Jim Pomeroy: BRICS made of glass
In foreign policy circles, the term “mirror imaging” is often thrown around when debating a particular country’s motivations on the world stage. Mirror imaging, in essence, is a hypothesis that assumes that a state actor will predictably behave in a certain way because “that’s what we would do.” The theory was made famous at the height of the Cold War in 1961 by Russian-American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner who claimed that Soviet and American policymakers (and their citizenries) often had a false sense of the opposing camp’s intentions. Despite being a nearly 70-year-old theory, many political analysts, pundits, and candidates still fall for mirrors of their own construction.
Take for example the predictions of global calamity that were being proliferated three weeks ago just prior to the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Isfahan, Fordow, and Natanz. Corners of both the antiwar Left and isolationist Right were warning that such a strike would bring about either devastating strikes against regional U.S. military bases or even a Third World War. One of the more interesting predictions, and clear-cut cases of Bronfenbrenner’s hypothesis, came from former Fox News personality turned podcast giant Tucker Carlson. On June 4, Carlson took to X and fired off a polemic against longtime conservative pundit Mark Levin who had recently voiced support for targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities. In his 500-plus word diatribe, Carlson said that such an attack would amount to “regime change” and that any military exchange with Iran “could easily kill thousands of Americans.” However, Carlson’s most interesting and revealing theory had to do with Iran’s membership in a supposedly ironclad alliance called BRICS: “While it’s often described as a rogue state, Iran has powerful allies. It’s now part of a global bloc called BRICS [emphasis added], which represents the majority of the world’s landmass, population, economy, and military power. Iran has extensive military ties with Russia. It sells the overwhelming majority of its oil exports to China. Iran isn’t alone. An attack on Iran could very easily become a world war. We’d lose.”
BRICS is an organization with which many Americans are unfamiliar. The acronym itself (sans “s”) was coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs analyst Jim O’Neil. O’Neil’s thesis was that Brazil, Russia, India, and China were all emerging economic powers that stood to challenge the economic hegemony of the Global North and/or The West. BRIC became a formal political organization in 2009 with its first meeting that year in Russia. South Africa joined the following year after being invited to the organization’s second summit in Brazil. Pretoria’s inclusion into BRICS thus added the “s” to O’Neil’s original acronym. On paper, BRICS does seem to be a formidable organization. Since 2010, the organization has expanded to include Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the UAE, and Indonesia (while retaining its original moniker). Currently, BRICS represents 46 percent of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s landmass. Brazil, China, and India are undoubtedly economically successful nations with impressive GDPs. Economically speaking, BRICS does present a challenge to the G7. However, this is where BRICS’s cooperation and strength ends.
Unlike the countries of the G7 (Japan, UK, France, United States, Germany, Canada, and Italy), there is no military alliance holding BRICS together let alone similar geopolitical interests. Take Russia and China for example. Despite being heralded as closely allied antagonists of American and western interests, Moscow and Beijing have long had suspicions of one another. This was seemingly vindicated last month in a New York Times report that showed that Russian internal security forces were fearful that Beijing was actively recruiting intelligence assets within Moscow’s defense establishment. In a subsequent report, less than two weeks later, it was also revealed that Beijing back-hacking groups have been hacking into Russian companies and government agencies for three years now. Or take India and China. These two foundational BRICS members have disputed border areas along the Himalayas for seventy years. In 2020, fighting between Chinese and Indian soldiers along their shared border resulted in dozens of fatalities. Lastly, why would the UAE (a recent signatory of the Abraham Accords) and Egypt (a country dependent on U.S. foreign aid) launch a war against America in order to defend Iran as Carlson suggests?
The answer lies in a mirror imaging fallacy that Carlson has unfortunately fallen into: If the G7 is allied militarily through NATO, then BRICS must have similar arrangements. Or, put another way: If the United States is willing to go to war to ensure the economic success of its international partners, then surely Beijing and Moscow would do the same. Instead, following the U.S. strikes on Iran, the most that the mighty BRICS alliance could muster was a formal denunciation. Even China, which some observers predicted would flex its muscles in the strait of Hormuz, did not and grew outwardly reluctant when Iran threatened to close the strait. Beijing’s lack of leverage over its BRICS “ally” became nakedly apparent. It also showed that while Tehran was willing to escalate tensions in the region, Beijing was petrified of such a proposal.
BRICS is not NATO and we as Americans should be thankful that NATO is not BRICS. The image that Carlson painted was that of an improper reflection that he either genuinely saw or wanted to be true for his own rhetorical purposes. Like a mirror, BRICS can be impressive, but it is inherently weak and fragile past its economic value. It is an “alliance” made of glass.
Jim Pomeroy, raised in Bucks County and a former congressional aide, works in higher education. He is the author of the forthcoming Alliances & Armor: Communist Diplomacy and Armored Warfare during the War in Vietnam.
