Indonesia, beware of the (unnecessary) BRICS trap – Academia

New Foreign Minister Sugiono recently announced Indonesia’s interest in joining BRICS at the group’s summit in Kazan, Russia. He emphasized Indonesia’s free and active foreign policy through “active participation in every global forum” and conveyed Indonesia’s desire to uphold and support the interests of the Global South through the grouping.

However, Indonesia should not take official BRICS statements at face value. He must read between the lines: Russia is using BRICS to show that it still has supporters from the Global South against the Global North who support Ukraine, thus portraying it as a civilizational struggle.

Furthermore, most of Indonesia’s economic activity with the BRICS countries took place outside the BRICS framework, thus making its expansion through the BRICS unnecessary.

The purpose of BRICS is to counterbalance Western economic influence and promote a more equitable global governance structure for developing countries or the “Global South”. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the plenary session of the 2024 BRICS Summit underlined this point.

He criticized the “rules-based order imposed by the West” as a means of restricting development in the Global South. He highlighted the perceived hypocrisy of the West’s approach to global politics, stating that the world should instead follow “universal principles” that respect the sovereign choices of all nations and uphold international law, a stance aimed at challenging Western dominance.

However, this narrative conflicted with his defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which he described as necessary to counter “Kiev’s critical threat to Russia’s security and the rights of Russian-speaking people.” from Ukraine.

This justification contradicts the core principles of the Global South, such as respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence, as outlined in the 1955 Bandung Declaration.

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