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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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.
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