'an obscure, disordered clique...'
How Dutch Prime Minister and possible next NATO chief views BRICS
"The BRICS is a very obscure, disordered clique. Don’t take it too serious.” Words by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte last month during a debate in the Dutch parliament on a question about the position of the West possibly weakening as more and more countries are joining BRICS. Rutte then continues with “It (the BRICS) includes India and China, so what could ever come out of this?"
Rutte’s downplay of the BRICS could be geopolitically motivated, a deceptive portrait of the BRICS for the Dutch people, or even a shot across the bow for his candidacy as next NATO leader. Or maybe he just believed what he said.
This article will not dive into the Western views on BRICS at large but analyse and provide background on the specific statements in Rutte’s remarks.
For a more general overview, an interesting report on the BRICS build-up, the (mis)interpretations of BRICS, and EU views on the BRICS was published last February by the ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European and & Foreign Policy) in collaboration with the University of Pretoria.
Locating the BRICS in the EU’s vision: a case for cooperation over competition
Also available as PDF
‘Don’t take BRICS too serious’
This remark seems mere geopolitical spiel, either for propaganda purposes or for strengthening his candidacy position as next NATO chief.
The rise of BRICS ofcourse matters for Europe. The economic impact of BRICS has increased over the years, having become a larger GDP entity than the G7 since last year.
And when looking towards the future, the GDP disparity will only continue to grow.
BRICS does not only matter economically for the West but also in the spheres of trade, global security development, monetary, financial and investment policies, multilateral regulatory affairs, people-to-people and cultural exchanges. And not the least being an umbrella of nations who have been separated or divided by current and past (Western) hegemonic powers in the past centuries.
However what actually triggered this article were two other statements made by Rutte; ‘BRICS being obscure and disordered’ and ‘BRICS includes India and China, so what could ever come out of this?’.
‘Depicting BRICS as obscure and disordered’
This depiction is not just about current geopolitical rhetoric. The thought or impulse behind depicting BRICS as obscure and disordered can be perceived as a characteristic of Western nations criticizing emerging non-Western nations of threatening or violating the "rules-based international order".
The Western nations, among which all former colonising countries, are used to draw up rules and enforce these worldwide. Non-Western nations, however, are less and less willing to comply, as this concept of a rule-based world order does not comply with their cultural profile, which is high Particularist, Communitarian and Diffuse; the generic non-Western culture. BRICS nations all fall more or less into the non-Western cultural region.
Rutte’s depiction has root in these different cultural dimensions and perceptions. This is explained in the China21 Journal article “it’s the culture, stupid” where we conclude that the Western and non-Western cultures are playing different games, Chess vs. Weiqi (or Go). But the West is thinking that we all are playing Chess, and therefore portray BRICS as obscure and disordered.
The article explains the differences between Chess and Weiqi as follows :
In their book A Thousand Plateaus (1980), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari offer a succinct explication of the difference between the two games. They note that in chess the conflict is institutionalized and regulated with a front and a rear battle line, whereas in weiqi there are no battle lines. It is a question of arraying oneself in an open space, they note, of holding space, of maintaining the possibility of springing up at any point. Chess is played in a structured space, with each piece assigned a specific role in the hierarchy with a clear differentiation between the pawns and the elite pieces such as knights, bishops, kings and queens, each moving in its designated way.
In contrast, weiqi is played in a fluid space where the pieces are identical, and their roles are ambiguous. It is the strategic context that matters. The strategic orchestration of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are as many moves in weiqi as atoms in the observable universe, offering infinite flexibility and manoeuvring room to an astute player. The ambiguousness and fluidity of their roles augment the potential importance of every piece on the board, bewildering those who do not understand the weiqi game. China plays weiqi by radically expanding its playing field and its global political-economic space. The expansion of BRICS and BRI are notable examples of this strategy.
The institutionalized and regulated nature of Chess indicates that it has roots in a Universalist culture. Weiqi is played in a fluid space and the roles of the pieces are only determined in a concrete situation; typical phenomena of a Particularist culture.
Considered obscure and disordered by Chess players.
‘BRICS includes India and China, so what could ever come out of this?’
This interpretation by Rutte presumably originates from two angles.
First of all the currently popular ideological polarization outlined in the West; liberal democracy versus authoritarianism. While India is considered the largest democracy in the world, China is portrayed as the largest authoritarian state. The second angle lies in the recent history between India and China, foremost the border dispute.
