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Introduction

  • Polity Forum: Challengers or Stakeholders? BRICs and the Liberal World Order
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Notes

  1. Mark Atherton, “The new world order,” The Times (London), 20 March 2008.

  2. As a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official explained, the BRIC countries are major regional economic and political actors with global interests and “soon life itself prompted the necessity for establishing a mechanism for dialog” among them. “Stat’ia direktora DVP MID Rossii A.M. Kramarenko ‘Rossiia i stanovlenie dialogovogo mekhanizma v formate BRIK;’” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russian Federation, 16 January 2009 and my interviews, Moscow, June 2009. Reports of BRIC meetings starting in 2007 may be found at the website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Rossiia v sisteme mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniiRossiia – mezhdurnarodnye strukturyRossiia – BRIK. http://www.mid.ru/ns-rasia.nsf/brik.

  3. For example, Jim O’Neill, “The Brics Economies Must Help Form World Policy,” Financial Times, 22 January 2007; Jim O’Neill, “Why It Would Be Wrong to Write Off the Brics,” Financial Times, 5 January 2009; Jim O’Neill, “You Can’t Build the Future Without BRICs,” The Daily Telegraph, 4 April 2009; and Jim O’Neill, “We Need Brics to Build the World Economy,” The Times (London), 23 June 2009. At the Gleneagles Summit in 2005, Western leaders agreed to hold a separate set of meetings with ministers from the emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Mexico, now known as the G8+5. Russia had already been invited to participate in the renamed G8 as a status enhancement to compensate for its diminished position after the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union. However, China did not seek rapid induction into the clubs of the rich countries. “Are the Right Countries Sitting at the G8 Table?” Deutsche Welle, 14 May 2007.

  4. Kramarenko, “Rossiia i stanovlenie,” and my interviews, Moscow, June 2009.

  5. According to the World Bank, using market rate GDP, three of the BRICs, China (3), Brazil (8), and Russia (9) already are in the top ten in 2008, and India is 12th. World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 7 October 2009. Also for 2008, but using PPP GDP, all four BRICs make the top ten: China (2), India (4), Russia (6), and Brazil (9). World Development Indicators database, World Bank, 15 September 2009.

  6. Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2009). See also Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (New York: Random House, 2008).

  7. Fareed Zakaria makes this classic realist observation in “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay,” International Security 17 (Summer 1992): 177–98 and Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of America's World Role (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Nicholas Spykman, America's Strategy in World Politics (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1942).

  8. Whether American hegemony and unipolarity are eroding and the significance of relative economic decline are subjects of ongoing debate. See, in particular, Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of U.S. Primacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Robert A. Pape, “Empire Falls,” National Interest online. http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484, (22 January 2009); and Christopher Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony: Myth or Reality,” International Security 34 (Summer 2009): 147–72.

  9. Robert B. Zoellick, “After the Crisis,” Speech to The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University, 28 September 2009. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,contentMDK:22329125∼pagePK:64257043∼piPK:437376∼theSitePK:4607,00.html. See also Krishna Guha, “Down but not out,” Financial Times, 19 October 2009, 7; and Jonathan Kirshner, “Dollar Primacy and American Power: What's at Stake?” Review of International Political Economy 15 (August 2008): 418–38.

  10. We focus on the BRICs but recognize other important international groupings of emerging economies, such as RIC, IBSA, BRICSAM, “the next 11,” and also the emergence of China and India as sequentially the two front-runners and challengers to the United States.

  11. See the references listed in note 4 and also Jim O’Neill, “Some Advice for the G20”, Global Economics Paper No: 181, Goldman Sachs, 20 March 2009.

  12. In addition to the references in note 7 and Michael Glosny's article in this issue, see Richard N. Haass, “The Age of Nonpolarity: What Will Follow U.S. Dominance,” Foreign Affairs 87 (May/June 2008): 44–56; Daniel W. Drezner, “Bad Debts: Assessing China's Financial Influence in Great Power Politics,” International Security 34 (Fall 2009): 7–45; Robert S. Ross and Feng Zhu, China's Ascent: Power, Security, And The Future Of International Politics (Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press, 2008).

  13. U.S. National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2008): iv–vii.

  14. Global Trends 2025, xi and 1.

  15. Global Trends 2025, 12.

  16. See in particular, Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); David Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends Versus Old Tendencies,” World Politics 31(1979): 161–94; and Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

  17. Robert Jervis, “Theories of War in an Era of Great Power Peace: Presidential Address, American Political Science Association, 2001,” American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 1–14; G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); G. John Ikenberry, “Democracy, Institutions, and American Restraint,” in America Unrivaled. U.S. Unipolarity and the Future of the Balance of Power, ed. G. John Ikenberry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 213–38; Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance; and Keohane, After Hegemony.

  18. G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West,” Foreign Affairs 87 (January–February 2008): 23–27. See also his works cited in note 18.

  19. For a useful overview see Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony.”

  20. Robert Jervis, review of World Out of Balance in Perspectives on Politics 7 (March 2009): 219. For the argument on unipolarity see Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, chapters 5 and 6.

