Published in Sada, the online journal of Carnegie’s Middle East Program · January 2024 · also available in Arabic
The expansion of BRICS to include Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was widely read as a geopolitical gesture — a signal about alignment, and about distance from Washington. This piece argues the economic case stands on its own terms, independent of the signalling.
As a matter of economic policy rather than diplomacy, both states have concrete reasons to want membership. The argument matters because it changes what the expansion predicts: an alignment gesture can be reversed when the political weather changes, whereas an arrangement that serves a country’s trade, investment and development interests tends to persist through it.
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