed the “southern” bloc of countries. The largest member by far is China followed by India. Politically, they see themselves as non-aligned and somewhat against what they claim to be US or Western dominance of the global economic system.
No one is going “crazy” unless you believe the nonsense peddled by so called experts in economics and geopolitics on Youtube. BRICs is, to put it mildly, unwieldy. While they are, of course, economically powerful, they are still a pretty far cry from the G7 (in terms of economic size). All of the “original” BRICS combined is slightly larger than the size of the US economy alone.
Geopolitically and demographically, the world is going through a very interesting transition. Nearly all of the G7 countries are mature populations with 5 of them seeing populations already peaked or peaking. The COVID pandemic has re-energized the notion of “self sufficiency” which is a significant departure from the 50 years of globalization and free trade. Climate change action is a big subject which the BRICS and G7 don’t always see eye to eye.
The elephant in the room is China and more specifically their rivalry with the US. Both sides have their perspective (which have many books written about them) It is clear that China has increasingly become less comfortable with the status quo. So while not diminishing the role of other nations the next 10-20 years will very likely be about the rivalry between China and US.
Adding or subtracting other nations to the G7 is fairly trivial from this perspective since the US already pretty much has solid allies militarily and economically with Australia, S Korea, and some SE Asian countries. India and the US relations are also on relatively solid footings.
BRICS is being pushed hard by Russia and China because they geopolitically oppose the “West”. Not hard to see why, the West supports both Ukraine and Taiwan meanwhile Russia and China both want to invade/annex/vassalize these countries.
The thing is that the rest of the countries in BRICS, namely Brazil, India, and South Africa are not particularly interested in doing that. Nor are they particularly allied with each other unlike the G7 nations who are both militarily and economically allied.
Brazil is doing OK, but they’re more interested in the economic stuff and couldn’t care less about the geopolitical stuff and isn’t interested in pissing off the US. South Africa is quite literally falling apart from corruption and are struggling both politically and economically. India is moving toward the US to counter China (See the QUAD agreement. They used to ally with Russia for this purpose). Speaking of China, they have competing territorial claims on both India and Russia which makes a for a curious BRICS “alliance”. Also, China has supported Pakistan against India which is why India has historically maintained tighter relations with the USSR/Russia.
Ultimately there isn’t much of a rivalry. The G7 is much more wealthy, militarily powerful, and much more international clout than BRICS. Frankly, BRICS could not survive economically without the G7. The G7 on the other hand would feel it if the BRICS nations stopped trading with the G7, but there wouldn’t be an economic apocalypse. BRICS would disintegrate in such a scenario.
G7 largest democratic countries who want to look like they care about the world and its human rights
BRIC largest (and other sizes) “democratic” or otherwise governed countries who want to ignore the fate of the world and human rights.
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