  21. Martin Wolf, “The West No Longer Holds all the Cards,” Financial Times, 23 September 2009.

  22. For an overview of suggested reforms see the Stiglitz U.N. Commission recommendations, available in short form in “Preliminary Draft of the Full Report of the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System” (21 May 2009); and for context see Leslie Elliott Armijo, “Monetary Relations,” International Encyclopedia of Political Science, ed. B. Badie, D. Berg-Schloseer, and L. Morlino (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Reference, forthcoming, 2011).

  23. Larry Summers calls it the “balance of financial terror”—in which one misstep by either side could bring down both economies, and possibly the global financial system. Lawrence H. Summers, “The United States and the Global Adjustment Process,” Speech at the Third Annual Stavros S. Niarchos Lecture, Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, 23 March 2004; see also Brad Setser, “The balance of financial terror,” 9 August 2007. http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser/209711; and Guha, “Down but not out.”

  24. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance.

  25. Michael Mastanduno, “System Maker and Privilege Taker: U.S. Power and the International Political Economy,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 121–54, at 123.

  26. Robert B. Zoellick, Statement on Conclusion of the Second U.S.–China Senior Dialogue. U.S. Department of State Press Release, 8 December 2005.

  27. Zoellick, “After the Crisis.”

  28. Sergei Lavrov, “Rossiia i Mir v XXI veke,” Rossiia v Global’noi Politike (July–August 2008) http://www.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/33/9968.html.

  29. Sergei Lavrov, “Vneshnaia politika Rossii: novyi etap,” Ekspert No. 47, 17 December 2007. http://www.expert.ru/printissues/expert/2007/47/vneshnyaya_politika_rossii/

  30. Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs – America and the World, 1990, special issue 70 (1990/1991): 25–33. On balancing, see Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony,” and Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion Revisited: The Coming End of the United States’ Unipolar Moment,” International Security 31 (Fall 2006): 7–41.

  31. Brooks and Wohlforth, World Out of Balance, especially chapters 2 and 3.

  32. An assessment of the extensive debate on soft balancing is beyond the scope of this article. However, for a sample see T.V. Paul, James J. Wirtz, and Michael Fortmann, eds., Balance of Power: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004); Randall Schweller, Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power (Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing against the United States,” International Security 30 (Summer 2005): 46–71; and Kier A. Lieber and Gerard Alexander, “Waiting for Balancing: Why the World Is Not Pushing Back,” International Security 30 (Summer 2005): 109–139.

  33. But for an early balanced assessment see Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for Would-be Great Powers,” International Affairs 82 (January 2006): 1–19.

  34. Harold James, “The Rise of the BRICs,” The International Economy (Summer 2008), 41. Strobe Talbott discusses the notion of a “sovereignty hawk” in The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008).

  35. Alexander Lukin, “Russia to Reinforce the Asian Vector,” Russia in Global Affairs 2 (April–June 2009). However, the Russia article in this Forum notes that Russia would benefit from “tying its hands” with international conditionality promoting rule of law.

  36. Realists expect an inevitable tendency among great powers toward coercive regional domination. See John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001): 41. Wohlforth argues against the existence of regional polar powers because the unipole is likely to have great power allies in the same region that would act as agents, as for example, Europe and Japan have on behalf of the U.S.: Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World.” See also Amitav Acharya, “The Emerging Regional Architecture of World Politics,” World Politics 59 (July 2007): 629–52.

  37. Vyacheslav Nikonov, “Rozhdenie mnogopoliarnogo mira,” Izvestiia, 17 June 2009.

  38. My interviews, Moscow, June 2009.

  39. Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo, “Brazil: To Be or Not to Be a BRIC?” Asian Perspective 31 (2007): 43–70.

  40. On peer learning, see Kramarenko, ‘Rossiia i stanovlenie; and Clifford J. Levy, “Russia's Leaders See China as Template for Ruling,” New York Times, 18 October 2009. The Russians have also sponsored conferences and smaller gatherings to discuss best practices. For example, in Kazan in August–September 2009, the Russian government sponsored a BRICs conference to address competition policy.

  41. My interviews, Moscow, June 2009. On transgovernmental networks, see Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

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The author thanks Leslie Elliott Armijo, Michael Glosny, and Thomas Sherlock for their helpful comments. This BRICs Forum originated as a panel at the 50th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, New York City, 15–18 February 2009. I am grateful to all of the panelists, including Parag Khanna and Peter Rutland, for their participation and insights.

Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, “Dreaming with the BRICs: The Path to 2050,” Global Economic Papers No. 99 (New York: Goldman Sachs, October 2003); Jim O’Neill, “How Solid are the BRICs?” Global Economics Paper No. 134 (New York: Goldman Sachs, 2005); Jim O’Neill, “Building Better Global Economic BRICs,” Global Economics Paper No. 66. (New York: Goldman Sachs, 2001); Goldman Sachs Global Economics Group, “Brics and Beyond,” 2007; and Jim O’Neill, “The New Shopping Superpowers,” Newsweek, 20 April 2009. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, the BRICs will surpass the G7 in 2021.

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Roberts, C. Introduction. Polity 42, 1–13 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.20

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