🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦➕ The possibilities offered by the “integration of integrations” track for BRICS+ are substantial, provided that such a platform is open, inclusive and ensures connectivity across regional integration arrangements.

This will deliver the much needed “multiplier effect” in the process of economic cooperation and can set off a new process of globalization that connects regional arrangements in the developed and the developing world, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Yaroslav Lissovolik.

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🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦 The BRICS strengthened the trend towards the formation of a multipolar system of international relations and the growth of economic cooperation among the states of the world.

The development of the BRICS has contributed to the birth of a new economic system, based on the equal access of countries to financing and sales markets, a combination of state planning and a market economy.

The value of the BRICS paradigm does not lie in expanding the capabilities or ambitions of the BRICS countries, but in a qualitative change in the economic development model of the Global South, writes Valdai Club expert Anastasia Stepanova.

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🌏 The only real way to expedite the construction of Grand Eurasia is via the “integration of integrations” scenario.

It may involve the aggregation of Eurasia’s leading regional integration arrangements (and their developing institutions) represented by developing economies.

Such a platform of developing economies across the expanse of Eurasia can bring together such regional arrangements as:

➖ South Asian Association for regional Cooperation (SAARC)
➖ ASEAN, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
➖ Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)
➖ The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

In the case of SCO there may be the possibility to resort to an extended SCO+ format which would involve the addition to SCO of those Eurasian economies that are outside of the main regional integration arrangements.

The resulting SAGES platform may represent the main assembly line for economic cooperation among the Eurasian developing economies that is based on the mechanism of “integration of integrations”.

In case a comprehensive pan-Eurasian platform for developing economies were to be formed this would open the gateway to the completion of the assembly of platforms that span the entire expanse of the Global South, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Yaroslav Lissovolik. 

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🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦 Today BRICS is no longer a club of growth leaders, and the ability of the candidate countries to effectively participate in solving the most acute current problems facing the developing world - the energy and food crises - is coming to the fore.

In many respects, these considerations have dictated China's desire to include Argentina and Iran in the union, despite all the well-known problems facing the economies of these countries.

The new global situation requires developing countries to push old grievances to the background, so that they may work on the task of increasing the representative nature of the BRICS, expanding its potential in addressing the food and energy crises.

The inclusion of new full members of the BRICS is a long process, which, even with the consent of all participants, could take several years. The Chinese approach to foreign policy is traditionally characterised by flexibility and action on several tracks at once. It is this “second track” that BRICS+ is intended to become, writes Dmitry Razumovsky, Acting Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

👉 On July 12, we discussed this and other issues within the framework of the expert discussion timed to coincide with the release of the new Valdai paper “BRICS+: The Global South Responds to New Challenges (in the Context of China’s BRICS Presidency)”. Watch the video.

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🌐 The Bretton Woods system arose at the final stage of the Second World War (1944) as a result of negotiations between 44 states, led by the United States and Britain.

The two key Bretton Woods institutions were the International Monetary Fund (mission — currency stability and convertibility) and the World Bank (assistance in the reconstruction of war-torn states, as well as assistance to countries embarking on the path of decolonization).

Today there is no state or group of countries on the planet capable of imposing its will on the entire world community, however, today we are witnessing another wave of interest in reforming Bretton Woods.

Let us single out several main approaches that dominate the modern discussion about reforming Bretton Woods 2.

🎯 Technocratic approach. Its supporters, representing the structures of the UN and other international organizations, believe that the system should be preserved, correcting only the forms of organisation of work and adapting the system management structure to modern realities.

🎯 Liberal approach. During the period when Christine Lagarde held the post of Managing Director of the IMF (2011-2019), an attempt was made to widely introduce issues of the liberal agenda into the activities of the Bretton Woods institutions. During this period, gender equality, sustainable development, the fight against climate change and socio-economic inequality in all its manifestations were recognised as new priorities in the work of the Bretton Woods System.

🎯 Neo-Marxist approach. Supporters of this approach sharply criticise the structures of the Bretton Woods System for their adherence to the ultra-liberal “Washington Consensus” and the practice of “conditionality”, i. e. putting forward political conditions when issuing credit to the countries of the Global South. 

🎯 Construction of a parallel “Anti-Bretton Woods”. This approach, from our point of view, has not yet been formalised, but over time, China, Russia, and with them other BRICS states as an international forum with claims to certain functions of an intergovernmental organisation are increasingly inclined towards establishing it.

A new or radically reformed Bretton Woods, of course, should take into account the opinion of all the states of the planet, regardless of their size. The solution of such a problem through negotiations will last for many years, while the likelihood of success will be minimal, writes Valdai Club expert Stanislav Tkachenko.

