However—as is the case in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—the BRIC was not only a forum for Russia, but equally for China. In December 2010 South Africa became a member and China sent an invitation to South African President Jacob Zuma to participate in the 2011 BRIC summit in China. The aim was to broaden the BRIC into BRICS, this despite the fact that the size of the South African economy is only a quarter of Russia’s and its growth in 2011 would not exceed 3 percent. China especially, which, with South Africa, is the biggest investor on the African continent, seemed to profit from this enlargement of the BRIC.[44] However, during the BRICS summit in the South African town of Durban on March 26 and 27, 2013, President Putin succeeded in forging a closer cooperation with his South African counterpart. Vladimir Putin and Jacob Zuma agreed to create a kind of platinum OPEC,[45] and Putin offered South Africa help with the construction of a nuclear power plant. The two leaders also decided to build a strategic partnership and deepen cooperation in the military sphere, including joint exercises of the armed forces of the two countries. Plans were also announced to set up a joint production of the Ansat light purpose helicopter.[46] The cherry on the cake was a declaration by both countries “not to participate in any treaties and agreements which have an aim to encroach on the independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity or national security interests of the other party,”[47] which can be read as a South African pledge to keep its distance from NATO. Another Russian hope: to build a BRICS development bank that would challenge the hegemony of the Western-dominated IMF and World Bank had to be postponed to the summit of 2014.
There are plans to enlarge the BRICS with other emerging economies. The main candidate is Indonesia. Its accession would transform the BRICS into BRIICS.[48] Another candidate is Turkey. In fact there is a whole series of emerging economies that would qualify for membership. The list of potential new members includes Mexico, Nigeria, South Korea, and Vietnam. However, as Martyn Davies, indicated, “There is a debate within the Brics as to whether to ‘deepen’ or ‘widen’ the grouping. While South Africa and Brazil are keen to expand the number of member countries, China and India prefer to consolidate. Russia is ambivalent.”[49] The Russian ambivalence could be explained by the geopolitical rather than economic importance it ascribes to the grouping. It would certainly welcome an old ally, such as Vietnam, and possibly even Turkey, which is considered by the Kremlin to be an independent and critical NATO member. It would certainly be, however, reluctant to admit a close US ally, such as South Korea. All this cannot conceal the fact that the BRICS remain a highly artificial construct, and this will even be more so when the club expands. Ruchir Sharma wrote:
China apart, they have limited trade ties with one another, and they have few political or foreign policy interests in common. A problem with thinking in acronyms is that once one catches one, it tends to lock analysts into a worldview that may soon be outdated. In recent years, Russia’s economy and stock market have been among the weakest of the emerging markets, dominated by an oil-rich class of billionaires, whose assets equal 20 percent of GDP, by far the largest share held by the superrich in any major economy. Although deeply out of balance, Russia remains a member of the BRICS, if only because the term sounds better with an R.[50]
Chapter 5
The Eurasian Union
Putin’s Newest Imperial Project
On October 8, 2011, Vladimir Putin launched a new project, when he published in the paper Izvestia an article with the title “A New Integration Project for Eurasia: The Future That Is Born Today.” In this article he announced the creation of a “Eurasian Union.” The Union, he wrote, would be “an open project.” The three countries of the Customs Union—Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan—formed the core of this new Union. However, wrote Putin, “we hope for the accession of other partners, and first of all of the countries of the CIS.”[1] This was the first time, after the establishment of the CIS in December 1991, that the Kremlin launched an integration initiative that intended to incorporate the quasi-totality of the former Soviet Union. Putin explicitly denied that it was an attempt “to recreate, in one form or another, the USSR.” On the contrary, he said his project was inspired by the example of the European Union. Like the EU the Eurasian Union would develop itself through a process of deepening and enlargement. It would, like the EU, also have its own supranational organs, such as a Commission and a Court.
