The Post-Western World: Building Institutions vs. Descending into Chaos
Valdai Discussion Club Conference Hall (42 Bolshaya Tatarskaya St., Moscow, Russia), October 12, 15.00
List of speakers

On October 12, the Valdai Club hosted a discussion titled “Post-Western World: Foundations of a Polycentric Global Order,” focused on the rise of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) countries in the world order, and the issues of interpreting new changes in the Western-centric discourse.

Oliver Stuenkel, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo began the discussion by introducing his book, titled “Post-Western World” and talking about the current economic challenges in the BRICS countries, which led some experts to doubt the organization’s prospects as a potential bloc.

“The argument [that the world is descending into post-Western chaos] tends to overlook the creation of a new phenomenon, which the rise of institutions led by non-Western powers,” Stuenkel said.

According to Stuenkel, part of this is because of the Western-centrist perspective of much of the scholarship on international affairs, which do not look at the historical economic importance of countries such as China. He also noted that it would be inaccurate to call China an “emerging power” when it is in fact a returning power, and that the time since China lost its economic importance in the 1870s is called in the country a “century of humiliation.”

Stuenkel also outlined several elements of the new institutions of the post-Western world, focusing on finance (AIIB, New Development Bank, Chinese payment systems), trade and investment (RCEP), security (SCO and BRICS internal meetings), and infrastructure (Nicaragua Canal and Trans-Amazonian Railway).

“Considering how notable these institutions have become, it is really notable how little is written about them, and how little work has been done about the significance for understanding the future of global order,” Stuenkel concluded.

Marina Larionova, Head of the Moscow-based Center for International Institutions Research talked about the recent shifts in BRICS countries toward the convergence of growth rates and the acceleration of bilateral trade turnover.

Larionova also focused on the issues of Western-centric discourse of international relations, but also noted that it has some plusses, such as the ability to test old paradigms against new countries.

Georgy Toloraya, Professor and Executive Director of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research, said that it would be more appropriate to look at the decline of the Western-centric world order not as a decline of the post-WWII order, but as a decline of the 500-year-old Eurocentric world order.

“We have all the preconditions for a major war situation, contradictions between major powers. The issue of the post-Western order is the issue of relations between major power centers. A multipolar global order is not necessarily good. It might be easier to live under one single rule and someone keeping up this order, but that is not going to happen. At this point we will have this polycentric, multipolar world, and it depends on us, how to build it,” Toloraya said.

Toloraya added that while European countries were able to prosper thanks to a combination of individual freedoms and geographic expansionism, which allowed those countries to collect rent from other parts of the world. In that respect, the post-WWII world order was more of an exception, according to Toloraya, as the Western countries no longer controlled the territories of their now former colonies.

He also noted that transnational corporations assisted the rise of emerging countries, and that while the West has been against a new division of power, it has not always been against the shift of wealth. He referred to the United Kingdom, which handed its dominance in global affairs to the United States, saying that this gives hope to BRICS countries for a non-violent reform of the world order.

Toloraya concluded that the new world order would be impossible in the current paradigm because of the environmental problem, which would make the Earth’s current resources unable to handle a rise of a multipolar order with the same concentrations of economic activity. Based on that, Toloraya called for a new paradigm of sustainable development that would make such an arrangement possible.

During the question and answer session, the speakers discussed the issues facing BRICS as a very diverse group of countries, possible expansions of BRICS to Indonesia and Turkey and the results of the group’s work thus far.