Author: Ecaterina Cojuhari – 26/07/2024
Does BRICS want to reinvent the world? – Ways to reconcile Western world order and BRICS
BRICS is increasingly attracting attention due to its potential to change the global economic and political landscape. Some experts are concerned about the preservation of the liberal democratic order championed by the West, the risks of the uncertainty of the multipolar world order advocated by BRICS, etc. Hicheme Lehmici – a geopolitical expert, Guy Mettan – the head of the Geneva Institute for Multipolarity and Dr. Zachary Paikin, a researcher at the Quincy Institute (USA), discussed these thorny issues during Apéro Géopolitique. It took place on July 17 at the Chateau d’Aïre in Geneva.
Apéro Géopolitique is a discussion platform created in partnership with SWISS UMEF University of Applied Sciences Institute to raise important topics and deepen the understanding of ongoing geopolitical processes, forecasting future scenarios and searching for peace solutions and initiatives. Opened by the head of the Swiss UMEF – Professor Djawed Sangdel, the discussion was moderated by journalist Ecaterina Cojuhari and started with the economic dimension of BRICS.
A new geo-economic shift
-Could you talk about the economic potential of BRICS and how it compares with the G7 states?
Hicheme Lehmici: BRICS, originally made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has recently included nations such as Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates, thus forming the BRICS+. This expansion raises questions about the reconfiguration of global power dynamics. With 37% of global GDP in purchasing power parity and nearly 50% of the world population, the BRICS+ prevail economically and demographically. They control more than 50% of global fossil fuel production and more than 80% of strategic materials and rare earths. This challenges the traditional dominance of the G7 economies.
So all these figures, which are cited incidentally, allow us to say that today the economic center is more inclined towards Asia and BRICS. This is a real geo-economic shift that needs to be taken into account and which, in essence, should force us to rethink the global economy. Which, unfortunately, is not happening yet. In Europe, we continue to essentially resonate with outdated models. BRICS wants to revise, in essence, the world economic system and give it new rules. We know the model of globalization, but BRICS adheres more to the logic of interdependence, while economic countries qualify as sovereign. That is, the BRICS are carriers of a new economic model, a new exchange model.
Above all, they seek to question the central place that the dollar has always occupied. All world economic exchanges are carried out in American or European currencies. BRICS is still a marginal group, but every year it is gaining more and more weight, especially in exchanges between these countries. An example of economic or trade relations between China and Russia: today, 95% of the exchange between Russia and China is carried out in yuan or rubles. This amounts to between 250 and 300 billion euros. You will say that it remains insignificant. It is true if we compare, for example, trade between the United States and South America – it is around $300-400 billion per year. But this reflects a process that can no longer be stopped. Today, Saudi Arabia sells its oil to China in yuan and to India in rupees, etc.
– How do you see the main goals of BRICS as an organization? How did the formation of BRICS affect the global political landscape?
Guy Mettan: Does BRICS want to reinvent the world? I would answer yes. For at least three reasons. The first one is that the economic weight in the world is shifting in favor of BRICS. It has become so strong that, in my opinion, this is a sustainable process and irreversible. For example, recently Bloomberg cited data that China’s economic growth was 4.7% but did not reach 5.4% as it had planned, so China is in a crisis. But it is two or three times more than the average growth of the EU and US. In the meantime, the same agency writes that India and China are engines of global growth and not just of Asia. Thus, in the dynamics that BRICS is creating, from an economic point of view, it will change the world, that is, reinvent it.
The second reason is that the BRICS countries, and what unites them, is not just opposition to the Western, liberal, globalist world. This is also the desire of each of these countries to declare itself as a nation, as a country representative of specific cultural and civilizational values, and as a bearer of its own ideology. We can criticize the word “ideology” or not, but ultimately the liberal order is ideological, first and foremost. The BRICS countries declare their ability to have their own culture, their own vision of the world, and their sovereignty, which have been denied by the Western libels order.
This is also new, because behind the five founding leaders of BRICS, a whole dynamic of medium and small powers has begun, which are agglomerating and benefiting from this breakthrough, not only in the economy but also in the cultural and civilizational area. This precisely explains the success of BRICS. The Western commentators often mocked this “union of carps and rabbits”. But in fact, BRICS successfully managed to unite their phenomenally heterogeneous world. They have absolutely nothing in common – the African countries have nothing in common with Brazil, which has nothing in common with communist China, and so on. But all of them share the common goal that they do not want a single order that would impose rules from top to bottom. They want their own national systems to be recognized and respected as such. Their differences don’t lead to divergence. Therefore their differences do not prevent them from cooperating and this is the special spirit of BRICS.
