Arab Countries Leave Western Axis And Invite Brazil, Russia And India To Economic Forum

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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

Brazil, Russia and India participated on September 9 in the 161st ministerial Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This occasion marked an increasing protagonism of BRICS and the cooperation of its members on the world stage.

The Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mauro Vieira, went to the meeting and met not only with his counterparts from the Arab world at the forum and in bilateral meetings but also with the foreign ministers of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, and India, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. GCC Secretary-General Jasem Albudaiwi stressed that joint ministerial meetings aimed to strengthen strategic relations with countries and organisations.

Albudaiwi underlined that the meeting is “a continuation of the considerable efforts made by both sides to strengthen friendly relations that fulfil their aspirations, particularly given that this dialogue serves as a permanent platform for discussion at the ministerial level, as it facilitates the exchange of views on key issues of mutual concern, including threats to regional and global security, as well as exploring ways to enhance cooperation in various fields to serve common interests.”

The GCC, created in 1981, consists of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman. It aims to promote regional integration between countries in politics, infrastructure, legislation, energy, defence, science, and the economy. The GCC does not often invite non-member states to its meetings. Even rarer is the invitation extended to geographically distant nations, as is the case with the three visitors to this meeting: Brazil, Russia, and India.

According to Brazilian data, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are important trading partners for Brazil. The South American country’s trade balance exceeded $16 billion last year, with $9.3 billion in exports and $6.7 billion in imports. Collectively, GCC member countries are the fifth largest market for Brazilian exports. Within this group, Saudi Arabia naturally stands out because it has the largest territory and the largest population.

To understand the dynamics, Saudi Arabia is to the Persian Gulf what Brazil is to Mercosur. In this way, Brazil’s presence at the 161st GCC ministerial meeting reinforces the country’s economic ties with the House of Saud and makes it clear to the other Arab countries of the Persian Gulf that Brazil wants to strengthen relations with every country in the region.

Brazil is keeping an eye on investments from sovereign wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait, which realise that the end of the fossil fuel era is approaching. These countries know that the resource on which all their wealth is based is finite, and, therefore, they need to guarantee the survival of the State through investments in various places around the world. Today, Brazil has this privileged place because it is one of the guarantors of the Persian Gulf’s food security.

The investments aim to diversify the economies of these countries and generate employment for citizens since population growth has made it impossible to employ everyone in the state machinery.

Today, they invest in the development of national industry and need markets to export to, and Latin America’s biggest country will undoubtedly be one of those markets. If Brazil wants to establish a balanced relationship with the member countries of the GCC, it will have to find a way to address the trade deficit on the GCC side. In other words, Brazil will have to buy more.

Aside from the economic sector, Brazil’s rapprochement with the region is quite significant in the political sphere since Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were invited to join BRICS, a group of emerging countries that lead the struggle for multilateralism.

In addition to Brazil, two other founding members of BRICS, Russia and India, were present at this meeting, revealing the South-South dialogue nature of the event and demonstrating without a doubt the increase in the protagonism of these countries through BRICS, which has achieved great strength. It also shows a diversification of the Persian Gulf countries in an attempt to escape from this dynamic of very strong links and overreliance on the Washington-Brussels axis.

The Global South can be seen as a 21st-century version of the non-aligned movement that emerged during the Cold War. In this sense, the Middle East has this clear perception of presenting an independent foreign policy that prioritises the new pole of power that is forming. For this reason, the GCC has unapologetically continued to trade with Russia despite Western sanctions whilst recognising that Brazil is Latin America’s most important country, as well as India, which holds the same status as Brazil except in South Asia.

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