GEOPOLITICAL PERSPECTIVES OF BRICS

Abstract

Abstract. Geopolitical influence of the BRICS on the modern system of international relations
experts and scholars evaluate differently. Among Western experts can distinguish both
skeptics and supporters of the association of the BRICS. At the initial stage of BRICS formation
among Western experts prevailed view on the continuing economic growth of member countries
and their gradual transformation into a regional or international leaders. More than 10 years
of existence of such a trans-regional association Western experts reconsidered the BRICS geopolitical
perspective. Now they say there are internal political, territorial, socio-economic and
cultural contradictions in the association that is not allowing it to become an alternative to the
existing world political and economic order.
On the contrary experts from the BRICS consider cooperation in the format as an opportunity
to consolidate their own regional or global leadership as opposed to the US-EU, to protect
and to support for national interests, therefore they gradually reorganize cooperation at the
level of the BRICS and create internal economic organs.

The problems of the BRICS institutionalization can be overcome through the initiation of one
of the member countries to expand the format of political and economic activity or the aggravation
of relations with Europe and the United States, when the cooperation within the association
will be the only political, financial or commercial alternative foreign policy. In the future,
we can predict a scenario of the geopolitical aspirations of member countries – the deepening
of integration cooperation within BRICS, initiated by the Russia; the inability of the economic
integration of the BRICS countries as a result of acute internal political and economic situation
in the Russian Federation; partial disengagement of China from deep transformations within the
BRICS to save the balance of power at the level of the US-EU-China and to prevent the sole leadership
of the Russian Federation; external initiation of exacerbation of economic or territorial
relations between the member countries of the BRICS to prevent consensus within the format.
Key words: geopolitic, development scenarios, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa,
BRICS.