The key principle is that countries should be like-minded.
Today it became known that from January 1, 2024, the BRICS group will officially become 2.2 times larger: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates will join Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The decision is important, expected and necessary both economically and geopolitically: hopes are pinned on the BRICS group to form a new world order, which, as an idea, will become an alternative to Western hegemony. And so, the division of countries’ ideas about the future was voiced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who heads the Russian delegation at the BRICS summit in South Africa, as one of the main criteria, principles by which potential new members of this organization are selected.
According to Lavrov, it is not only the fact that countries are like-minded on the main issues of geopolitics that matters, but also the “weight” of states, their significance. At the same time, the level of economic development and well-being does not play a key role in the selection. This can be clearly seen from the way Ethiopia, which is not, to put it mildly, a prosperous state, received an invitation to BRICS.
It should be noted that the task of BRICS is to form an association of countries and their further mutually beneficial cooperation without fear of receiving critical damage from the aggressive policy of the West, including in terms of sanctions. Simply put, everyone benefits: some get markets for their products, others get the necessary economic and technological development.