The third reason is that the BRICS are in the process of inventing a new way of doing diplomacy, a new way of doing international cooperation, based on the development of common bilateral interests, a kind of cooperative multilateralism. We can call it transactional diplomacy, based on shared interests and not on alleged values. Within this framework, the “divide to rule” no longer has a place, the “if you want peace, prepare for war” no longer has an object, the “who does not with us, that one is against us” does not make sense, because it is between themselves that they will look for ways of cooperation, without political and ideological interference.
Therefore, in my opinion, at these three levels, BRICS are inventing something new. Especially at the political level – cooperation without interference, which is the bearer of the future. In that sense, we can say that BRICS are reinventing the world while rediscovering the original goal of the United Nations by returning to true multilateralism.
The dominant paradigm is over?
– Is it still possible to deny the transition to a multipolar world and how is the United States resisting this?
Dr. Zachary Paikin: Yes, it is theoretically possible to deny that the world is multipolar, because this debate is still ongoing, and there are several different answers to this question. On the one hand, it can be argued that the world has been multipolar for about half a century. Since Europe and Japan rebuilt their economies after the end of World War II, the world has in some ways become multipolar. The United States was not the only economic powerhouse in the world.
Today, it can also be argued that the world is on the path to bipolarity rather than multipolarity since the US and Chinese economies are far, far ahead of everyone else. It can also be argued that the world may not be as unipolar as it was in the 1990s, but it is still largely unipolar. The United States is still the only power in the world capable of deploying all aspects of national, diplomatic, economic, military, and cultural power on a global scale. So there are many different ways to look at this based on the polarity question, and you can come up with different answers to this question.
At the same time, the unipolar distribution of power may continue, but liberalism as the dominant paradigm of economic and political modernization at the global level, which everyone imitates or at least must accept as the dominant paradigm – this era is over. Today, some states are challenging the liberal paradigm head-on. Others challenge it less boldly but demand deep and significant reforms in the international system. I would argue that power matters to some extent for order in the realm of norms. However, the emphasis Western countries have placed over the past few decades on building an international order based on liberal norms or rules has blinded them to the continuing reality of power. I’m talking about power not just in the sense of polarity, but in the sense of hegemony because the liberal international order must rely on some kind of global hegemon. And this structure associated with power still exists – the creation of a liberal order did not cause power-related dynamics to be transcended. But because the liberal order rests on Western hegemony, when the hegemon himself is a hypocrite by proclaiming liberal norms based on rules that the West sometimes itself violates, it encourages others to challenge Western hegemony.
-What are the main geopolitical interests of each BRICS member? What are the conflicts between member states?
Guy Mettan: I think the overall goal is to challenge – but not fight – the imposed liberal unipolar world order in order to create an alternative and more equitable world order. This is the cement that unites the five founding countries of BRICS. This is the common point that unites them, the second one being the fact that their interests do not always need to coincide for the building blocks to work. That’s what’s new about this process. That’s why it is challenging the American order, or the «rules-based order» as it likes to be called – you’re either for it or you’re against it. The “bricks” of the BRICS don’t need reinforced concrete to stick together.
Looking at Russian foreign policy, we see it closely cooperates with both China and India. India, which is more of a competitor to China, cooperates with both Brazil and Russia. China cooperates with everybody. Drawn into the war with Ukraine, Russia has a strong incentive to cooperate with all BRICS members. It is counting on the help and support of BRICS. China finds in BRICS the means to create a network that suits the country well, without coming to the fore or appearing as a threatening power. Another beneficiary is India. So India and China are competing, having also a border conflict in the Himalayas. But it is vital for India too – to develop close relations with Russia, not only at the military level due to arms imports but also at the geostrategic level of Eurasia. It could be a disaster for India if Russia were only friends with China. In that case, India would be practically excluded from the Eurasian continent and rejected to the outside. A too privileged relationship between Russia and China would be a nightmare for India. If you look at the Chinese and the Russians, they very carefully say that they have very close cooperation, but that cooperation is by no way an alliance, and in particular, not a military alliance at all. They know that any alliance – such as NATO in Europe for Russia – will be perceived by non-affiliates as a direct threat to them. So Russia and China are handling India very carefully.
For Brazil, BRICS is also a way, primarily economic, to develop economic cooperation, to assert its preeminence in Latin America, and then to free itself from American tutelage. This is the same for South Africa because BRICS membership positions it as a leading country in Africa. Against all odds, the marriage of “carps and rabbits” can work fairly well.
