The second Nuclear Security Summit and the Fourth BRICs Summit took place almost back to back in late March although their venues were not identical. The NSS was participated in by 53 countries, including all great powers, and the BRICs Summit by five great powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The purposes and agenda of the two summits are different: The former for the security and reduction of nuclear materials and the latter for the reform of the international economic and financial order.

If we scrutinize their backgrounds and ultimate purposes, we can find that they reflect the slowly moving tectonic change of the world order.

Both forums were created when the danger of nuclear proliferation and illicit trafficking of nuclear materials was becoming increasingly serious and the existing international financial order was failing to deal with the 2007 international financial crisis. The NSS is initiated and led by the U.S., which mainly sets its agenda, while the BRICs Summit is suggested by Russia but its agenda is jointly set and it has no leader.

It should be noted, however, that the NSS is not dictated by the U.S. as its decisions are made by consensus and agenda items are fully discussed at the NSS and amended if necessary. However, it is also true that great powers have a stronger voice than lesser powers. Most important of all, decisions are not legally binding. In the case of the BRICs Summit the decision-making process is more democratic in the sense that all participants are equal.

It seems that the Obama administration is experimenting with multilateralism through the NSS. During his campaign for the U.S. presidency, he pledged that he would seek multilateral diplomacy, criticizing the Bush administration’s unilateral diplomacy. He rejected dogmatism and supported pragmatism, while advocating diplomacy through soft power, not hard power. However, he seems to limit multilateral diplomacy to global issues.

In the Asia-Pacific, in contrast, he still sticks to the traditional unilateral security strategy and hard power diplomacy. He is trying to build the trans-Pacific partnership and link it with trans-Atlantic partnership by transforming APEC into a U.S.-dominant free trade organization and strengthen the existing hub-spoke military partnership by consolidating the existing alliances and creating new ones so that the U.S. can contain any great power(s) challenging its hegemony in the Asia-Pacific.

This dualistic approach reveals that U.S. hegemony is weakening but the U.S. refuses to accept the reality. The world is changing but nobody can accurately foresee what kind of world order will emerge. The former global superpower, the United Kingdom, had been unable to get out of the illusion that it was the global hegemon until its joint military campaign with France against Egypt in 1956 failed.

The BRICs Summit representing the emerging great powers calls for “a more democratic and just multipolar world order.” In this vein, it demands that on the basis of international law, equality and multilateral decision-making, the international financial and monetary system should be more representative, the G20 be the primary forum for international economic cooperation and the U.N. be strengthened and reformed so that it can play a central role in dealing with global challenges and threats. In order to increase the group’s power in the U.N. China and Russia support the other three countries’ membership of the Security Council. What the BRICs nations demand is almost identical with what Third World countries have demanded throughout the post-World War II era. They have been advocating, through the Non-aligned Movement and the Group of 77, a new international economic order and democracy in the U.N. The Third World shares the same view with the BRICs on the inviolability of the principle of non-intervention in domestic affairs. Both believe that state sovereignty precedes humanitarian intervention. On the basis of this view, both oppose humanitarian intervention by the U.N. in Syria.

These demands of BRICs are an obvious challenge to the unipolar world order and U.S. hegemony. Scholars generally agree that when emerging great powers challenge, a general war is likely to happen, but they are divided over whether the emerging great powers will act in unison or whether they will seek confrontation or cooperation even when they unite. One thing is clear: The world is being divided into the West and the non-West. The non-West includes all Third World nations, and BRICs leads them. The Third World now has a strong leadership. But one problem with the non-West is that its unity is not strong as the old Third World. Some are developing fast and becoming more pro-Western, while others still remain rogue states. In terms of civilization and ethnic identity, it is extremely diverse. More important is Russia’s position: it has been oscillating between the West and non-West mainly because of its geopolitically ambiguous position. Now, it identifies itself with the non-West, but there is no guarantee that it will not switch to the West or try to form its own group.

The world is slowly in transition to a new world order. Obama’s dualistic approach and the BRICs’ are symptomatic of this.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a professor at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University. ― Ed.