PRECURSORS OF THE EURASIAN PROJECT: IGOR PANARIN AND ALEKSANDR DUGIN
Ideas about creating a “Eurasian Union” were not new. They had already been circulating for many years in Russia. What was new was the fact that the Russian leadership, after years of hidden support, finally decided to embrace the project openly. One of its main protagonists was Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst, who, in his capacity as dean of the Diplomatic Academy of the Foreign Ministry, became one of the main ideologists of the Eurasian idea. In an interview in Izvestia,[2] published in April 2009, he had predicted the creation of a powerful “Eurasian Union,” led by Vladimir Putin. This Union, modeled on the EU, would have a parliament in Saint Petersburg and create a single currency. The Eurasian Union, he said, would not only encompass the territories of the former Soviet Union. He predicted that Alaska would return to Russia and that Russia would play a leading role in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. In the end China and the European Union would also become members and form a triumvirate that would dominate the world. Panarin predicted that the global role of the United States was over. According to him this country would soon fall apart.[3] In a lecture, delivered in Berlin in February 2012—after Putin’s official adoption of the Eurasian Union project—Panarin declared that “the Eurasian Union should have four capitals: 1. St. Petersburg; 2. Almaty; 3. Kiev; 4. Belgrade.”[4] He added a timetable also. Armenia, Tajikistan, and Ukraine could join by December 30, 2012; Serbia and Montenegro, as well as Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia, by December 30, 2016. After this date “Turkey, Scotland, New Zealand, Vietnam, and several other countries could join.”[5] When Putin declared that the Eurasian Union is not a reconstitution of the former USSR, he was completely right because the scope of the project seems to be much more ambitious. Panarin mentioned here no fewer than seven possible members that were not former parts of the defunct Soviet Union, although New Zealand[6] and Scotland (after independence) are improbable candidates. Panarin warned that the West had started the “Second World Information War” against Putin’s Eurasia project. This war would be led by Zbigniew Brzezinski (“an agent of British (!) Intelligence”), Mikhail Gorbachev (“the Judas of Stavropol,” who must “be brought before a public tribunal in Magadan, for his role in the collapse of the USSR”), and Michael McFaul, the US ambassador in Moscow (“a theoretician and practitioner of coups d’état,” “sent to Moscow to enhance the efficiency of Operation Anti-Putin”).
44
It led in South Africa to critical comments. One economist “berated the government for simply replacing Western corporations plundering Africa’s natural resources with a new group of what he called ‘sub-imperialist’ powers, the Brics.” (Peter Fabricius, “Brics Summit Important for SA,”
45
Alain Faujas, “La création de la banque de développement des Brics renvoyée à 2014,”
47
“Russian, South African Presidents Sign Declaration on Strategic Partnership,”
48
Cf. Michael Schuman, “Should BRICS Become BRIICS?”
49
Martyn Davies, “Indonesia and Turkey Top Brics Contenders,”
50
Ruchir Sharma, “Broken BRICs: Why the Rest Stopped Rising,”
1
Vladimir Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee, kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya,”
2
“Professor Igor Panarin: Gosudarem postsovetskogo prostranstva stanet Vladimir Putin,”
3
On Panarin’s grandiose visions see also Marcel H. Van Herpen,
4
Igor Panarin, “The Information War against Russia: Operation Putin. Part 1. Eurasian Integration: A Pathway Out of the World Crisis.” Lecture in the International Conference Securing Mankind’s Future (February 25–26, 2012), organized in Berlin by the Schiller-Institut. http://www.schiller-institut.de/seiten/201202-berlin/panarin-english.html (accessed June 28, 2013).
6
New Zealand has expressed an interest in creating a free trade zone with the Eurasian Union, but this is, of course, nowhere near becoming a full member. (Cf. Letter of Dmitry Shtodin, Minister Counsellor at the Russian Embassy in Rome, published as an appendix to Mauro De Bonis, “Urss? No grazie, Putin sogna l’Unione Euroasiatica,”