The BRICS summit will be held in Johannesburg this week, which in addition to the leaders of Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa will be attended by the heads of Argentina, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and Jamaica. They plan to discuss cooperation in the field of economic planning in the face of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as well as cooperation in the field of security, fight against terrorism and poverty.
Executive director of the National Committee for BRICS Study, director of the Center for Russian Strategy in Asia of the Institute of Economics, professor of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, Georgy Toloraya, considers it important that the 10th BRICS summit is held at a time when fragmentation of international economic relations and a political crisis have taken place in both global economy and world politics.
"Recently, we saw that the G7 summit ended in acrimony and disarray. This has never happened before. US President Donald Trump's visit to the NATO summit also showed that now the Western countries are far away from unity. In these conditions, the BRICS acts as a bastion of stability, and the atmosphere at the upcoming summit, the problems raised by the leaders, serve to promote a new global agenda," Toloraya is convinced.
According to him, the agenda of the summit is related to the protection of the principles of trade and economic relations, multilateral organizations, including the WTO, the fight against protectionism: "In fact, BRICS is becoming a platform for leadership in the economic globalization, while the United States is acting as a brake and a revisionist power on international economic relations.
And the same goes for politics. BRICS is paying increasing attention to security issues. This agenda was especially important this year due to the June meeting of top security officials, the meeting of foreign ministers, the meeting on the Middle East, meetings on certain aspects of security. A serious real progress has been made here, up to the creation of an intelligence forum. That is, BRICS is a factor of stabilization, peace and harmony, and not a factor in destroying the world order, which we are witnessing on the other side of the globe. And this is not the merit of the BRICS, but the circumstances are such that it should be used."
Georgy Toloraya hopes that BRICS will have the courage to realize itself as a decisive factor in world affairs: "Some countries are too shy in this sense and not used to the idea that it's time to take control of their own destiny. The time has come when BRICS should present itself in a new capacity: not just as a platform for expressing interests of a limited group of countries, but as a driving force in establishing a multipolar and stable international order. This is the main purpose of the current summit."
