“Not the West, not the East, the Global South,” highlights Celso Amorim about the BRICS
The Special Adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Ambassador Celso Amorim, during an exclusive interview, spoke about the genesis of the BRICS as a cooperation forum among countries of the Global South.
By Thayara Martins | thayara.martins@presidencia.gov.br
The Head Adviser of the Special Advisory to the President of the Republic, Ambassador Celso Amorim, has an extensive career in Brazilian diplomacy. He studied at the Rio Branco Institute, a training center for Brazilian diplomats, and concluded his post-grad studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna and London School of Economics.
Celso Amorim was Brasil’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during the administrations of President Itamar Franco (1993- 1994) and President Lula (2003-2010). He served as Brazil’s Permanent Representative at the United Nations, in New York (1995-1999) and Geneva (1991-1993 and 1999-2001), and was also the Brazilian Ambassador in London between 2001 and 2002. Since January 2023 he has been serving Lula’s third administration.
Among the multiple awards he received in recognition of his career, Amorim was recently chosen by the Bravo Business magazine as one of continent’s most “imaginative” leaders. In 2010, he joined the list of the Foreign Policy magazine as the 6th among 100 global thinkers.
In an exclusive interview for the BRICS Brasil website, Celso Amorim talked about the importance of developing countries joining forces around common agendas and the relevance of a group such as the BRICS. He highlighted that the forum does not have an anti-western character and listed Brasil’s agreements with Western countries and the opportunities for cooperation among BRICS members in areas such as economics, finance, and environmental sustainability. Another element underscored by the diplomat was the importance of global governance reform and the understanding that there cannot be an international organization without the active participation of the developing countries. Check out the interview.
How did the idea of coordinating among countries and creating a cooperation forum that has an acronym created by an economist as the starting point come to be?
One day, when I presided over an international health organization, economist Jim O’Neill was England’s Minister of Treasury. I sat beside him in a meeting and said, “wow, I am glad to be sitting side by side with the person who invented the BRICS”. The Economist said, “yes, yes”. And then I added, “but we were the ones who created it”.
I believe that what is behind our group is the notion that the organizations from the Global South need to be institutionalized. At that time, this expression was not used very often, but in the early 2000s, when I represented the Brazilian government, Russian diplomat Sergei Lavrov came to talk to me and suggested we create the BRICS forum. When Lavrov suggested this, we started the discussions and it evolved from there. We had the first ministerial meeting, but the first presidential meeting was in 2009, in Ekaterinburg, in Rússia.
"How can anyone say that Brasil is against the West when we have just concluded an agreement with the European Union? There is no point. Being subordinated to a particular leading country, we don’t want that."
I have a friend who was Great Britain’s Minister of Interior and today runs a non-governmental organization in the United States, who once asked me, “Celso, why do you give so much importance to the BRICS?”. And I answered, “to strengthen the G20.” It sounds contradictory, but it isn’t.
For example, everyone knows that the United Nations (UN) Security Council reform is a complex issue, that it will take a long time to occur. But there is an understanding that there cannot be an international organization without the active participation of the developing countries. So, if Brasil went in alone, or even China, it would not have the same influence that this group of countries in the BRICS have. And, by the way, many of them are G20 members, too.
Is it possible to highlight some of the relevant moments for the consolidation of the group?
I think it was the first presidential meeting in 2009, in Ekaterinburg, Russia. That was when we saw that the group was formed, initially with an almost exclusively economic connotation, as it still has, but now it is more diverse in terms of issues. I think that was the key moment. There was also, in 2014, the Fortaleza Summit, in the capital of the Brazilian state of Ceará, which was also very important because it was when the BRICS Bank was created.
The BRICS has become an important platform for the discussion of global issues. What are the main achievements that have allowed the forum to maintain its relevance in the international scenario?
The idea of the BRICS is to have a cooperation group among large developing countries that can, among other things, study the possibility of cooperating on energy, on the monetary field, and even on the field of peace and security, which is more complex. This is very important because it has shown the big Western, capitalist countries that they cannot dictate the rules; they can present initiatives, but they will have to discuss them with us.
And I think this did not exist because before, the G7 would speak and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) would just follow. Now it is different.
What is the role of Brasil in building a more just international order, and how can the BRICS help to strengthen the Global South in this process?
We can build a bridge to strengthen the developing countries in areas such as sustainable development, climate change, finance and economics, and avoid being victims of financial maneuvers that can harm us. With the BRICS, we do not rely on one single country or group of countries. For example, concluding the agreement with the European Union was excellent, but one cannot associate only with European countries. And there is also the fact that the existence of the BRICS contributes to strengthening bilateral relations between countries. Our relationship with China, for example, expanded significantly because China has grown a lot, but we now have a familiarity that I don’t know if we would have, if it weren’t for the BRICS.
I think that, if we open it completely, almost all developing countries will want to become BRICS members. This reveals the importance the group has.
Some analysts argue that the BRICS has an anti-Western bias. What do you think of that?
Brasil has many Western values and a culture that also derives from the Indigenous peoples, the Africans, and immigrants from the most diverse countries, such as the Japanese. I believe that Brasil has this mixture that makes the country extremely attractive. I just read a book by Stefan Zweig, “The World of Yesterday”; there is a chapter in which the author talks about how open our country is to new experiences, new cultures, without ever creating any of the difficulties and rivalries that existed in Europe at the time of the author . So, Brasil is, above anything else, a country that wants to defend its position and that of the developing countries without any aggression.
"BRICS is a group of developing countries that want prosperity, but also want peace. I believe that the world in which we live today is mostly in search of peace. I think it was that Pope Paul VI who said, “development is the new name for peace.” The BRICS is the new name for development."
We have had, for example, important agreements with the United States in the field of labor. And we have started some in the field of energy, on the other hand, we have several projects with China. There aren’t many countries that have this capacity for dialog — there are some, but not many. How can anyone say that Brasil is against the West when we have just concluded an agreement with the European Union? There is no point. Being subordinated to a particular leading country, we don’t want that. Not the West, not the East, the Global South (is what we advocate for).
And President Lula's leadership, in this context, is indisputable on issues related to conflicts among countries. President Lula is an active pacifist, not just in theory. He acts to contribute to peace. How many countries have had the capacity to dialog with Russia and Ukraine? At President Lula’s request, I went to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I made a long trip, part of it by train inside Ukraine, to talk to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And we are sought after. We are a country of peace. Brasil hates war. How many countries are there around the world that have borders with other 10 countries and had its last war over 150 years ago? Brasil does.
Do you believe that the BRICS has potential for expansion? And lastly, what message would you like to leave regarding the importance of the BRICS for Brasil and for the world, especially in a moment of so many global uncertainties?
I believe the BRICS has to be open and that the developing countries must feel represented. But operationally, it cannot expand indefinitely because, in order to take concrete action on important issues, it must maintain a certain cohesion. We cannot lose the specificity of the BRICS, which is its capacity to act collectively and to exert real cooperation.
My message is that the BRICS is a group of developing countries that want prosperity, but also want peace. I believe that the world in which we live today is mostly in search of peace. I think it was that Pope Paul VI who said, “development is the new name for peace.” The BRICS is the new name for development.