BRICS: Global Governance Through Development

The central question of contemporary international politics is this: Is there still room in the world for a consistent and peaceful revision of the orders that have taken shape over the past 500 years, or do they require revolutionary changes? We can insist quite consistently and persistently that the intergovernmental frameworks of the Global Majority that have emerged over the past decade and a half do not set revisionist goals for themselves, but we understand that this very method of influencing the international environment has been—and remains, for now—the only viable one for them. If only because the alternative to revisionism is not acquiescence to Western hegemony—which has seriously exhausted its material base—but rather a revolutionary approach that entails dismantling all the key institutions and systems established under the leadership of the United States and Europe.

Therefore, the goal of alliances such as BRICS is precisely to correct those distortions in the international system that give the West undeniable advantages. In other words, the aim is to ensure fair conditions for the inevitable competition in the global economy and politics. The question is: Should the leaders of the Global Majority strive to create institutions capable of consolidating their position within the framework of international diplomacy? After all, the main criticism leveled at BRICS today is precisely the group’s unwillingness to put forward concrete proposals and measures in the sphere of international governance and to jointly provide the political and economic backing necessary for their implementation. In other words, to become a real alternative—in every sense of the word—to those international institutions that are directly or indirectly controlled by the West. For now, the BRICS countries have chosen the path of creating "soft infrastructure" that the world’s nations could rely on should the United States and the European Union opt to dismantle globalization rather than reform it. But we cannot rule out the possibility that, at a certain stage, the tactical measures adopted by BRICS may prove insufficient. And we need to start thinking now about what set of objectives would enable the alliance to ensure international governance—which is currently in decline—in the future.

The first issue we should address in this context concerns the role and functions of institutions in international affairs in general. They can be of two types: universal institutions, created to formalize the existing balance of power, or regional institutions—that is, those aimed at addressing a specific challenge facing a relatively small community of states. The former include the UN and the entire ecosystem built around this organization. Yes, they are partly monopolized by a narrow group of countries through their control over the bureaucracy, and they cannot effectively solve a whole range of problems facing the modern world, but they nevertheless remain functioning bodies where all countries of the world are represented on a relatively equal footing.

The latter can vary widely—from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), whose goal is to balance the interests and capabilities of Russia and China in Greater Eurasia, to NATO, which essentially constitutes the West’s military bloc led by the United States. There are also less prominent examples: the European Union (the economic foundation of Europeans’ allied commitments within the Western framework), ASEAN (coordination of economic policy among states with similar export potential), and many others. On the whole, they are, in fact, quite effective when it comes to their core functions—it’s hard to argue with that: the SCO, NATO, the European Union, and ASEAN all excel at fulfilling the purposes for which they were created. However, problems arise when these institutions attempt to address issues that fall outside their areas of competence and the objectives of their members: The SCO has played no role whatsoever in the Middle East crisis; NATO found itself sidelined when the U.S. needed to wage war in Iraq or Afghanistan; the European Union failed to create a peacetime political union; and ASEAN’s attempt to pressure the military government in Myanmar was entirely in vain. It follows that BRICS—in terms of its structure, ideology, and objective goal-setting—does not yet fit into any of these categories. This means we cannot "invent" tasks for its hypothetical institutional structure based on existing experiences.

But there are also informal institutions of a global nature, whose role is generally associated with so-called "global governance." This raises the question: What are the classic examples to which BRICS is being compared? First and foremost, there is the G7—an informal grouping of Western countries led by the United States, established in the mid-1970s. Its emergence was linked, above all, to the "oil crisis" of 1973 and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam (1973–1975). At the same time, neoliberal economic ideas were gaining momentum in the West, which subsequently ensured a couple of decades of unqualified prosperity.

Thus, the G7 was a response to the challenges the United States and its closest allies faced in managing that part of the world that lay outside the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. It became, if not a defensive mechanism, then a means of directly coordinating Western policy toward the rest of humanity. Everything else in the G7’s activities is of secondary importance compared to this central task. There is no reason to believe that the BRICS group could replicate such an objective; therefore, it is impossible to speak of the possibility of repeating the G7’s experience.

An alternative to all these activities for BRICS—as a more organized institution—could be to take a tougher stance against Western attempts to reestablish its dominance in world affairs. However, as we are well aware, this is not only difficult to imagine given the composition of BRICS, but it also makes very little political sense. Moreover, we should not completely rule out the possibility that the international community will succeed in establishing a more just global order without the risk of a large-scale military conflict. At the same time, the militarization unfolding before our eyes in the West may represent preparations for a "hot" phase of the intensifying confrontation, but it may also remain merely a set of measures designed to ensure that the U.S. and its allies retain the ability to influence those areas of world politics where they will no longer hold a monopoly. On the other hand, we must also acknowledge that the West’s monopoly on power in world affairs has not been completely exhausted. Moreover, in certain sectors and dimensions of state power, the United States is still capable of setting the rules of the game and securing significant advantages for itself—primarily in the sphere of modern technologies and their military applications.  Consequently, pushing for a drastic "redistribution" of influence in the realm of global governance would also be unconstructive.

Thus, the BRICS countries—along with their political and expert communities—face the challenge of devising an institutional framework for the alliance that can simultaneously respond to the global demand that has already emerged, while at the same time being grounded in a set of objectives that will ensure the organization’s effectiveness. First and foremost, we understand that an alliance of such diverse states—even in a "five-nation" format—could not have survived for so long if all its members were not interested in it, even in the face of fairly serious tactical differences or limitations on their freedom to make foreign policy decisions. We also recognize that forming an alliance based on opposition to a specific entity (the USSR, Russia, China, or the global majority) is a far simpler task than creating an institution with a more positive motivation. As a result, BRICS already has the advantage of a fairly broad spectrum of areas of cooperation in which all its member countries are interested, but at the same time is only just beginning to explore the possibility of defining a key objective capable of truly giving practical meaning to the group’s institutionalization.

It seems that the concept of development—a commodity that is both in high demand and in short supply on today’s international political market—could serve as a starting point. We also know that the UN goals adopted in this area in 2015 are, first, very general in nature, and, second, are heavily influenced in practice by Western institutions and will certainly not be achieved to any significant extent by the target year of 2030. At the same time, the goal of the BRICS countries themselves at the time of the alliance’s formation was precisely development in the broadest sense of the word—jointly promoting the creation, on a global scale, of conditions that would allow Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa to achieve their development goals amid dwindling resources and pressure from competitors in the West.

Moreover, unlike the United States or Europe, the BRICS countries are interested not in containing, but in supporting the development of as many countries around the world as possible. This applies not only to Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but also to other members of the group—Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Iran. In this sense, they are quite capable of taking the lead on the development agenda—without creating conditions for an escalation of political conflict worldwide—especially at a time when the UN is objectively weakening as the consensus that underpinned the organization fades into the past. It is equally evident that issues such as climate change and the fight against poverty will become equally pressing for many countries around the world in the coming years, while, on the other hand, they will be of absolutely no interest to the West and the international agencies it controls. And if BRICS, as an alliance, were to adopt the task of development—both conceptually and practically—as its primary internal and external goal, this could very well become the driving force behind the emergence of a new, progressive institution of global governance in the form of BRICS itself. Thus, the practical task is to determine in which specific spheres and aspects of the BRICS countries’ activities the concept of "development" is currently being realized—this could become an interesting area of focus for the expert community.