Experts: Cuba's alliance with Russia not enough to give it entry to emerging-economies club

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel is expected to attend a meeting of an organization of major emerging economies later this month in Russia after the island requested partnership in the group as a new way to seek aid and credits for its ailing economy.

Viktor Koronelli, the Russian ambassador in Havana, recently told a Russian news agency that Cuba sent a formal request to join in a letter to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, who is chairing the group, BRICS, this year. He said Díaz-Canel received an invitation to join the gathering.

Carlos Pereira, a senior Cuban Foreign Affairs official, later confirmed the letter in a publication on X. He said BRICS is becoming “a key actor in global geopolitics and a hope for the countries in the south.”

BRICS, formally created in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China, seeks to strengthen economic ties among developing nations while advocating for an international order that is less dominated by Western nations.

South Africa joined in 2010, and five new members — Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia — joined this year. Argentina declined to become a member, but several other large economies and middle-income countries like Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand have expressed interest.

Cuba has applied to become a partner, a step below full membership that allows countries to familiarize themselves with the organization and potentially receive an invitation to join as members later.

The Cuban leadership is trying to cash in from decades of advocacy for a “new multilateral world order” and its close political and military alliance with Putin to get access to some of the perks that come with partner status, such as access to funds from the group’s New Development Bank.

“It just gives them another formal channel to ask a government for help,” said John Kavulich, a longtime Cuba watcher and president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

“If there’s a channel they can use to ring their Salvation Army Bell, they will use it,” he added. “They don’t want to join the BRICS because it provides them with a template for all the economic changes they need to make. They are trying to get some government to give them money so they don’t have to make any of those changes.”

The island’s government is increasingly dependent on foreign aid to provide food and medicine to the population and keep public services running as the economy continues to deteriorate. With a tourism industry that has yet to rebound from the pre-pandemic era, fewer oil subsidies coming from Venezuela, increased financial pressures from U.S. sanctions and a deep reluctance to open up its economy to foreign investment, the Cuban government finds itself increasingly indebted and with fewer sources of foreign cash.

Military leaders and hardliners on the island appear to have bet on Russia as the country’s savior, though Putin has yet to deliver a significant economic boost to Cuba. Through its ties with Russia, Cuba was granted “observer status” in the Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, Belarus and three other post-Soviet states in 2020, but little benefit has come from that so far.

Politically, Cuba has unequivocally signaled its support for Russia.

While originally abstaining in votes at the United Nations that condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cuba later fully aligned with Putin. In an earlier visit in May for Russia’s Victory Day, Díaz-Canel wished Putin “success in conducting the special military operation,” he said, using the euphemism coined by Moscow to refer to the invasion. The Cuban leader also used the visit to press upon his host “the very challenging and hard conditions” the island was facing.

In June, Cuban authorities welcomed a Russian nuclear submarine to Havana Harbor, the first since the Cold War.

Cuba may hope these gestures will be enough to get Russia’s support for its candidacy, which might align with Russia’s vision to expand the group aggressively and use it for its own anti-Western agenda. However, experts believe it’s a long shot precisely because of the group’s increased diversity and Cuba’s lack of tangible goods to put on the table.

“Cuba doesn’t bring anything to further legitimize the BRICS,” Kavulich said. “If Miguel Diaz Canel arrives at a BRICS meeting and says, ‘This is a great example of solidarity,’ most of them are going to roll their eyes because they’re not there for solidarity. They are there for the money.”

Other group members like India appear to be more interested in preserving the group’s economic weight and diversifying trade than bailing out bankrupt nations.

Even other members who have built close ties with Cuba might decide against the island’s partnership this time.

Despite its close political and military alliance with Cuba, China has not provided significant aid or investment in recent years because the Cuban government has been unable to pay its debts or substantially reform the island’s inefficient centrally planned economy.

Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, once a close friend of the Castro brothers, has distanced himself from Cuba and has not provided substantial aid as he did during his previous term in office. Da Silva, who justified Iran’s inclusion in the BRICS by citing its geopolitical weight, has reportedly vetoed requests from Nicaragua and Venezuela to join the group as partners.

“Venezuela and Cuba are bad bets; I don’t think they bring anything” to the BRICS, said Ryan Berg, the director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Brazil and India, two democratic countries in the BRICS, don’t want anything to do with BRICS becoming known as this authoritarian grouping that is servile to China. So they’re going to veto expansion to those kinds of countries.”

Decades spent promoting a non-aligned movement to erode U.S. leadership in the world will not buy Cuba much, Kavulich believes.

“That could have worked in the 1960s or ‘70s, but Fidel, and what he represented, is dead,” Kavulich said. “The Cubans want to figuratively carry Fidel’s coffin with them everywhere they go and say, ‘Hey, remember the Comandante?’ That was 60 years ago.”