The expansion of BRICS is an alarm for America.
According to this news site, last week, the bloc of countries known as BRICS took a historic step to invite six new countries to join. The joining of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, and Egypt to BRICS consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will expand this alliance.
These 6 countries are among dozens of other countries that have expressed interest in joining BRICS. It seems that with the expansion of BRICS, this coalition can be considered a systematic competitor for the Group of Seven.
As economic tensions increase and geoeconomics becomes a battleground, southern countries seem to be attracted to the BRICS group, which is partly led by China.
So, the question now raised in this report is why so many countries, including many of the United States partners, are participating in this project and seeking to strengthen its mission.
Many argue that we are in the midst of a new Cold War. Even members of the US Congress have given credit to the concept. But this is an incomplete analogy.
As many have pointed out, China has an economy similar to that of the United States and will likely soon surpass it in terms of GDP.
This is while the economy of the former Soviet Union at its peak was only one-third of the economy of the United States.
But what is very different in the global vision of alliances is that many countries are in the position of wanting to join an alliance.
Scholars and analysts have been discussing the rise of the Global South for decades, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, pointing out how the unprecedented and sustained economic growth of many non-Western countries has given them global power. They bring.
The researchers also concluded that while the center of gravity of the global economy was in the Atlantic Ocean between the United States and Europe in 1980, it had shifted to Izmir, Turkey, by 2008, and would probably be somewhere between China and India by 2050. will receive.
This new environment offers the countries of the Global South options on how to respond to the growing friction between the great powers and how to position their countries in the midst of great power competition.
During the Cold War, the world was divided into three groups: the Western Bloc, the Soviet Bloc, and the countries that were part of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement.
After the Cold War, many Western Bloc norms formed what is often referred to as the liberal rules-based international order. This new order was embodied in new organizations such as the World Trade Organization and older venues such as the United Nations in a “unipolar moment” when democratic capitalism and trade liberalization seemed to have triumphed over every enemy.
But today, the growing power that balances the United States does not seek to form a Soviet-type bloc, which is due to material and intellectual reasons.
China does not have the military capacity to exercise power over large parts of the globe and provide security guarantees to distant friends. It thus avoids the kind of alliances that define the United States’ relationship with its major allies in Europe and East Asia. Beijing has many partners, including “comprehensive strategic partners”, but no alliances.
Beijing also does not have a good relationship with the international order led by Washington. China believes that the United States prioritizes the interests and preferences of the United States in its relations with other countries. Now, with the increasing influence of China, the West, and especially the United States, is protecting the rules on the basis of which it has created various organizations in the world.
China’s voting rights and its position in international forums are still very small compared to its economic weight. For example, China has a 5% voting share in the main lending arm of the World Bank, despite accounting for 16% of global GDP.
China has repeatedly demanded to increase its voting power and that of other emerging economies at the global level in order to increase the participation of countries in the modern distribution of the global economy. Currently, many countries in the global south believe that their interests are neglected in the current world system.
Moreover, aligning with organizations such as BRICS does not mean a binding commitment to one side of the new Cold War.
The SCO may be a security cooperation forum like NATO, but it lacks any Article 5 features. In the worst-case scenario, if a US-China military confrontation were to occur, US allies would be expected to quickly join Washington in the war, but China’s partners would not.
Indeed, a growing coalition of countries with competing systems, ideologies, and political approaches to the West may create an ineffective organization that cannot collectively respond to a problem.
According to this report, China believes that a larger, more geographically and economically diverse group of countries can ultimately be directed toward the goal of increasing their collective representation in the global order. For example, the inclusion of more countries, especially major exporters of goods such as
