China and India gave Russia the main gift in Kazan, by Pëtr Akopov for RiaNovosti. 10.24.2024.
Today, the Kazan BRICS summit will end with a meeting in an expanded format, including 13 countries whose applications to join the organization are a priority. An even larger number of states have expressed a similar desire, so in the foreseeable future, BRICS will face several waves of expansion. Quite recently, the group was "five", now it is "nine", but everyone remembers and understands which countries were at the origins of the process - Russia, China and India. It was with the RIC format in 2003 that BRICS began, and the idea of uniting the three great Eurasian powers was put forward by Yevgeny Primakov back in 1998.
The Russian elite of that time did not yet have a correct understanding not only of our geopolitical interests, but even of Russia's place in the world, but strategically and nationally minded statesmen like Academician Primakov (who was then the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) realized that relying on the integration of post-Soviet Russia with the West or even on a strategic partnership with it was futile. Russia needed to focus on the East , based both on national interests and on the desire to build a new, post-Western world order. And it was China and India, along with Russia, that were to become the three forces that could both promote it and consolidate the non-Western world around themselves.
This concept has always been criticized by both our Westerners and Western geopoliticians, and not only because it absolutely did not meet their interests. Many believed that the contradictions between the three powers were so deep and diverse that their rapprochement could only be temporary and situational: well, yes, they want to limit the West's influence in regions of the world that are important to them or even reduce its shareholding in globalization, but sooner or later they will collide with each other (including in the struggle for spheres of influence), so that in general the Anglo-Saxons need not fear the emergence of a united front of non-Western powers under the leadership of Moscow , Beijing and Delhi.
The West's hope that a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance was impossible lasted almost until the start of our operation in Ukraine - now it is not even customary to remember that this was the dominant concept among the Anglo-Saxons. Although China has not become an open military ally of Russia, everyone understands who is on which side of the barricades. The expectation that Beijing would sacrifice strategic relations with Russia for the sake of a tactical win in the growing confrontation with the United States has clearly failed.
The West, of course, has not given up on trying to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, but now it is doing so in the hope of a long-term perspective. In the meantime, the main bet is on playing out the contradictions between Beijing and Delhi - fortunately, there is something to work on there.
Moreover, the territorial dispute, which is the main stumbling block on the path of Chinese-Indian rapprochement, is a legacy of colonial times, English rule over India and London's attempts to subjugate Chinese Tibet. That is, first they laid mines, and now they are trying to play on the contradictions.
In 1962, they even went to war, which happened at a time when the closest allied relations between Moscow and Beijing had already developed a huge crack (and then completely slid into confrontation), and between Moscow and Delhi, sympathies and ties were only growing stronger. For the next two decades, the Moscow-Delhi-Beijing triangle essentially had two sides: China against the USSR and India. Beijing began to establish ties with Moscow and Delhi only in the mid-1980s, but even then there was no talk of a trilateral format: the USSR soon collapsed, power in Moscow ended up in the hands of the pro-Western elite, and Delhi continued to be wary of Chinese initiatives. Therefore, a real triangle began to take shape only at the beginning of this century, when the leadership of all three countries came to understand its importance.
At the same time, Beijing and Delhi have failed to resolve territorial disputes, although after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 , and Modi in 2014, strong leaders capable of strategic thinking took the helm of both countries. That is, they understand that border disputes and conflicts only play into the hands of the opponents of both countries, allowing the West to scare Delhi with "Chinese expansion" and put a spoke in the wheel of BRICS. Xi and Modi held several meetings, even in a special, unofficial format, visiting each other. But the last such meeting took place in the fall of 2019 in southern India, and then the pandemic hit.
And soon after it began, in May-June 2020, there were bloody clashes between the two countries' militaries on the border in the Himalayas - after that, there were no more exchanges of visits. Moreover, Xi and Modi have not held a single meeting since then - they met a couple of times at international forums, communicated, but did not hold official negotiations.
That is why it is so important that on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the summit in Kazan, the first meeting in five years between the Chinese President and the Indian Prime Minister took place. And the day before, it was announced that in recent weeks, diplomats and military personnel from both countries had held talks and reached agreements on border patrol mechanisms (or rather, the line of actual control), meaning that the situation had returned to the state before the clashes four years ago. It is clear that this was done specifically to make it possible to hold official talks between Xi and Modi, and such an agreement in itself is an extremely important achievement.
Strengthening Indian-Chinese trust is of great importance for Russia and the entire non-Western world, which is why the meeting between Xi and Modi in Kazan is so important. Ultimately, the US should be deprived of the ability to influence relations in the RIC triangle - and this will be a significant contribution to strengthening BRICS.
https://ria.ru/20241024/briks-1979677687.html
Home
Latest images
Register
Log in
