Your humble blogger has found M. K. Bhadrakumar to be a bit of a mixed bag as a geopolitical commentator. On the one hand, he’s written many extremely insightful columns at his website, Indian Punchline. But from time to time, he’s had some pieces that were eyebrow-raising, such as ones where he speculated on Russian politics. However, below he is discussing India’s view of BRICS, and here he should be on very solid ground. And as you will soon see, in a fresh interview with Glenn Diesen, Bhadrakumar gives a harsh reading of the BRICS project.
The fundamentals of India’s position are very much like the foreign policy principles that Jerri-Lynn Scofield described, citing the statements of India’s impressive Minister for External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Jerri cited key passages from S. Jaishankar’s 2020 book, TThe India Way” rel=”nofollow”>he India Way: Primer for India’s Multipolar Approach to Foreign Policy in a 2022 post:
Jaishankar outlined a foreign policy for India to pursue in a multipolar world:
…it is the underlying assumptions that can make a difference. We have been conditioned to think of the post-1945 world as the norm and departures from it as deviations. In fact, our own pluralistic and complex history underlines that the natural state of the world is multipolarity. It also brings out the constraints in the application of power. A behaviour and a thought process which reflects that can facilitate the creation of a more favourable equilibrium with others (Jaishankar, p. 20).
As I noted in March when I last addressed these issues in IIndia Is Mulling Rupee-Ruble Payments System for Trade with Russia, this multipolar orientation draws from the non-alignment tradition that India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, pioneered in the immediate post-colonial period. But as Chowdhury told me, “The new policy is one of multi-alignment, where India engages with all major countries – but kowtows to no one.” Note that this is a world no longer dominated by the G8; instead, half the world’s twenty largest economies are now non-Western (Jaishankar, p. 41).
According to Jaishankar:
Geopolitics and balance of power are the underpinning of international relations. India has a tradition of Kautilyan politics that puts a premium on them. If there are lessons from the near part, it is that these were not given the weightage that they deserved. The Bandung era of Afro-Asia n solidarity in the 1950s serves as a reminder of the costs of neglecting hard power. But more than lack of focus on capabilities, they reflect an underlying thinking. We have since reached a league where the ability to protect our interests is an assumption, not just an option. This is best done through a mix of national strengths and external relationships (Jaishankar, p. 16).
In 2024, we posted Indian Foreign Minister Throws Cold Water on the Idea of a BRICS Currency. Keep in mind, as we have repeatedly stressed, that the BRICS initiative of setting up payment systems to facilitate bi-lateral trade, frees countries in participating trade pairs from dollar sanctions and is thus very beneficial. But it does not amount to the goal that many BRICS enthusiasts attributed to the alliance, that of creating a new currency. From that post:
The remarks by the highly respected Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar should put paid to the idea that a BRICS currency is coming soon, if ever. Jaishankar raises a series of particular issues consistent with a point we have made: that a common currency would require a very substantial legal and systems architecture. Agreeing on the legal structure would entail a reduction of sovereignity (BRICS rulings would have to supercede national courts) which seems contrary to the notion that BRICS is meant to increase, rather than reduce, national sovereignity. Jaishankar also points out, as we have, that the BRICS nations are too economically diverse (as in often divergent) to make a common scheme work easily if at all.
Jaishankar points out that bi-lateral currency deals work well enough and appear satisfactory to most BRICS members. That does leave unsolved the point that your humble blogger and Michael Hudson have raise: that absent mechanisms to encourage balanced trade such as the ones that were part of Keynes’ Bancor, many countries are likely to wind up with sustained trade deficits relative to particular trade partners. What happens when those countries wind up with a lot more of that currency than they want? They can use it to buy assets in the chronic trade deficit country, but a lot of nations do or would place restrictions.
With that as prologue, Bhadrakumar’s remarks should come as less of a surprise. Starting at 22:15:
Professor Glenn Diesen: And we saw this after World War II, but continuously the US draws a lot of power from making sure that other countries only use US technologies, only use its industrial products, only use energy, its supplies, only use its transportation corridors, banks, currency, the SWIFT payment system. Again, everyone is dependent on US and the US avoids any real dependence on anyone else, then you can have this asymmetrical interdependence where the US draws its hegemonic power from. But I think the Europeans, they committed themselves to this model thinking that they would be rewarded. Instead as you said. it’s more of a vassal status now.
