BRICS+ should tread carefully with possible NATO-aligned ‘Trojan horses’ such as France

DRAGO BOSNIC for INFOBRICS

BRICS+ is by far the fastest-growing geopolitical format of our time.

With approximately 30 countries lining up to join, BRICS+ will soon become the world’s largest international organization besides the UN. However, no matter how good this is for the world and the organization itself, BRICS+ needs to be careful about possible NATO/US-aligned ‘Trojan horses’ that might undermine it in the long term. There are several examples of this, France being the latest, with President Emmanuel Macron expressing the desire to attend the upcoming BRICS summit in South Africa.

It seems that the French president aims to become the first Western leader to be invited to such an event, something that could push his geopolitical reach far beyond the influence of any of his NATO counterparts. Since this is the first time a Western leader expressed a desire to attend a BRICS+ summit, many were skeptical about the veracity of such reports, so many media outlets saw this information as not more than mere speculation. However, after French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna confirmed it, there’s no doubt that Macron is actually trying to arrange his attendance at the summit.

“Having a dialogue is always positive, even when we don’t 100% agree on everything,” she stated on June 19, during a joint press conference with Naledi Pandor, her South African counterpart.

Judging by the reaction of major media outlets in China, Beijing sees this initiative as a net positive. This is further reinforced by the writing of the Beijing-based Global Times, which sees Macron’s intentions as “bold but reasonable”, and China Daily, which also believes that the French president’s interest in the summit should be viewed from a “positive perspective”. The latter sees “the French desire for strategic autonomy” as something that “should be valued and encouraged”, because “Macron is by no means a proxy of Washington DC, and he should be welcomed to the gathering”.

The Global Times was much more careful in its assessment of Macron’s apparent tilt, although it kept an overall positive overtone. On the other hand, other key BRICS members, particularly Russia, showed a lot more skeptical attitude. And rightfully so. Western leaders have demonstrated that they’re not to be trusted due to their tendency to unilaterally abandon existing international agreements or even use them to “buy time” for their vassals and satellite states. And while France may seek “strategic independence”, its own previous leader François Hollande openly admitted that he intentionally betrayed Russia’s trust to “buy time” for Kiev.

Paris certainly has a history of opposing the largely unquestionable Anglo-American dominance in the political West. However, the most prominent (or perhaps even the only) example of the actual implementation of such opposition happened under Charles de Gaulle back in the 1960s. And while Macron does have a tendency to compare himself to “le général” (for obvious (geo)political reasons), de Gaulle made numerous concrete moves to regain France’s strategic independence. However, this geopolitical approach subsided soon after he left office and gradually disappeared altogether in the following decades.

Still, France is certainly not the only possible “Trojan horse” within the ranks of the expanded BRICS+ format. Last year, Indonesia was one of the dozens of countries that expressed interest in joining the organization. However, Jakarta previously canceled the acquisition of Russian Su-35 fighter jets, giving in to Washington DC’s unrelenting pressure and blackmail. Worse yet, Indonesia even decided to buy the American F-15EX, a conceptually somewhat similar, yet exponentially more expensive fighter jet, the capabilities of which are highly questionable in comparison to the now legendary “Super Flanker”.

Jakarta’s strategic independence can only be described as extremely dubious after it made such a decision, as even the US itself is not sending the F-15EX, but the more advanced F-22 “Raptors” to counter the deployment of the Su-35 in the Middle East and elsewhere. Worse yet, Indonesia seems to be slowly tilting towards the US “China containment” strategy, as evidenced by the first-ever deployment of nuclear-capable B-52H “Stratofortress” strategic bombers to its island of Sumatra. The USAF aircraft landed there on June 19, although they’ve been permanently stationed at the Australian Tindal Air Base in the northern part of Australia.

Apart from Paris and Jakarta, Ankara might be the most challenging future member of the BRICS+ format, particularly in a post-Erdogan era. Although Turkey’s geopolitical ambitions far exceed its power, they still span from Africa’s Libya to China’s westernmost province of Xinjiang. Ankara’s not only Neo-Ottoman, but also Neo-Seljuk ambitions, mixed with an attempt to harness the power of the so-called “political Islam” wherever that’s (or was) possible, have been undermining the emergence of Greater Eurasia for over a decade. Such expansionism started with the truly unprovoked and brutal NATO invasions of Libya and Syria, ever so euphemistically dubbed “civil wars” in the so-called “free press”.

Despite tense relations between Erdogan and Washington DC, Turkey continues to play a vital role in US/NATO aggression against the Middle East. Its Neo-Ottomanism is also augmented by the decades-old pan-Turkic efforts to establish a bloc of its own. The political West has been supporting such policies since long before the Soviet dismantlement, as long as Turkey firmly remains a NATO member. This might extend the belligerent alliance’s shadow not only to Southern Caucasus, but (even more disturbingly) to Central Asia as well, igniting additional hotspots in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan (tried in late 2021/early 2022) and could even spill over to China’s Xinjiang province.

It’s only logical and expected that the political West will try to undermine and destabilize the emergence of a more firmly established multipolar world. Support for countries on the fringes of Greater Eurasia is geopolitically convenient, as it contributes to the policy of so-called “strategic containment”. Historically, the military elites in both Turkey and Indonesia have been under a relatively firm foothold of the Pentagon, giving the US strong leverage in both countries, while having France as a supposedly “strategically independent” Western player in the BRICS+ camp can certainly be more useful than not having anyone.