BERLIN – It would be a big mistake for the West to dismiss the recent BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in Kazan – Russia’s unofficial “Islamic” capital – as an anti-Western sideshow of little consequence. Western governments might like to believe that the gathering showed a lack of unity and substance, but the reality is more complicated.
China, Russia, Brazil, and India established the BRICs in 2006 (South Africa joined in 2010) as a counterbalance to the G7, the club of leading Western industrialized countries, and to the US-dominated global order more broadly. While the initiative was never taken seriously in the West, the BRICS have evolved into a multilateral platform not only for countries like China and Russia – which want to end Western dominance and, in Russia’s case, establish a new, explicitly anti-Western global order – but also for more neutral emerging powers.
Moreover, the grouping recently expanded to include not just Iran and Ethiopia but also Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which have a strong interest in good relations with the United States and other Western governments (Saudi Arabia has accepted an invitation to join but has not yet formally done so). It therefore has made progress toward its goal of serving as a multilateral platform that is independent of the West and all economies reliant on the dollar or the euro.
The long-term significance of this progress should not be underestimated, especially considering that more emerging economies have expressed an interest in joining the group. Over the course of this century, the BRICS+ could well become the vehicle of “the rest,” set against the West. This would be a strikingly dialectical result of globalization and the Western-promoted free-trade agenda of the past few decades.
Given the longer-run implications, the West should not confuse Russia’s desire to unravel the global order with the strategic goals of the rest of the group. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle may be living in their own nineteenth-century dream world, but the same cannot be said of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, or the new Arab members. They do not seek a break from the existing global order or the West, but rather increased global influence, recognition, and prestige. This is especially true for the new superpower, China.
The situation represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the West, provided that a second Donald Trump presidency does not wrench open the existing global fault lines. If the West remains politically and culturally united, it will continue to play a leading role in the twenty-first century despite its demographic challenges. But it must learn to share power.
Decolonization began with the end of World War II, nearly 80 years ago. When the United Nations was founded in 1945, it had only 51 member states; today, following a long, tumultuous period in which many new nation-states emerged from the former European colonies across the Global South, there are 193. Yet despite the widespread achievement of formal sovereignty, there was never any real redistribution of power and wealth.
Starting in the late 1970s, China emerged from its self-imposed Maoist ideological prison and began its gradual integration into the Western-dominated world economy, a process that accelerated following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. With China’s opening and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s, a new world order was born; and like it or not, the rise of the BRICS is an expression of this historic change.
Emerging-market and developing economies’ desire to claim their share of global power and wealth is completely understandable and justified. The Western world should stop reacting defensively and ignorantly to these countries’ pursuit of their legitimate interests. But the emerging powers must recognize that with more power and economic influence comes more responsibility.
A new, rebalanced world order will still require firm rules based on universally accepted values. Otherwise, chaos, violence, and war will ensue. If a permanent member of the UN Security Council – namely, Russia – invades its neighbor (Ukraine) without cause, it calls into question the founding principles of the UN and the prevailing world order.
The resurgence of war in an age of nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence represents an international threat without precedent. Both the G7 and the BRICS+ face the same danger; everyone is in the same boat, with the same shared responsibilities. The fact that two large authoritarian powers with imperial ambitions lead the BRICS makes the need for global diplomacy all the more urgent. A future based on “might makes right” ultimately means a return to a well-known past, one that the founding of the UN and its foundational conventions was supposed to put to rest for good.
What rules do the BRICS+ countries intend to follow? The world deserves an answer to this critical question.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024.
