Today BRICS is restoring from identity crisis: the group has neither broken up, nor turned into a formal bleak structure — it is still up, game face on its’ activities. The past stage has been calling for second thoughts. Evidently, nowadays the world needs a new authority, as well as fundamental rethinking of the realities that concern us. Hence, BRICS needs to re-group and come up with its’ own roadmap, says Boris Martynov, Head of Department of International Relations and Foreign Policy of Russia, MGIMO University.
BRICS recently found itself at a new development stage: it is actually the stage of crisis, which has not passed, yet it seems to end up soon. It comes from a decline of growth rates. BRICS has always been considered as strictly informal economic alliance, so if its’ growth rates have declined, then it is no more taken seriously. That stage seems to come to its end, revealing the moment of truth. BRICS has not broken up or disappeared, has not turned into a formal bleak structure — it is still up, game face on its’ activities. The past stage is calling for second thoughts, and prospects for the future development to be seen.
As time goes on, BRICS tended to include more and more political background, primarily concerned with issues of security, geopolitics, ideology and political philosophy in its true sense. Evidently, the present world needs a new authority, as well as fundamental rethinking of some of the realities that concern us. The US is entering a new interesting period. How we shall call it is still a question: probably, it is the half-life period — America is divided within itself. Now what one could expect from a great global power, if it is divided within itself? This means it is the right time to re-group and make some proposals on its own, not following someone else’s directives. The time has come for negotiating some general principles of the international law, to prevent the world from complete anarchy.
Now BRICS has already managed to maintain cooperation in the field of private international law, particularly civil disputes, trade and economic collisions. Now it is turn to manage cooperation in terms of the international public law: to fight for the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and primacy of the international law — at any state — in the first place.
Besides, one needs to negotiate unilateral sanctions, which are unacceptable. They have hit Russia, and the others feel more or less safe, until those sanctions are exposed to them as well — China is another country showing major concerns on the case. So, it is the right time to unite against them.
No doubt, BRICS has been full of various tendencies and non-compliances inside, but this may become the moment of change in order to create some new general philosophy and values that the world needs today. Yes, those values may be different, thus differently explained. We should have a common understanding of BRICS’s values, because we may be completely different in terms of civilization and culture. However, we have the same views on politics — we all are reformists.
However, what reforms we have to propose? The first stage included making efforts on International Monetary Fund (IMF) and creation of the New Development Bank. Those steps look very good, but now we should advance to the new stage.
BRICS today is restoring from identity crisis. The upcoming summit in Johannesburg is to fix the achieved results and to outline the main growth areas for the nearest future — that is all everyone needs now.
