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To “Be a Recognized, Institutionalized and Comprehensive Segment” of a new world order or not to “BRICS”?

July 20, 2015
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A long-awaited event – the 7th annual BRICS Summit held in Ufa – made profound experts elaborate the question of further prospects for the group’s development. Should it be a partnership without any supra-secretariat or an organization with formalized mechanisms of cooperation was and is still strongly argued. As the Russian delegate during BRICS Youth Summit (3.07–7.07) I had a unique opportunity to ask a respective specialist about the general vision of BRICS as such and of its further development. Georgy Toloraya, Executive Director of Russian National Committee on BRICS research, kindly shared his view on a long-term BRICS outlook while the Ufa Declaration proved there are certain prerequisites for realization of the predictions defined.  

 

Mr. Toloraya, how shall the group of the BRICS countries be perceived? What does generally stand behind the abbreviation?

 

- There’s a wide range of interpretations of what BRICS is: from understanding that this is a sort of instrument used in a war against West to the very liberal idea that BRICS is nothing more than a construction which is excessively incensed. The mainstream ideology now shares a view that BRICS is mostly about economics. Not regarding it to be simply a political union, I would rather say that’s the union of political elites, a strategic political project of the BRICS governments initiated for solving the issues which cannot be solved or are much harder to solve one by one. This is very pragmatic: if we can vote together inside G20, for example, and can achieve our common (BRICS) goals – that’s good. If we have contradictions – it is not. So this is what I call a political project, a kind of “a marriage of convenience”.

 

During the speech before the BRICS Youth you’ve touched upon the possible enlargement of BRICS as a multicivilizational block. What are the candidates for increasing theBRICS group’s number?

 

- Actually there are several countries which have expressed their interest in joining BRICS, though I cannot name them for certain reasons. But so far, the BRICS officials have decided to have a moratorium on expanding membership in order to put the “house” in order by developing clear rules of business first and then to think about the enlargement of BRICS.

 

I reckon that BRICS cannot be a too numerous grouping by definition: the states which are the BRICS members are supposed to be representatives of civilizational platforms, big, populated, swiftly economically developing, simultaneously being natural leaders of their regions. So there aren’t so many actors in the world which would correspond to this list. Anyway, if we look at the Parkinson's law, we’ll see that the maximum normal functioning number of any committee is seven. After reaching it – several fractions develop. Thus, BRICS shouldn’t be more than seven states. There are some candidates and I opt Indonesia as the first one: a big Muslim country which is absent in this multicivilizational union. We’ve suggested it for many times but it has been put aside. Hopefully, in the future we’ll witness progress in this direction.

 

For the time there’s no need for enlarging BRICS but still I believe the outreach mechanism to be of great importance for engaging other regional countries in the process of formalized collaboration. We should have some kind of observers and partners for dialogue on a permanent basis and let them move up later through a certain mechanism of interaction within BRICS. It isn’t only up to the Chairman to decide which states are to be invited for a partners’ dialogue and which are not. The SCO work is to be taken as an example in this matter.

 

There are intense debates on perspectives of converting the block into an alliance which presupposes institutionalization of the existing format or leaving it in a form of a partnership, thus, making it less burdened with the bureaucratic apparatus. What is your opinion in this context?

 

- Well, bureaucracy is not always bad. Even if it does not correspond to the ideas of creativity in terms of political leadership, it’s good from the aspect of implementing decisions that have been made so far.

 

One of the main BRICS shortages is the lack of accountability and control over realizing agreed upon points. I’m convinced that the minimal existence of bureaucracy will give the momentum to BRICS not only to throw in some ideas but to have a plan and implement it. Sooner or later this mechanism of implementing decisions will be needed.

 

Would it make sense to put the issue of military-technical cooperation to the agenda in order to deal with the issues of peace and security in a more effective way and to contribute to a more comprehensive cooperation in as many spheres as possible?

 

- There were some suggestions that the BRICS governments should think of their joint peacekeeping force, maybe under the auspices of the United Nations, to be deployed in Africa, for instance. Several experts offered to set up this force separately from the UN, but I think it’s too far and not realistic at the moment.

 

If we look at military-technical cooperation, I mean the armament rate, we’ll see that historically Russia, China, India were in the armed race with each other and that was normal. Thus, as for now I would welcome developing economic cooperation in military-technical sphere.

 

Source: Geometria: YOUTH BRICS 2015 RUSSIA. THE BEST SHOTS

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