Professor: The real BRICS story

Professor Oliver Stuenkel says BRICS is misunderstood and shouldn’t be dismissed or seen as a threat to the current global order.

Transcript

00:00Is BRICS a viable alternative to a Western-led world order?

00:05So I think there's two slightly exaggerated notions that are quite popular of BRICS.

00:10The first is that they're way too different from each other.

00:13And as a consequence, we can ignore the meetings altogether.

00:18By the way, it's just much more than just a leaders' meeting.

00:20It's around 100 meetings involving ministerial, civil society and all sorts of engagements.

00:27The other is that people in favor of BRICS say that they can lead the new global order

00:33or people in the West fearing that BRICS may seek to overthrow the existing order.

00:38That is also not the case.

00:40I think it's somewhat comparable to the G7.

00:43Recently, the G7 was unable to articulate a final declaration because divisions were too large.

00:51Divisions are also quite significant amongst BRICS countries.

00:54I mean, there's a group of countries that are fairly explicitly anti-Western, led by Russia and Iran.

01:02And there are countries that are embracing what most governments call multi-alignment.

01:08Countries like India, for example, want to strengthen their ties to the United States,

01:13but they react to multipolarity and also join a grouping like BRICS,

01:17which allows them to diversify their partnership, have options,

01:21and have a lot of opportunities.

01:24level one pallets like ...

01:27it's just like a growing pandemic.

01:30Number one ...

01:31,

01:40vocain was not good for winning the standard of holding the standard of holding this position.

01:43So, what do you mean,

01:45if you are doing this as a set testimonial?

01:47then you could choose to like the minimum or are