E-News&Songs 11月例会報告（2024）
米国大統領選挙明けの11/14 に開催の11月例会を銀座オフィスにて行った。題材はBRICSの会議のホストを務めるロシアPutin大統領の思惑に関するもの。 教材は次期米国大統領Trumpに関する記事を今後取り上げる前であり、タイミング的にも相応しい記事であったのではないかと思われた。
以下、教材のニューヨークタイムズ記事、長文であるが、本報告の読者の皆様には ご一読をお勧めしたく思った次第であり、本報告に加えた。
Putin Brings Together Economies He Hopes Will Eclipse the West
The Russian leader hopes to use the meeting of the so-called BRICS group, which includes China and India, as a counterweight to the West.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the West imposed sweeping economic sanctions, cut its access to the global banking system, and sought to isolate Russia diplomatically from the rest of the world.
But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is determined to show the West that he has important allies on his side.
This week Russia is hosting the so-called BRICS group — which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — in a gathering of emerging market countries. The meeting, which begins Tuesday, has expanded this year to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
Its wonky name notwithstanding (it was coined by a Wall Street banker in 2001), BRICS now includes countries representing almost half the world’s population and more than 35 percent of global economic output, adjusted by purchasing power.
①The conference is intended to present a hefty showcase of economic might but also entice new countries into a coalition Russia hopes to build that would form a new world order not dominated by the West.
“This summit is about Putin punching back,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. Mr. Putin presents his country’s war in Ukraine as “the spearhead of destroying the old world order and helping to build a new one,” Mr. Gabuev said.
“And BRICs is the most potent and representative structure of this new world order,” he added.
That was a message Mr. Putin emphasized at a meeting of officials and businessmen last week in Moscow ahead of the summit.
“In the last decade, over 40 percent of the growth in global G.D.P. of the entire world economic dynamics came from the BRICS countries,” Mr. Putin said, asserting that the developed Group of Seven countries is playing a declining role in the global economy.
“The gap is widening, and it will further widen — this is inevitable,” he said.
Mr. Putin was unable to travel to last year’s summit in South Africa because of a warrant for his arrest issued by the International Criminal Court, to which South Africa is a signatory. While other leaders held high-level bilateral meetings, Mr. Putin was forced to deliver his speech, and hold all his meetings, virtually.
This year, Mr. Putin said he would have 17 bilateral meetings in addition to those in the larger group format.
“Standing next to all of these leaders shaking hands and taking pictures, Vladimir Putin will be trying to tell the world that Russia is not isolated,” Mr. Gabuev said.
②The Russian leader will be projecting that “Russia is part of the global majority and the part of the international community that is trying to isolate Russia is the West,” Mr. Gabuev said. “So the West is, by default, the global minority that’s ostracizing Russia.”
Beijing and Moscow are keen to see BRICS expand further, and the Kremlin invited representatives from another 20 countries who have expressed interest in membership to participate in this year’s summit.
③Both capitals have pushed proposals to dramatically change the global financial system. At the previous summit, there was discussion of creating a BRICS currency, which did not materialize. This year the dominant proposal is for a BRICS payment system, known as BRICS Bridge, that would help Russia circumvent the issues it has had sending and receiving money in global commerce because of sanctions.
Russia’s finance minister, Anton Siluanov, has also tried to muster support for an organization that could serve as a replacement for the International Monetary Fund, which froze contact with Moscow in 2022.
While Mr. Putin will get to play the role of host, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, will arrive at the summit in a commanding position. Mr. Xi is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Mr. Putin, which would mark the fourth face-to-face meeting between the two leaders since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Despite growing pressure from the West on China not to aid Russia’s war effort, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin have deepened their relationship, in no small part because of their shared grievances toward the United States.
The host nation of the BRICS gathering has grown ever more reliant on Beijing to sustain its war, and China represents more than 60 percent of the grouping’s economic output. (It was roughly 70 percent before the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.) China’s economic heft within the group allows Beijing to pledge more investments and loans to other members.
“Countries are looking for economic benefits from this association,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing. “That’s what makes BRICS so attractive. And China being the largest economy in BRICS makes it a magnet.”
④Analysts said they would be watching how Mr. Xi interacts with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, and whether the two leaders build on recent diplomatic momentum aimed at easing border tensions. Courting Mr. Modi would allow Mr. Xi to drive something of a wedge between the West and India, which has drawn closer to the United States in recent years as a member of a security grouping called the Quad.
“It would be huge if Xi and Modi shake hands, smile and telegraph a message that tensions between the two Asian powers are easing, even just a bit,” said Eric Olander, the editor of the website China Global South Project.
Among China’s priorities for BRICS is continued expansion of the group as a way to diminish the power of its chief geopolitical rival, the United States.
⑤As Beijing’s relations with the West have frayed over a host of issues — none more damaging than its tacit support for Russia’s war in Ukraine — as China has shifted more attention to courting developing and non-aligned countries. As more countries join BRICS, Beijing can argue, as Moscow does, that it has more legitimacy as a global power than Washington and its club of rich nations, analysts said.
