Another BRICS in anti-West wall

Tuesday’s announcement that Indonesia has acceded to immediate full membership of the BRICS group of countries dominated by China and Russia leaves no doubt about the extent to which things have changed in Jakarta under new President Prabowo Subianto. His predecessor, Joko Widodo, up to the time of leaving office in October 2024, was in no hurry to join what was then a nine-nation, mainly anti-Western group that was being used by Beijing and Moscow primarily as a strategic catspaw to create an alternative world order to that dominated by the West. As Dewi Fortuna Anwar of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency said, Indonesia under the leadership of Jokowi, as the former president was popularly known, “didn’t join because it didn’t want to be seen as part of an anti-Western group”. During his two terms, Jokowi sought to integrate Indonesia with Western institutions by working to secure membership of the OECD.

The former leader’s reservations, however, clearly have received short shrift from Mr Prabowo. With immediate effect Indonesia, with the world’s largest Muslim population, has become BRICS’ 10th member and its first from Southeast Asia. It takes its place alongside the original five members – Brazil, Russia, India and China plus South Africa – that gave BRICS its acronym and more recent members Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates. Jokowi’s hesitancy and caution about BRICS was well-founded and it will be unfortunate for Indonesia if its rushed membership makes our neighbour part of what Donald Trump warned last month could become a target for 100 per cent tariffs imposed by the US. Reacting to reports that the BRICS countries as a group were trying to create a rival currency to the US dollar, thereby reducing their reliance on the West, an angry Mr Trump warned: “The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER.” One hundred per cent tariffs on their exports would follow, he said.

Just what Mr Trump intended with that warning is anyone’s guess. But what is not in doubt is that the BRICS countries, as a group dominated by Chinese and Russian strategic interests, are suffused by anti-Western sentiment as they strive to create an alternative to the Western-led world order, and it is extremely uncertain that goal is in Indonesia’s economic or strategic interests. Democratic Indonesia’s interests are unlikely to lie in any sort of alignment on anything with the tyrannies that rule China, Russia and Iran and the clapped-out, corrupt and woke regimes that misgovern Brazil and South Africa.