New Brics members Saudi Arabia, UAE taking 'a step away' from US, seeking global roles

The successful bids of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the Middle East's two largest economies, to join the Brics group has strengthened their ability to act independently of their long-standing security guarantor the United States, analysts said.

Membership of Brics - a grouping of developing economies that earlier included Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - will also boost the oil-wealthy Gulf monarchies' efforts to diversify their partnerships as they seek to be accepted as global economic powers, the experts said.

Alongside the two Gulf nations, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt and Argentina were also invited as the Brics bloc pledged to champion the "Global South".

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While keen not to be seen as promoting an anti-West alliance, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have effectively "taken a step away" from Washington by attaining Brics membership, Middle East observers said.

Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said Saudi Arabia and the UAE were "eager to diversify and deepen their global partnerships independent from US dominance".

They are looking for a "more neutral global playing field where independent sovereign countries can choose their partnerships" pragmatically and based on particular interests, she told This Week In Asia.

In the case of Brics membership, that means "taking a step away from the US and effectively strengthening the hand of China", Diwan added.

On the other hand, the decision by the Brics nations to invite four Middle East countries to join their ranks - Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Iran - "highlights shifting geopolitical winds as much as it reflects an opportunity for closer economic integration with those states", said Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank.

For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, inclusion in the Brics group is "potentially symbiotic", as both are looking to engage and deepen cooperation with non-Western countries and diversify their economic partnerships "as an additional hedge" against the US, he said.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would "probably view a decision to join as furthering their goal to be viewed as not just important regional leaders, but global ones", Panikoff said, in a statement issued by the Atlantic Council on Thursday.

On the other hand, the inclusion of Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the expanded Brics group would bring new investment and trade opportunities to existing members as the Gulf monarchies seek to quickly diversify and scale their economies across a range of new, non-fossil fuel industries.

But membership of Brics is not considered likely to undermine ongoing US efforts to build a new security and economic architecture in the Middle East to compensate for its shifted foreign policy focus towards containing China and Russia, analysts said.

The UAE is a member of two US-backed minilateral forums - the Abraham Accords and I2U2 groups, established in 2020 and 2022 respectively - which aim to create strategic partnerships between Washington's allies in West Asia.

The Abraham Accords led to the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel, the top US ally in the Middle East, and four Arab nations including the UAE, while I2U2 brought India into the fold.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been strengthening their economic relations by "relying on bilateral ties which provide the greatest freedom", Diwan said. Hence, it is "interesting" that the two states are now building toward more multilateral forums - like the I2U2, the Abraham Accords, and now Brics.

"I don't think these stand opposed to each other, and, however contradictory, each may still be deployed to address particular needs and objectives," she said.

As such, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not expected to support the push by Russia, their Opec-plus partner, to make the expanded Brics a powerful new oil lobby.

"The Russians would like to use the forum to end their isolation and to de-dollarise energy markets. But the Saudis can maintain more control through Opec and their privileged discussions with Russia," Diwan said.

Guy Burton, an adjunct professor of international relations at the Brussels School of Governance, said the new Middle Eastern members of Brics "will all bring different motivations and baggage".

"The Saudis and Emiratis will see it as vindication of their growing importance in the global economy, while Egypt and Iran will be hoping that membership generates investment for their flagging economies - and Iran will see it as a potential political alliance," he told This Week In Asia.

"There's also the challenges of agreeing things", given that everything in Brics is done by consensus and there is a lack of a formal, institutionalised decision-making process, he said.

So despite the recent de-escalation in tensions in the Persian Gulf promoted in part by China, the Brics grouping is not expected to become a "vehicle for addressing ongoing disagreements among Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran, or indeed will resolve ongoing disagreements among the various partners", Diwan said.

Elsewhere in Asia, observers were scrutinising the potential Brics members that failed to receive an invitation this time round. Prior to this week's meeting, some 40 countries were seen as interested in being part of the grouping. Among them was Indonesia, Southeast Asia's biggest economy and the world's fourth most populous nation.

Anil Sooklal, South Africa's ambassador to Brics, said in a Bloomberg interview that Indonesia had asked for its accession to be delayed as it wanted to consult its Asean counterparts and that it could be admitted in two years.

Ahmad Rizky M Umar, an expert on Indonesian foreign policy at the University of Queensland, said it was likely that Jakarta was wary about the views of its Southeast Asian neighbours.

"Several Asean member states, including the Philippines and Singapore, may dislike closer cooperation with China and Russia, so Indonesia would be taking this into consideration," he said.

According to Umar, of particular importance to Indonesia is whether joining Brics might bring value to the country's ambitious development projects, including the relocation of its capital city and investment into its domestic industries, including raw materials like nickel.

"Brics does not provide much incentive because Indonesia is already engaging with China through the Belt and Road Initiative," Umar said. "Jokowi [President Joko Widodo] appears to be prioritising engaging in bilateral ties for these infrastructure projects because they might give more tangible and immediate benefits."

Jefferson Ng, associate research fellow at the Singapore-based S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the Indonesian leader may also be hoping to be deferring the decision to his successor, who will take power after next year's election.

In any case, Indonesia needed to transform "its own strategic policy ecosystem to properly work around and gain benefits from new minilateral or multilateral groupings" like Brics, according to Evan Laksmana, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia military modernisation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.

He suggested efforts for acceding to Brics or OECD had to be seen as the "Widodo administration's last ditch attempt to gain international investment and trade opportunities, rather than a systematic, well-thought-out plan to contribute to global order".

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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