Ties with other emerging economies crucial

After five years of introspection and institution building, the sixth BRICS summit offers an opportunity to the group to focus on its relations with the rest of the world. Relations with the G7 are particularly contentious. Russia's exclusion from the G8 following the crisis in Crimea has moved the BRICS to the center stage in Russian foreign policy thinking, and risks pulling the group onto an opposition footing with the West.

The other four BRICS member (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) will have to decide whether they stand by Russia in its ongoing standoff with the G7, or whether they will act as a bridge to reconnect Russia to the international community. The group seemed relatively united on the issue in late March, when the foreign ministers of the five member countries issued a joint statement standing by Russia in the face of possible expulsion from the G20.

The Crimea issue is a particularly difficult point for BRICS, because solidarity with Russia seems out of line with their uniting geopolitical principle of non-intervention and negotiated problem solving. Little is expected to be made clear at the sixth BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, because the group will attempt to keep its focus on less contentious economic issues and the building of some institutional architecture, in the form of the BRICS "new development bank" and contingent reserve arrangement.