Brazilian Professor Felipe Krause, director of Oxford University’s Brazilian Studies Program, posed this question in an opinion piece published July 16 in the daily O Globo, a mouthpiece for Anglo-American geopolitical interests. Krause, a former diplomat who received his advanced degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford, then proceeded to answer his own question with a resounding “yes,” complaining that by remaining in the BRICS, Brazil “has lost its strategic focus” and is paying a high “diplomatic price with dubious benefits.” Notably, the article appeared in the midst of the turmoil created by Donald Trump’s attacks against the BRICS and against Brazil specifically, which had just hosted the successful July 6-7 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Krause’s arguments differ little from those published by the British Crown’s Chatham House, also known as Royal Institute for International Affairs, which complained in a July 8 article that “authoritarian” China and Russia dominate the BRICS to follow an agenda different from other members. Krause claims that BRICS has become a platform for Chinese foreign policy, in which China “sets the agenda, imposes priorities and projects its ambition to redesign the international order, according to its interests.” Brazil has no role, acting merely as a “supporting player in a geopolitical project that is not its own,”
Russia, Krause adds, relies on the BRICS as a “diplomatic shield trying to clean up its image and escape isolation.” Its narrative about the Ukraine war is “covered up by the group’s connivance and the insinuation that Western countries provoked the conflict,” he says of the BRICS. Krause also asserts that Russia also uses Brazil as a base for espionage.