“China is keen to cast this as a coalition of the Global South against the U.S.-led West,” Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said of BRICS. “The caveat is that the bigger the coalition, the less effective its policy coordination and unity.”
The inability of BRICS foreign ministers to release a joint statement last month at a meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations has come to underscore the difficulties the group faces as it grows.
Even before expansion, finding agreement was a challenge, largely because of the simmering rivalry between China and India for leadership of the Global South.
While China can rely on support from isolated, anti-Western member states like Russia and Iran, it will have difficulty persuading India, Brazil and South Africa, the group’s major democracies, to take a more adversarial stance toward the United States. To those countries, BRICS is a way to strike a balance between Beijing and Washington, not an opportunity to pick sides, experts said.
That has also kept BRICS-curious countries like Saudi Arabia out of the group, at least for the time being. Last year, Saudi Arabia was invited to join the BRICS, but has refrained from doing so, even leaving the question of their participation in the summit open. Last week, Russia’s finance ministry had to roll back comments describing Saudi Arabia as a member of BRICS.
Mr. Putin visited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh last December, when he said that Russian-Saudi relations had reached an “unprecedented level.”
But the oil-rich country is trying to balance its relations with Russia with the need to maintain good ties with the United States and other Western countries.
The BRICS group has been boosted by the return of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to power in Brazil, which will take over the rotating BRICs presidency from Russia in January 2025. During his first two terms in office, between 2003 and 2011, Mr. Lula helped found the bloc and loudly advocated for more cooperation among developing nations.
The New York Times By Valerie Hopkins and David Pierson Oct. 21, 2024
教材の英文解釈に関し、以下のような設問に従って会を進行した。
「プーチン大統領はBRICSをてこに自国の求心力、地位を何とか維持しようと考えているようだが、そんな風に事は運ぶと思われるか？」
After reading the article of the New York Times, we would like to exchange free opinions on the subject theme: Putin appears to consider that he could maintain his ability and lift his status by having the rest of the world communities pay homage to his role, by making the efficient use of BRICS as a lever. I wish you all to think if things will proceed as he plans or if that is reallythe intention of Putin in order to successfully accomplish his ambition to dominate the world power, together with BRICS.
以下がテーマに関する考察点：
For your reference, the following may be the possible thoughts or considerations.
- 拡大BRICSはプーチン大統領が目論むように新しい世界秩序になるのでしょうか？
Will it or the enlarged BRICS bring forth a new world order which Putin probably envisages?
- BRICS対G７、この関係は今後どちらが優勢になるのでしょうか？
BRICS vs. G7: which do you think will increase in power?
- ロシア経済は「停滞」していなように見えますが、ほんとうのところはどうでしょう？
Russian economy does not seem to be stagnant. What do you think of the true reality or the status of the economy?
- 中国はインドとアメリカ合衆国、西側との間にくさびを打ち込むことなど、できるものでしょうか？
Will China become a nation capable of driving in a wedge between India and the U.S.A. or the West? Does it look like any possibility?
- BRICS内で、中国とロシアはインド、ブラジル、南アフリカと一枚岩になれるのでしょうか？
Is there any possibility that China will be a monolithic party with Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa?
- BRICS加盟候補のサウジアラビアは今後どう判断するのでしょうか？
What do you think about the possible decision by South Arabia as a candidate for participation in BRICS?
参加メンバーで話し合って得た結末は以下のようなものであった。
BRICSは現メンバー国の経済力が拡大し、かつ新規の参加国もあり、時間はかかるかもしれないが全体として「西側」を上回るところまで行くことが予想される。
しかし、将来ロシアはその中にあり周縁国のレベルに留まり、プーチンが求めるほど大きな影響力を発揮することは見込めない。それは中国が圧倒的な存在であるためである。
またBRICSが拡大するとしても、その主要国が「大義」に欠ければ、拡張には限度があるに違いない。
Our Conclusion：
We anticipate BRICS will enhance its economic power and may possibly expand with new participants. It may surpass the West as a whole, though it may take time. But Russia will remain as one of fringe countries among other members and we cannot foresee that Russia will be able to really exert its influence in future as Putin has sought.
当月の例会を終えてみて、
わたしたちの会のメンバーは毎月例会で取り上げる分野の専門家ではないので、例会では、はじめから結論や見込みの正しさを求めておらず、わたしたちは英語を読むことの楽しさと、時事を始めとして興味深いことに対して自分で考えてみて、それを何とか（当然、苦労して）英語で話をまとめる（論拠と論理）ことにダイゴミを感じて歳を忘れて（？）励んでいる次第。でも今月は難儀でした、正直「骨が折れ」ました。英語はいつまでたっても難しい！(forever bittersweet?)
★私たちの目指すもの：
英語では「生き字引」、認知症予防では「生き証人」！
こんな会をいっしょに楽しむ新メンバーをいつでも歓迎します。
♪お試し参加してみませんか。
文責 村上剛康