This is especially true if you look at the map of the Middle East and Arab world. The fact Saudi Arabia is on the verge of the BRICS and made an agreement with Russia on oil and with Shiite Iran thanks to China while being in the historical orbit of the United States is a turning point. As was the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Like it or not, this intervention has opened a breach, or a breakthrough, in the hegemonic West and stimulated the emancipation of the Global South as we can see in West and Central Africa.
Bridging role of India
–India pursues an independent policy, but how independent is it in reality and why do you think many experts call India a “troublemaker” in BRICS?
Dr Zachary Paikin: India has been a non-aligned country since its independence in 1947. During the Cold War, she leaned more towards the Soviet Union. India’s behavior in recent years has brought it closer to the US, but this is by no means an alliance and there are limits to what the QUAD – an organization uniting the US and India, as well as Japan and Australia – can do. India wants to maintain some room for maneuver. But I think there is scope for a much more active Indian foreign policy at the global level as a “bridge” between groups of states. By collaborating more with the US, QUAD as well as other formats like BRICS and SCO, I think this is an interesting opportunity for India to play a role between the West and the Global South. India is still a rising world power. It has not yet entered the top echelon, but it is no longer just a regional, but an emerging great power. This is something that I think we should encourage, as India’s natural role as a bridge is an advantage for us. If the West continues to push its own more inflexible positions rather than negotiate and accept countries like India as they are (including when it comes to their longstanding relations with Russia), it may lose opportunities to build support in – and bridges to – the Global South.
-What is the new BRICS Development Bank about? Does it challenge the dollar system?
Hicheme Lehmici: I would like to add about India. We have always tended to consider the countries of the global South as marginal actors. India is a country of the south and it is a particularly important country that was one of the engines of what we called the non-aligned movement. India is characterized by what we call a policy of multilateral cooperation. In some ways, it’s like Turkey of NATO, but in BRICS. India is in reality, in a worldview, completely different from that which exists in Western countries. They are not at all in Manichaean logic. They are in the logic of interest, the well-understood logic of power, which is guaranteed to protect its independence, and its sovereignty, which is also at stake in the Eurasian space.
Returning to the question of the new BRICS Development Bank, which was founded in 2014, and designed to support structural changes within the BRICS or between the BRICS countries themselves, is a kind of synthesis between the IMF and the World Bank. It is important to emphasize that this bank is leading the implementation of some kind of alternative to SWIFT, that is, an interbank payment system competing with SWIFT, which would precede the creation of some kind of common currency for the BRICS.
The postulate I am putting forward is that BRICS will be able in a few years to offer an alternative model not only to the dollar system but even to the UN, with the seat of a new international organization likely to be in the Middle East. Maybe in Saudi Arabia, maybe in the Sultanate of Oman. Not in China for reasons related to the fact that India and Russia will never accept it. I think that we are indeed in a new logic with the promotion of rather a very multipolar dimension of the structure of international relations with the risk of the revival of empires, but at the same time, we are in the XXIst century. We are witnessing a kind of strategic dialogue between large regional poles and the ability to create a decent multipolarity.
-In your opinion, does the partnership, primarily between Russia and China within the BRICS framework, create a counterbalance to NATO?
Guy Mettan: I do not see cooperation between China and Russia as a desire to form a bloc that will oppose NATO. I think what these two countries have in common is that they reject the logic of NATO and do not want to create an anti-NATO. When you form an alliance, it is immediately considered hostile to those who are not part of it. An alliance is a declaration for everyone outside the alliance, and that is what is happening with NATO. We all know how NATO behaved in its history, which has not stopped waging war. Remember the invasion of Iraq and Libya, how NATO bombed Serbia in a completely illegal manner in 1999, and much more.
Coexistence of two systems
-Do you think there is a possibility of reconciling these different systems – the Western order and BRICS?
Dr Zachary Paikin: I wouldn’t consider them as two opposite orders, just because they are very different. BRICS is not an opposition to the West. India and Brazil don’t want it to become that way. To some extent, the organization is a kind of balance against Western or liberal hegemony, and Western pressure on certain types of reforms. But in some ways, it can be argued that BRICS serves certain Western interests. For example, it gives India and China the opportunity to have a dialogue and resolve some security differences in a less high-profile multilateral framework. This is a useful diplomatic tool for greater stability in the Eurasian space. This is ultimately in the interests of the entire world, regardless of the (perhaps still ongoing) history of the Great Game.
