- 18 février 2025
- Pays : BRICS Thèmes : Impérialisme Relations Nord-Sud & Sud-Sud Source : Transnational Institute (TNI)
The BRICS bloc poses a strategic challenge to Western hegemony, but to understand its potential as a counter-power requires a closer look at the complex relations within the bloc and between its members and other countries in the Global South.
The formation of BRICS is one of the main features of globalization in the 21st century. Originally formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the group has become a political and economic platform since the late 2000s. The rise of BRICS reinforced the entrenched imaginary of ‘modernization’ and ‘development’ in the Global South [1], giving rise to some optimism about the ability of these countries to become an alternative to Western hegemony. Nearly two decades later, the BRICS countries continue to meet this ideal as geopolitical tensions have risen and more than 20 countries have applied to join the group. These include the wealthy oil-producing and exporting countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Iran, as well as Ethiopia. This has led some to argue that the BRICS may shift the world’s centre of gravity.
In this essay, I present three ways to analyse the BRICS : a top-down geopolitical perspective, a horizontal view of intra-BRICS relations, and a bottom-up examination of power asymmetries and exploitation among the current BRICS and other countries and regions in the Global South2. Given the complex international conjuncture, geopolitics now pervades our everyday realities, although of course geopolitical analysis alone does not provide the full picture of contemporary global capitalism. Here I introduce other elements that might help to reposition the debate and move beyond the old dichotomies of ‘North–South’ and ‘West–East’.
Notes
[1] BRICS is seen largely as a coalition of the Global South, without much debate about this category, how to define it, and what its political implications are. Some discussion on this topic has been advanced by Waisbich, Roychoudhury and Haug (2021) in a special issue of Third World Quarterly. Much more discussion is needed, however, as noted at the end of this essay.
Les opinions exprimées et les arguments avancés dans cet article demeurent l'entière responsabilité de l'auteur-e et ne reflètent pas nécessairement ceux du CETRI.