Russian Expert: BRICS To Become ‘the Main Driving Force’ for a New Global System

Sept. 5—In a speech delivered at the session “Expanded BRICS: New Components of Global Stability” at the annual Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russian economic expert Dmitry Suslov called for the BRICS to become “the main driving force” to bring about a new global system, TASS reported. Suslov is Deputy Director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, and expert of the Valdai Club.

Suslov said the BRICS is facing a “fork in the path,” in which “it has two alternative paths for further development. The first path, which I consider more preferential, naturally, is to maintain and even increase the intensity of cooperation and turn BRICS into the main driving force and institution of global governance and reform of global governance in the interests of the global majority, in the interests of the developing countries of the world,” he said.

“The question on the agenda is how BRICS should position itself after expansion. This is how it should be: It is the vanguard of the global majority,” Suslov added.

The second option is turning BRICS “into a loose discussion club, participation in which is prestigious, does not entail any obligations and where, in fact, there is no decision-making mechanism.”

To go with the first option, Suslov argued, three priorities must be adopted. “The first is the main focus on the issues of global governance, especially in the area of finance and in the area of forming a new system of settlements between countries, namely, reducing the role of the dollar and, above all, creating a new settlement mechanism independent of the United States and the Western system in general. The second is increasing the flexibility of BRICS within the framework of the agenda and cooperation projects between the countries of the association. And the third is slowing down the expansion process. Not stopping the expansion process, but slowing it down and focusing, above all, on strengthening partnership relations between BRICS and other countries of the global majority.”

Suslov concluded that the BRICS has to set u