The first inclination of liberal democracy versus authoritarianism is widely propagated in the West’s political discourse against China. But what is India’s position and view in this ?
India, considered as world’s largest democracy indeed has a distinctive different form of governance from China. But does this automatically mean they are eternal adversaries as Rutte tries to make us believe or for that matter that India automatically belongs to the ‘liberal democracy camp’ (or ‘West camp’) ?
Listen to India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyan Jaishankar during the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum in 2022.
Jaishankar outlines that India certainly has issues with China but India refuses to be part of any camp or axes and it is perfectly capable of managing relations with China.
Some extracts from this interview :
“Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”
“Today linkages are being made between China & India and what is happening in Ukraine. Come on guys, China & India happened way before Ukraine.”
“Reporter: There will always be two axes at this point, I think it is an understood fact that you have the U.S. led West and China as the next potential axis. Where does India fit into this ?
Jaishankar: No, I am sorry that is exactly where I disagree with you. This is the construct you are imposing on me and I don’t accept it. I (India) don’t think it is necessary for me to join this axis or not. And if I am not joining this, I must be with the other one. I don’t accept it, I am one-fifth of the world’s population and I am today the 5th or 6th largest economy in the world. Forget the history and civilization bit, everybody knows that. I feel I am entitled to have my own side, weigh my own interests, make my own choices”
“We have a difficult relationship with China. We are perfectly capable of managing it. If I get global understanding and support, obviously it will also help me. But this idea that I do a transaction, I come in one conflict because it will help in conflict two, that’s not how the world works. A lot of our problems with China have nothing to do with Ukraine, have nothing to do with Russia.”.
In a recent interview last February during the Munich Security Conference 2024, Jaishankar explained how the BRICS came about (from minute 03:05).
Transcript :
“The BRICS started in an era where Western dominance was very strong. The premier gathering of the world was the G7, and you had a number of significant powers in the world who felt that, well, they were not part of the G7 but maybe they also brought value to the table by sitting and discussing with others.
So in a sense you had a collection of these countries. It was originally four; South Africa joined later. And if you look at it, it’s a very interesting group because it’s geographically as disparate as it can be. Yet it is bound by the fact that these discussions we’ve had over a decade and a half have been very useful for all of us.
Now, like any product, you test it in the market at some point. We tested it last year and asked people, so how many of you want to join BRICS? And we got almost 30 countries who were willing to join BRICS. So clearly, if 30 countries saw value in it, there must be something good we have done.
So I think it’s important today to make a distinction between being non-West and anti-West. I would certainly characterize India as a country which is non-West, but which has an extremely strong relationship with Western countries getting better by the day. Not everybody else necessarily in that grouping might qualify for that description.
But the contribution the BRICS has made -- if one looks at the G7 and how it evolved into the G20, I think in a way those additional 13 members who came into this bigger grouping, five of them are BRICS members. The fact that there was another group which was meeting regularly and discussing and debating I think certainly was an input into the expansion of the G7 into the G20. So I think we did a service to the world.”
Before explaining BRICS in this interview, Jaishankar was asked the following question from the moderator :
“Minister Jaishankar, India has more of a multiple-choice mindset. Is -- would that be -- would that be right? From nonalignment to -- I think you may have called it or somebody else called it “all-alignment.” So you can pick and choose alliances, but you can also pick and choose topics. On Russia, for example, you still buy Russian oil. Is that okay with your counterpart from the U.S.? Everything is -- your relationship is fine? You can do whatever you want whenever you want?”
Jaishankar replied as follows :
“Your question: Do we have multiple options? The answer is yes. Is that a problem? Why should it be a problem? If I’m smart enough to have multiple options, you should be admiring me, you shouldn’t be criticizing me.
Now, is that a problem for other people? I don’t think so. I don’t think so, certainly in this case and in that case. Because, look, we try to explain what are the different pulls and pressures which countries have. And it’s very hard to have a uni-dimensional relationship. Now, again, different countries and different relationships have different histories. If I were to look, say, between the U.S. and Germany, it is rooted -- there’s an alliance nature to it; there’s a certain history on which that relationship is grounded. In our case it’s very different.
So I don’t want you to even inadvertently give the impression that we are purely and unsentimentally transactional. We are not. We get along with people. We believe in things, we share things, we agree on some things. But there are times when you’re located in different places, have different levels of development, different experiences -- all of that gets into it. So life is complicated. Life is differentiated. And I think it’s very important today not to reduce the entire complexity of our world into very sweeping propositions. I think that era is today behind us.”