But how do you think the United States, I think Trump is very open about its his intentions to break up BRICS. But is this also a pressure on India to reduce its ties to BRICS? In other words, if BRICS is an instrument for diversification to have a more multipolar economic system, how far is India willing to go to defend its position in BRICS? Because often one gets the impression that India’s commitment is not among the strongest.
Former Ambassador M. K. Bhadrakumar: Look, Professor, this is a brainwave of the Russians, BRICS’ idea and then the Chinese. And our prime minister happened to be visiting Russia at that time and on the sidelines of a multilateral event he was sounded out whether he would sit in for a meeting like this. He agreed, if anything out of sheer politeness. And then it was languishing. You look at the history of this moment, languishing, and then the Russians breathed new life into it in 2014 and in 2020 uh 2022 when they needed it. They brushed it up and brought it up as a platform to defy the US and to orchestrate processes which have a strong anti-American content. Plainly I’m saying that this is what has happened on BRICS.
Otherwise BRICS is a toothless organization and it has absolutely no cutting edge in it. This is completely a doing of the Russians and the Chinese. India had nothing to do with it. That is the plain reality.
Now therefore if Trump is raising dust over it, the person to answer that should be Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinpeng. This is “Do not pit India against Trump when it comes to BRICS.” That is maybe a very smart game and they go and lie under the carpet, not being seen at all. But they are the ones, the culprits here, to give a cutting edge to this.
And at earlier time, even Shanghai Cooperation Organization you were had a cutting edge like this and it used to be called Asian NATO. India never, really, never really, was part of giving an anti-American slant to the BRICS. So Trump knows that and Trump is comfortable with that.
If Trump, if BRICS has not gone in the direction of developing a new BRICS currency, Trump should give credit to India because it was India’s opposition, India’s reservation.
Look at it like this: India has no problem with SWIFT. India has no problem in trading with dollars. India is not fearing that, India is not fearing that its resources are going to be confiscated by the Americans. Whose problem is this?
India is interested in one aspect of it which is to transfer the payment system to local currencies because that is an entirely different matter. It is in giving a habitation and a name for India’s currency in the world currency basket commensurate with India’s growing stature as an economic power.
You see it also has no anti-American thrust to it. If there are countries which do not have dollars to spare, India can still trade with them if they trade in local currencies. There is no anti-American content there. And the both these countries India and that country which does it they both have access to SWIFT. Nonetheless we use it like this. So therefore you know, it’s an ingenious thing that is happening here when you speak about on the one hand time-tested friendship and so on between India and Russia and then the Russians going and hiding when there is pressure from the Americans on BRICS and saying that it is, it is India’s can of worms. It is not. It was conceived in the womb of the Russian decision makers. So the Russians must answer this.
Diesen seemed taken aback and changed the topic to Iran, which he tried to depict as another front of American pressure on Iran. Bhadrakumar rejected that: “Iran is a completely different story.”
And before you see this line of thinking as toadying to the US, recall that India came under tremendous pressure from the US in 2022 for continuing to trade with Russia. Jaishankar has been giving variants of this speech for over two years:
India will continue buying Russian oil because it benefits the country, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said after meeting his Russian counterpart https://t.co/fDbnUePZ54 pic.twitter.com/BbRvJZm3Bq
— Reuters (@Reuters) November 8, 2022
I can’t find it, but I also recall a Western journalist pressing Jaishankar with the Bush logic of “You are either with us or against us” and Jaishankar politely refused to accept it. India has the right to truck with nations all over the world and will not have those relations constrained by loyalty tests.
Even though the US has become thuggish in its efforts to shore up its flagging empire, that does not mean that countries involved in BRICS want it to serve as a countervailing force, as opposed to a venue for advancing certain initiatives. For those who have follow readouts of Xi’s conversations with US presidents, one point he regularly makes is that China does not engage in bloc confrontation. Bhadrakumar’s remarks on BRICS suggest that many Indian diplomats and political leaders would disagree with that claim.
