All Roads Lead to the Global South: Brazilian-Russian Relations Within the BRICS Framework

Abstract

Since 2006, when the foreign ministers of Brazil and Russia indicated their desire to turn BRICS what was previously only an acronym developed in 2001 by Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs into a political organization a lot has changed in terms of policy making, geopolitics, and international relations. Since the formation of BRICS 16 years ago, the basis for collaboration has been strengthened and the fields of cooperation have been broadened. It has evolved into an all-encompassing and multi-level framework, with the BRICS Summit leading the way, supported by BRICS Meetings of Foreign Ministers and Meetings of National Security Advisers, carrying out practical cooperation in dozens of areas such as economy and trade, finance, science and technology, industry, agriculture, culture, education, health, think tanks. Both Brazil and Russia are significant regional leaders and are leading members of important international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the Group of 20 (G20), which places both at the center of the international arena. Although, Brazilian-Russian relations are not new; their participation in a South-South only forum such as BRICS might be noteworthy. That being said, and in order to better understand how both countries are interconnected, this paper proposes an analysis of Brazilian-Russian relations within the BRICS framework, with the goal to assess key aspects of their cooperation within it, and to argue that these relations within the framework of multilateral cooperation formats could bring both countries even closer, thus strengthening the Global South even further. The author highlights that the BRICS grouping can be viewed in two ways: a) as a new force seeking to overthrow the existing international system to create an alternative world order, to challenge the established Western powers, and to replace key financial institutions with new ones; and b) as a group of large emerging economies seeking to expand their currently limited ability to compete globally, concluding that the combined efforts of Brazil and Russia have provided some of the impetus needed to achieve this goal.