The likely second angle of Rutte’s presumption that nothing can ever come out of a collaboration between India and China lies in the recent history of both countries.
The bilateral relation between India and China has indeed been increasingly problematic in recent years. But nonetheless both countries are collaborating in the BRICS. And not only the BRICS but also in the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with among others Russia, Pakistan, and Iran.
The current state of tensions between both countries is predominantly caused by border conflicts, especially since the border skirmishes in 2020 which left casualties at both sides (20 deaths at the Indian side and 4 deaths at the Chinese side according their own intelligence sources). Chinese and Indian troops engaged in aggressive face-offs and skirmishes at locations along the Sino-Indian border, including near the disputed Pangong Lake in Ladakh and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and near the border between Sikkim and the Tibet Autonomous Region. Additional clashes also took place at locations in eastern Ladakh along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Since these skirmishes, China and India have been de-escalating along the border but mistrust continues with tensions and disputes. The Indian government has banned direct investment and hundreds of apps from China, which triggered additional confrontations in economic and security fields.
On 25 August 2023 during the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke on the summit's sidelines where they agreed to deescalate tensions at the border. India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar underlined that the maintenance of peace and tranquility in the border areas, and observing and respecting the LAC are essential for the normalization of the India-China relationship. But he has reiterated at different occasions since that the relation has not yet normalized.
Other causes of tensions are China’s relation with Pakistan, especially the construction project of the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and India’s membership in the QUAD (est. 2017), a strategic security alliance with the United States, Japan and Australia.
The history of India-China relations go back thousands of years ago and the natural border of the Himalayas has remained more or less unaltered. Great civilizations have existed on both sides of Himalaya and have maintained some or other kind of cultural and trade links, at least for the last 2000 years. During this period until the mid 1800s, India and China had been world’s two largest economies for 1800 years. Their armies had seldom crossed the Himalayas to challenge each other’s sovereignty or to annex a part of it (there are records of two military confrontations in ancient history).
Picture credit : 2,000 Years of Ecomonic History in One Chart, Visual Capitalist, Sept. 8, 2017
The major military confrontation in modern history was the Sino-Indian War in October 1962, lasting about one month with about 700 killed at the Chinese side and 1,400 at the Indian side. The conflict ended when China unilaterally declared a ceasefire on 20 November 1962, and simultaneously announced its withdrawal to its pre-war position, the effective China–India border (LAC), considered a Chinese victory.
In context, there was much more to this war than just the border dispute as India had declared the Federal Republic in 1950 and the People’s Republic of China was founded one year earlier in 1949, both just a little over a decade before the war. Both countries were dealing with the legacies and aftermaths of colonialism and foreign subjugation which left lots of sovereignty and other issues unsolved.
There was considerable progress of rapprochement between both countries from the 1980s onward. In the 2010s, Xi Jinping visited India twice for a state visit. The first time in 2014 when Narendra Modi took office as Prime Minister of India, and in 2019 for an informal summit with Modi. Narendra Modi visited Xi Jinping in China twice as well, in 2015 and 2018. Apart from these personal state visits, the leaders met each other on different occasions during various multilateral summits (BRICS, G20).
In contrast to Rutte’s “ever” appellation based on either ideology or history, the modern India-China relation is only about 70 years young after a century in which India was colonized by Britain and in the same period China suffered domestic turmoil and foreign subjugation (the century of humiliation).
The relation is at a cross-road in this time, especially with respect to the rise of both economies in recent decades. And the rise of the Asian economy as a whole.
Apart from the border dispute, the rise of both giants incur increasing economic and strategic power rivalry in Asia. With China having emerged more rapidly and powerfully, and with the expanding role in South and South-East Asia, India’s leadership is continuously being challenged in the subcontinent.
India started reducing economic reliance on China and even pursue economic decoupling since the beginning of this decade. China was India’s top trade partner in 2020 but the same year Modi put forward the Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India mission) vision as the COVID-19 pandemic exposed India’s vulnerability in supply chains, especially when exports from China decreased because of the pandemic. Modi administration’s started prohibiting and controlling investment, especially from China, and started building up the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative with Japan and Australia to reduce reliance on China.
India wants to catch up the asymmetry in the China-Indian strategic and economic rivalry.