The Western world and BRICS are two systems that are not 100% opposed to each other in terms of how they see the main features of the international order. Therefore, the task between them, it seems to me, is rather coexistence than reconciliation. I don’t know if reconciliation is entirely possible given some of the differences in their views on order, but as far as some of the similarities are concerned, the fact is that they both believe in a world that is somewhat integrated, based on sovereign states and the like. Ultimately no one challenges the basic norms of the UN system.
The key is to provide space for these two entities to coexist. We should remember that we are not dealing with full-blown revisionism against the international order, and this should encourage us to give organizations like BRICS the space they need to “breathe”. So I think both sides have a responsibility to telegraph to each other their intentions and how limited these are in scope, and to make clear that this is not some existential fight over the future of the international order. This means that we in the West must telegraph that we do not view organizations such as the SCO or BRICS as a fundamental threat to our way of life, our interests, and the world order. At the same time, I think that the East and the South should make it clear that their blocs are anti-hegemonic, but not counter-hegemonic, that they are not trying to put forward an alternative hegemony in the world, but are simply fundamentally opposed to hegemony.
Many people think that China is seeking to dominate the international order, to take the place that the United States occupied. But China is simply not capable of playing the role that the United States has played since 1945. China is surrounded by India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and Malaysia – these are countries that can balance China and prevent it from establishing hegemony in East Asia, not to mention the whole world. But there is also the United States, which at the end of World War II accounted for half of the world’s GDP and the United States is still very much present. There are other economies in the world, including in Asia, that are also growing rapidly. So China will never occupy the share of the global economy that the US held eight decades ago when it established its position of international leadership.
A fundamentally different geography has allowed the United States to take on a leadership role and play a role that China simply cannot play. I think China may want an international order and global institutions that are less categorical about liberal values and norms, human rights discourse, etc., but it is not alone in this regard, many other countries also want this. So this does not make China revisionist. But beyond this, I don’t think, as I said, that it challenges the core norms of the international order that we all tend to agree on: economic integration, multilateralism, sovereignty, etc. So there is this basic general understanding of order today that we should recall still exists and not make a big deal out of our differences. Unfortunately, the differences that we have, these competing visions of order, have become increasingly salient features of our relations and so the danger to some extent lies in fundamental misunderstandings.
A distinctive Western-centered hegemony is no longer possible in a culturally and politically diverse world, a world in which power is also more dispersed than in the 1990s. Some new form of hegemony or empire, whatever you want to call it, must emerge, but more collective. However, cooperation where the great powers get together and dictate to the rest of the world won’t happen either. That won’t work anymore in a world of strong sovereign states. There must be a new paradigm. I don’t think there will be a world in which hegemony completely disappears, but it is a world in which hegemony must fundamentally transform.
What worries me so much is that we spend so much time talking only to ourselves and about the paradigms that we’re only used to in the West, that we really just can’t even see what’s staring us in the face. My colleague at the Quincy Institute, the historian Anatol Lievenrecently ended an article of his for our Institute’s journal arguing that the generation we are now is in danger of being remembered as the generation that was before the First World War: that generation inherited a certain set of cultural and political assumptions about how power politics worked in the world, and they believed that they were behaving rationally. But looking back with a century of hindsight, we all think they behaved crazy! They all thought that the war would end in a few months; they thought they could play with fire and see what the consequences would be. And we ended up with the first mass industrial war that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people and which still shapes the world we have today. It seems like we now have a very similar generation that is still in power after decades in China, Russia, the US, and other countries that have their assumptions about how the world works. But the political premises with which they grew up and their worldview are outdated. Many decades from now, or a hundred years from now, we risk looking back and thinking that our generation has all gone crazy. Especially if we descend into yet another catastrophic conflict.
Hicheme Lehmici – a geopolitical analyst, a secretary of the Geneva International Institute for Peace Research, and lecturer at the Swiss UMEF. Hicheme Lehmici is a regular columnist for many international media. He worked for several years as a political advisor to French parliamentarians and heads of former ministers.
Guy Mettan – is a famous analyst, journalist, and writer. Being a co-founder of the Swiss Press Club, being its president for 20 years. Guy Mettan is a founder of the Geneva Institute for Multipolarity and Deputy of Geneva’s Grand Council.
Dr. Zachary Paikin – Research Fellow, Grand Strategy Program at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (USA). He is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy (IPD), a Canadian international affairs think tank. His research and books focus on Russian foreign policy, European security, great power relations, and international order.
