ISAS Insights

The leaders of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – issued a long communique at the conclusion of their eighth summit in Goa, India, on 16 October 2016. The communique disappoints because despite its forbidding length, or possibly because of that, it is long on platitudes and affirmations and short on specifics and concrete decisions. One cannot but get the impression that the BRICS leaders had perforce to stay with generalities because they would not find common ground were they to drill down to translating aspirations to action plans.