BRICS Insights: BRICS of a Multipolar World

The BRICS five member countries should remember that the realization of their projects and goals creates a multipolar world order, stressed Indian diplomat Shivshankar Menon when addressing the BRICS group. Menon believes that the group’s prime objective should be to create a more polycentric world. He argues that the emerging powers of the East have greater potential and a unique opportunity to reach a benchmark in creating a non-Western power that can offer alternative management of global affairs.

As the times have changed, many developing countries such as Indonesia, Nigeria and the BRICS members have attained gradual economic growth. Alongside a profound technological leap, these countries have completed sustainable economic leaps fueled by progress in agriculture, manufacturing and the service sector.

This gradual rise of non-Western powers relatively aligns with the slowdown of economies of the United States and Europe. This has limited their role in the world and provided an opportunity for emerging economic markets to make their mark on the international system.

The change in the current global system from unipolar to multipolar becomes clearer with the continuous emergence of countries, making the world more diverse, multi-cultural and politically diverse, but also with economic disparities. Incidents such as the 9/11 terrorist attack in the United States have shown that even a superpower cannot single-handedly tackle the complex challenges and must work with other powers, further encouraging the formation of a ‘multipolar’ world.

Clearly, inter-regionalism is playing a significant role in the present global system. The world order has long been determined by a power cycle among countries with political and economic supremacy. Interestingly, with the rapid economic growth registered by many developing countries from the South in the last two decades, a tectonic shift in the world political structure has become clearly visible and duly recognized by scholars from both developing and developed countries. This new scenario manifests more clearly in the form of economic dependence of the crisesplagued Western world on developing countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa. In the context of this new development, this phenomenon responsible for enhanced partnership among states from far-off regions is increasingly gaining steam.

BRICS is now an important geopolitical entity in the new century. Its member countries have achieved significant economic growth; they share about 30 percent of global territory and about 42 percent of the world’s population. At the time of its formation in 2009, they controlled 15 percent of the world economy and 42 percent of global currency reserves. BRICS has provided an ideal platform for its members to address issues regarding the establishment of a new political and economic order. The group has developed a reformist ideology by pushing for a more central role for developing nations in global decision-making.

Still, BRICS members are facing several challenges at national and international levels, and the member countries have increasingly voiced concerns at global forums. They have enjoyed the common platform to address common issues and appreciated the possibility of a world order not dictated by any single player. The group’s initiatives of establishing a central bank, a lending system such as a Contingent Reserve Arrangement, and stressing local currency trade have all shown that BRICS is here to stay.

For higher-level engagements, the group can enhance its bilateral, group and global-level interaction. BRICS should conduct intense interactions when handling emergent issues, and share expertise in handling health crises like Zika. Greater trust between security players of India and China will come from engagements such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative. These countries should also try to win trust from other neighbors and involve themselves in such projects, as they will enjoy support and acceptance from smaller countries when more projects and aid go to those nations most in need. Responsible global powers should be more active and helpful to states with pressing needs.

The author is a research scholar of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This article is based on “The Rise of BRICS—A Multipolar World?”, originally published at Asia- Pacific ISA Conference Hong Kong, June 25-27, 2016