The Vancouver Sun: Brazil, Russia, India and China are unlikely economic bedfellows - by Jonathan Manthorpe

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Brazil, Russia, India and China are unlikely economic bedfellows - by Jonathan Manthorpe

A beaming Russian president Dmitry Medvedev played host to not one but two summits of leaders from the countries that some analysts contend are poised to command the international stage if and when the 200-year-old North Atlantic ascendancy splutters to an end. Ekaterinburg, it seems, was the place to be for a glimpse of the future as leaders gathered for the meetings of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and then for the first summit of an economic organization that doesn't really exist and which is the product of the imagination and napkin jottings of Goldman Sachs economist, Jim O'Neill, who in 2001 proposed that by 2050 the current world economic leaders of the G-8 industrialized nations will be overtaken by Brazil, Russia, India and China, now known as the BRIC.While the air hung heavy with pledges of cooperation, it's hard to escape the view that China and Russia in particular are treading divergent paths. China's global influence, investment and responsibilities are growing, at least for the moment, while Russia's are declining. Moscow seems content to peg the country's mood-swings to the value of revenues from its energy exports; one day up, the next day down. No surprise then that the impetus to try to make O'Neill's speculative graphs into a real thing came from Russia. If you can't be a major force in other people's country clubs, form one of your own.

The lack of cohesion or unity of purpose in their economies and political structures is evident in the communique that came out of last week's summit. New depth of meaning was brought to the word "vague" as the final document talked about the need to "advance the reform of international financial institutions." What they seemed to be saying was that change is needed in the deal that has survived since the Second World War by which the World Bank is run by an American appointee and the International Monetary Fund is run by a European.