The BRICS bloc is riven with tensions

LIKE THE iPod and MySpace, the BRICS bloc is a product of the benign optimism of the 2000s. In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC in a paper about the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The quartet ran with the idea, holding its first summit in 2009. A year later South Africa was invited to join. Some analysts feared the BRICS might soon start to rival the G7, but the grouping quickly lost momentum. The non-Asian BRICS economies stagnated in the 2010s. At summits the bloc would issue garbled communiqués about the perfidious West—which the perfidious West would promptly ignore. The BRICS looked dead.

And yet the bloc lives. On August 22nd the 15th BRICS summit will open in Johannesburg, a major South African city—a party for many of the biggest swing voters in geopolitics. Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s president, will be joined by leaders including Narendra Modi of India, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil (known universally as Lula) and China’s Xi Jinping. Vladimir Putin will not be there in person. Were he to attend, then South Africa, as a member of the International Criminal Court, would be obliged to act on the arrest warrant the court issued for Russia’s president in March. And that might spoil the fun.