Why Is Saudi Arabia Hedging Its BRICS Invite?

At the BRICS summit last month, one leader was noticeably absent from the family photo of assembled leaders: Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Over a year after the kingdom was offered membership to the bloc, the invitation remains unanswered, and the crown prince passed on attending the 2024 summit. Instead, the Saudi foreign minister arrived for only the final day of the gathering. For its part, Saudi Arabia is hedging its commitment to a group that itself constitutes a hedging club for other middle powers. The motivations driving its ambiguous strategy deserve a closer look.

In the past several years, Saudi Arabia has seemed open to membership in BRICS, which several countries have used to diversify their partnerships and craft multialignment strategies. As early as 2022, Salman expressed interest in joining the bloc. Counting Saudi Arabia as a member would be advantageous for BRICS, given the kingdom’s relevance as a major oil exporter and its influence in the Middle East.

Last year, during the BRICS Summit in South Africa, the bloc—formalized by Brazil, Russia, India, and China in 2009, before adding South Africa in 2010—invited six countries to join its ranks. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE readily agreed. Argentina (awkwardly) declined. Its recently elected president, Javier Milei, preferred to align with the West, especially the United States. Saudi Arabia neither accepted nor declined. However, confusion quickly ensued.

BRICS gave invited members a deadline of January 1, 2024, to formally respond to the invitation. When that day came, President Vladimir Putin proudly launched Russia’s yearlong BRICS presidency with an announcement celebrating the five new members, listing Saudia Arabia in the grouping. Each new member government made concurrent announcements, including the Saudi state television channel.

But shortly after the announcement, all official mentions of BRICS membership were scrubbed from Saudi media. After two weeks of silence, the Saudi foreign commerce minister stated that the nation was still considering the BRICS invitation. When the South Africa foreign minister asserted that the Saudi delegation had confirmed their membership, a Saudi official source publicly rebuffed the claim.

As the October BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, neared and the Russian foreign minister publicly invited the Saudi crown prince to attend, the Saudi government remained tight-lipped about its relationship with the bloc. In mid-October, the Russian foreign ministry walked back a statement referring to Saudi Arabia as a BRICS member. At the summit, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan only committed to strengthening the nation’s partnership with BRICS—not to becoming a full member.

At this point, when or whether Saudi Arabia will accept or reject the invitation is unclear. However, Riyadh’s ambiguous BRICS strategy deserves attention for three reasons.

First, its refusal to commit to membership has become a source of embarrassment for the group and sets a negative precedent for future members. Riyadh’s decision to keep member states waiting for so long has generated considerable confusion about its status—analyses often wrongly describe Saudi Arabia as a member—and may have hurt the group’s prestige. Any increase in uncertainty emphasizes the informal and nonbinding nature of the bloc, which further undermines the narrative of a cohesive group capable of finding consensus and developing new ideas to address pressing geopolitical matters.

Lingering unease from Saudi Arabia’s ambiguousness—and Argentina’s rejection—might contribute to the bloc’s reticence to define what exactly its new “BRICS partner” status entails. This status, which was introduced at the Kazan summit, reportedly has been given to thirteen countries—including Belarus, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Türkiye, and Vietnam—but whether those countries have received official membership invitations is unclear. The new status appears to be a compromise between two factions among BRICS members: those in favor of another round of expansion and those opposed to it.

Second, Saudi Arabia’s hesitation, along with Argentina’s rejection, reveals that joining BRICS may come at a cost, a notion the bloc has long sought to avoid. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, for example, likes to say that BRICS is “against no one.” Indeed, one of the reasons why up to forty countries have signaled interest in being part of the grouping is that most identify several upsides—such as the chance to diversify their partnerships and to gain access to leading decisionmakers in China—and few downsides.

Saudi Arabia’s assessment is likely influenced by BRICS’s decision to invite Iran, as well as Russia’s aggressive rhetoric and plans to reduce the importance of the U.S. dollar. These moves could transform BRICS into an anti-Western club and jeopardize Saudi Arabia’s economic and security relationship with the United States. Furthermore, the bloc’s inclusion of Iran and the UAE places the countries on equal footing with Saudi Arabia at a time when Riyadh seeks to project itself as the regional leader.

Third, Saudi Arabia’s strategy is an instructive case study of how governments are balancing diverse partnerships in an increasingly turbulent and uncertain world order, shaped by the diminishing influence of the West and the emergence of multipolarity. Saudi Arabia has a long-standing security reliance on the United States that includes weapons deals, training, and support. The two governments are inching closer to the signing of a bilateral defense treaty that would further fortify their relationship. Any move toward Russia or China that might upset the United States may complicate these arrangements for Saudi Arabia.

Yet Riyadh is deeply interested in strengthening economic and diplomatic relationships with other major powers. Most importantly, China is Saudi Arabia’s top trading partner, and Riyadh is the main supplier of crude oil to Beijing. These ties have only grown as the kingdom pursues its Vision 2030 plan to diversify its economy, as demonstrated by the comprehensive strategic partnership signed by the two powers in 2022. China has also taken on a larger diplomatic role as the broker of the 2023 rapprochement deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Comparatively, Russia has a smaller but still important influence on Saudi Arabia. OPEC has become a platform of increasing engagement between Riyadh and Moscow. When Putin visited Riyadh in December 2023 to discuss cooperation on oil prices, the Russian president declared that relations between the two countries had “reached an unprecedentedly high level.”

Saudi Arabia cannot risk alienating China or Russia, but it also cannot afford to burden its relationships with the West by in any way endorsing China and Russia’s attempts to build an anti-Western bloc. Instead, Saudi Arabia has chosen a tricky balancing act of an ambiguous approach to BRICS that leaves it room to adapt to changing global conditions, including the coming U.S. leadership change.

Although Saudi Arabia’s strategy represents an extreme approach to hedging, such a balancing act is not unique to Saudi Arabia. In the context of BRICS alone, analysts have focused on the balancing acts of Brazil, India, Kazakhstan, and Türkiye, among others—reflecting the growing concern around the world about how to navigate an increasingly multipolar and unpredictable global environment. This strategy will only become more popular in the coming years.

Instead of trying to cajole commitments out of governments across the Global South, countries and intergovernmental groups must learn to accept ambiguity and create nuanced opportunities for meaningful cooperation. After all, Saudi Arabia’s strategy is unlikely to go unnoticed, and other countries may feel emboldened to follow this strategy.