The recent G-20 summit, hosted by India, and the BRICS summit in South Africa, convey the impression that a new international order is being shaped on different foundations from those that, after World War II, helped design the framework in which we have moved since then. A framework that, fundamentally at the service and to the benefit of the US and its Western allies, is defined in political and diplomatic terms by the UN, in the economic field by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the World Trade Organisation, and by NATO in the military field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For some time now, there has been a widespread feeling that the current international order is out of kilter and in many cases dysfunctional in addressing the problems and challenges posed by globalisation. An order that ideally, as the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan intended to establish in 2005, should be based on three pillars: development, security and human rights, so that there can be no development without security, no security without development, and none of the above without full respect for human rights for everyone. We are a long way from this, and there does not seem to be a common political will within the international community to reform the institutions of global governance. This, in terms of both their mandates and decision-making processes, as well as their representativeness, given the changes in the correlation of political, economic and military forces since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Consequently, the current picture shows, on the one hand, the main beneficiaries of the current status quo, with the US and its Western allies at the forefront, in a position of resistance, as they consider that any change will mean a loss of their current clout and will be contrary to their interests and privileges. On the other hand, there is a proliferation of attempts by some emerging actors, equally driven by the lust for power rather than by a desire for universal justice, to gain a foothold in the organs of global governance or, in even more ambitious terms, to create new parallel bodies that challenge and compete with existing ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is in this sense that the integration of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates into the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), an informal alliance of countries – which have no founding treaty, institutional structure, permanent secretariat or membership criteria – united mainly by their discomfort with the current system of global governance, stands out. For example, it does not seem that New Delhi and Beijing are exactly in tune with each other to form a global pole of reference, nor is it easy to imagine Moscow as Beijing’s subordinate, or the countries of the Global South aligning themselves with only one of these emerging powers if they can make the most of multiple and shifting alliances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Too diverse to offer a common vision of the international order due to divergent national interests determined by geography, history, culture and strategy, this alliance nevertheless illustrates the new geopolitics: that of an “\u00e0 la carte” world in which a low-cost, variable-geometry multilateralism is being articulated, where everyone is banking on the pragmatism of short-term gain over and above divergent long-term interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BRICS advocate the abandonment of the Cold War mentality of rigid blocs, led by a superpower that makes its own interests prevail. Unlike the Western world, which is politically and economically much more homogenous, the BRICS are an association of countries with different points of view and without a hierarchical organisation like NATO or the European Union. They have therefore more flexibility when it comes to undertaking specific projects of variable geometry, in which each partner country can get involved as far as it can and wants to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Enlargement to new countries thus represents a major quantum leap in the transformation of the world as well, as the BRICS currently account for 29% of world GDP, 46% of the population, 43% of oil production and 25% of exports. The advantages gained by the BRICS through this expansion are manifold in that it will give them greater and better access to natural resources (oil, gas, minerals, etc.), markets and investment, while also giving them more influence in the management of global affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The addition of new countries from the Middle East and Asia also means that global growth may become increasingly concentrated in the Indian Ocean, particularly around a corridor linking Mumbai to Moscow, because infrastructure development along the new corridor will allow Central Asian countries to export to the Middle East or India, as well as overland to Europe. This is a major geo-economic shift, as growth rates in countries on both sides of the corridor will boom at an unprecedented rate, and with a combined regional population of 2 billion, the boom could be bigger than China’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, the region connects Europe, Africa and Asia and currently 30% of maritime containers already transit through the Suez Canal and 16% of air transport calls at Gulf airports, not to mention the demographic asset: 55% of the inhabitants of the Middle East are less than 30 years old compared to 36% in OECD countries. It is therefore an ideal geographical location for expansion towards the Mediterranean and Africa. And also the consolidation of the physical infrastructures of the Chinese Silk Road, by physically linking with China through the countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation<\/a>, to which, in addition to the BRICS+, China, Iran, India and Russia (three of the eight nuclear powers in the world), the countries of Central Asia belong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In financial matters, the BRICS are pursuing a dual strategy. On the one hand, they are seeking to reform the existing system as much as possible, in particular the World Bank and the IMF; on the other hand, they are carrying out actions aimed at creating a new financial system, such as strengthening the autonomy of national currencies and preparing for the creation of a common currency. Thus, the BRICS have created the New Development Bank<\/a> to finance projects at affordable prices, such as the transition to electric buses (Brazil), hydroelectric power plants (Russia) and water supply (India) and established the Contingent Reserve Arrangement<\/a> to provide support through liquidity and forward-looking instruments in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, the emergence of alternatives to the current system of global governance, whether alliances of convenience such as Russia’s with China or a new regional multilateralism of variable geometry, reveals that the West is suffering the consequences of a loss of authority that it itself helped to undermine. As was the case of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the military interventions in Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011, the defeat in Afghanistan in 2021, the protectionism of the COVID-19 vaccine and the Trump administration’s disdain for multilateralism. As the Indian foreign minister said earlier this year during his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: the West has to stop believing that its problems are the world’s problems, because the world’s problems are not just the West’s problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photography: Flickr\/MEAphotogallery. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n Flavia Villanueva, trainee student at the CETC, has participated in this issue of Diari de les idees<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The recent G-20 summit, hosted by India, and the BRICS summit in South Africa, convey the impression that a new international order is being shaped on different foundations from those that, after World War II, helped design the framework in which we have moved since then. A framework that, fundamentally at the service and to the benefit of the US and its Western allies, is defined in political and diplomatic terms by the UN, in the economic field by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and the World Trade Organisation, and by NATO in the military field.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":64051,"template":"","category_newspaper":[563],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-64194","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-563"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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