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🌏 One of the important aspects of ASEAN’s greater capability to play a global role on the international stage is its neutrality that the bloc is observing amid the rising rivalry between China and the US in the Pacific. 

In pursuing the quest for maintaining a balanced and neutral position on the international arena there may be scope for ASEAN to explore the possibilities of greater cooperation with the cooperative arrangements that bring together the Global South and the advanced economies. ASEAN has made significant advances in this direction via building the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) together with China, Japan and South Korea.

At the same time there remains scope to complement the active ASEAN-EU links with greater engagement of ASEAN countries with the platforms developed by the Global South. In particular, ASEAN could become one of the key pillars in the BRICS+ global platform, it could also play a leading role in the creation of platform for Eurasia’s developing economies (Greater Eurasia). 

The year 2022 is a special one for ASEAN as a number of its prominent members have taken over the chairmanship in some of the key global and regional organisations. In particular Indonesia is the chair of the G20 and is actively preparing to conduct the G20 summit, while Thailand is the Chair in APEC.

Given its neutrality and mediation capabilities ASEAN could lead the creation of a global platform for regional integration arrangements – something that it could pursue on the basis of an R20 (regional 20) format within the G20, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Yaroslav Lissovolik.

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🌐 If the global economy is to shift from prioritizing quantitative growth targets towards qualitative goals such as sustainability, green development and other goals, there needs to be a more prominent role for multilateral financial institutions.

What is missing in the current system of global governance is greater coordination among regional arrangements — a system of “syndicated regionalism” (Regionalism Inc.) that would fill the voids in regional economic cooperation.

The process of coordination could be institutionalized via greater cooperation among the respective development banks and other institutions.

Re-building global governance architecture with regional blocs may serve to strengthen the “supporting structures” of the edifice of the global economy — with hardly any attention paid to coordination among regional arrangements, most of the coordination and regulation was focused on the nation state level or the level of global institutions.

A globalization process that is based on integration and cooperation among regional blocs may harbour the advantage of being more sustainable and inclusive compared to the paradigm of the preceding decades.

A globalization process that is based on integration and cooperation among regional blocs may harbour the advantage of being more sustainable and inclusive compared to the paradigm of the preceding decades, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Yaroslav Lissovolik.

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👷🌐 Looking ahead, there may be reasons to expect a reversion of the share of labour in national income in the coming years.

This trend that may have significant implications for the evolution of the global economy. The economic effects are likely to be also complemented by political shifts favouring left-wing parties, with some of the regions (Latin America being a case in point) already starting to exhibit these trends. 

✅ One of the bellwether indicators of a potential resurgence in labour is the rise in the levels of unionization.

✅ In the political sphere pro-labour forces are starting to gain the upper hand.

✅ There are also drivers emerging that may underpin a rising trend in wages and social security transfers.

The increasing role and share of labour is long overdue in the global economy. The main benefit from this long-term trend will be a greater emphasis placed in development on human capital, most notably in education and healthcare. It may also lead to a substantial revision in economic policy in terms of priorities and instruments used.

The transformation of capitalism towards a more labour-oriented mode is underway, writes Yaroslav Lissovolik, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

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🇧🇷🇷🇺🇮🇳🇨🇳🇿🇦 Despite its heterogeneity and its frequent dismissal by Western analysts, the BRICS has emerged as an alternative political bloc, contesting unipolarity and Western dominance in the international liberal order in order to promote an alternative global economic and diplomatic strategy.

In this context, the expansion of the BRICS has accelerated due to three factors:

1️⃣ First, the intense East-West confrontation.

2️⃣ Second, the deepening of “BRICS Plus cooperation”.

3️⃣ Third, demands for the inclusion of “node” countries “with clear national strengths and obvious location advantages”, according to Nian Peng of the Research Centre for Asian Studies in Haikou, China.

The BRICS are seen as an alternative to the G7 countries, grouping together five of the most dynamic emerging economies, which are positioning themselves as a decisive factor in the global governance architecture and as a voice of the ‘Global South’ that advocates an economic and political alternative to the West, Andrés Serbin writes.

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🌏 Now, when the contours of the sanctions restrictions of the collective West in relation to Russia have taken their almost-complete shape, the need for a revision of the system of Russian foreign economic relations is becoming obvious.

In the context of the forced break and undocking of many previously seemingly unshakable economic ties with the EU countries, Russian state and business structures have much more actively than before begun to pay attention to the geographically more distant, but so far politically relatively neutral nations of Southeast Asia, united as the ASEAN trade bloc.

However, are there any real grounds that amid the new geo-economic and geopolitical conditions, Russia and the ASEAN countries will be able to build up economic cooperation, and perhaps even elevate it to a qualitatively new level? Ekaterina Koldunova tries to answer this question.

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