From a Chinese perspective on the bilateral relation, several Chinese diplomats reiterated on numerous occasions during the late 2010s that “The sky and ocean of Asia are big enough for the dragon and elephant (China and India) to dance together”
However, China sees a deterioration of political trust between the two nations built up during the 2010s with a peak at the Wuhan summit in 2018. Especially after the 2020 skirmishes, there is serious lack of mutual trust and especially in the field of security limited space for cooperation.
For the border issues, China holds a different standpoint from India’s view that relations cannot normalize without solving this dispute. China believes that these issues should not be linked with broader bilateral relations as they are historical problems that take a long time to reach a consensus. Putting this issue as condition for the whole relation hinders the chances for cooperation and enhancing bilateral relations in areas of mutual interest. Instead putting this issue aside and under control, China hopes that relations will mature and eventually bring a settlement to the disputes as well.
Beyond the border disputes, China has concerns over India’s (military) strategic cooperation with the United States and multilaterally in SQUAD with regional adversaries as Japan. China suspects that India will not stand on its own as a strategic rival but will always align with other powers. In the past, for instance, India had built a strategic partnership with Britain and the Soviet Union to realise its strategic security interests.
Moving forward
While the different perceptions on border disputes and strategic economic and security rivalry will certainly continue for years to come in the bilateral relation, both India and China also share similar perceptions.
A war between both nations would hurt both nation’s strategic economic and security ambitions for this century to a great and decisive length. While other major economies possibly benefit from disruption in their bilateral relations with one or the other, this is not the case for the India-China relation. Peace and a degree of stability is a prerequisite for both nations moving forward in their developments and ambitions.
Another similar perception is that both China and India are considered civilization states and they strongly pursue their own path, values and interests forward, unlikely to be lured into one or another camp. While India is part of Western security alliances, it is also member of BRICS, SCO and for example refuses to follow the West’s ‘demands’ to stop trading with Russia.
Einar Tangen, Senior Fellow of the Taihe Institute and Founder of China Narratives recently shared following context on civilizations and empires in a private chat environment :
“All Civilizations were once Empires. But, not all Empires become Civilizations.
Empires are outward facing, their aim is to dominate others as a means of building power and legitimacy.
Civilizations tend to be inward facing, they defend what they have, as they deal with their societal issues and values.
Both Civilizations and Empires can fall when they are defeated militarily.
But Empires will also eventually fall when they will not be able to transition to a Civilization.
And Civilizations will fall when they will not be able to uphold their values anymore.”
Both in China and India, there is an increasing focus and attention to their respective civilizational dimensions. This is a natural occurrence at this stage as both ancient civilizations have first gone through decades of building up basic economic, governance and social structures after a century of foreign subjugation which ended mid-last century.
It is not likely that India and China ever become best friends, not just because of disputes in recent times but they have never been when they were the two largest economies for 1800 years with distinctively different civilizations. But being ‘best friends’ or in all the same camps is not a prerequisite for peace, stability and working together. History over 2000 years shows how the two very different ancient giants have lived peaceful next to each other for almost all of the time.
Mutual ignorance is not a way forward in today’s interconnected world so diplomacy in cultural and political contexts should be addressed with great care and sensitivity, considering each other’s positions and stages of development. It is obvious that both countries know that the other is going to stay and have influence as well on the Asia stage. And that some kind of working relationship will mutually benefit each other’s growth.
The sensitive dilemmas lie in the relative proportions of mutual benefits working together which makes diplomatic contexts of gestures but also giving face extremely important.
Especially as the bilateral relation is key to the regional prosperity and stability of the Asian Century as Singapore’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs George Yeo puts it.
Few final words on Rutte’s BRICS remarks
For the downplay of BRICS being an obscured and disordered organisation, this ‘new mode’ of multilateral collaboration is actually growing in the world. Multilateral collaborations based on specific mutual needs, interests and security with respect for each other’s sovereignty and governance. An alternative for the submission to a global rules-based order and like-minded strategic alliances. By the way ‘enemies’ Saudi Arabia and Iran simultaneously joined BRICS last year.
For India and China being ever unable to work together to some degree, this is more propaganda language than realism looking at more than one dimension, historically, culturally and with regard to both India’s and China’s future in the Asia Century.
Propaganda as stability and even worse chances for collaboration between India and China does not suit geopolitical agendas of other major economic powers and military alliances in this world.
Mark Rutte, good luck in your bid to become the next NATO chief.
For more insight and depth on China, browse China21 Journal essays and articles