Towards a multi-polar world: can BRICS, SCO serve as catalyst?

October 2024 witnessed two major global summits take place, having potential ramifications for the reigning world order. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit held in Islamabad on October 15-16 and BRICS Summit held in Kazan, Russia on October 22-23 send a loud and clear message to the US-led world order that an alternate global leadership is very much possible.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have repeatedly asserted since 2001 that they want a multipolar world and an end to the US-led world order. The Sino-Russian partnership since 2001 and the personal rapport between Putin and Xi have enabled both SCO and BRICS to sustain and expand their activities to play a leadership role in global affairs.

Can SCO and BRICS accomplish their objectives of focusing on regional security, connectivity and economic cooperation and dealing with issues of extremism, separatism and terrorism? How do the fault-lines in SCO and BRICS pose a serious challenge to its core members like Russia, China and India? Why is the West under the American leadership still playing a vital role in the reigning world order? And how can the non-Western world break the monopoly of the West in global power structure? These are the questions that are raised from time to time by those who are concerned about the fragility of the world order and about how the flashpoints, like the war in Ukraine and the armed conflicts in the Middle East, can destabilise the world.

During the BRICS summit, President Putin argued, "At present, the world is going through changes unseen in a hundred years. The international situation is intertwined with chaos but I firmly believe that the friendship between China and Russia will continue for generations, and great countries responsibility to their people will not change." Calling President Xi his 'dear friend', Putin asserted that the "partnership with China is a force for stability in the world. We intend to further enhance coordination on all multilateral platforms in order to ensure global security and a just world order."

Echoing Putin's call for a just world order, President Xi made it clear that the "cooperation in the BRICS group is the most important platform for solidarity and cooperation along with a mainstay force in promoting the realization of equal and orderly global multipolarity as well as inclusive and tolerant economic globalization."

BRICS and SCO summits were used as an opportunity by Russia and China to deepen their partnership and reiterate their resolve to provide an alternate global leadership. How far the global south can emerge as a viable bloc and how the West under the G-7 leadership will prevent a cogent challenge to their pre-eminent position in the world order will be seen in coming years. BRICS, earlier composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has expanded by including Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Ethiopia. Further enlargement of BRICS would reflect an emerging bloc which may include Pakistan, Turkiye, Azerbaijan and Malaysia.

The country that benefited the most from BRICS and SCO is Russia because it managed to break its international isolation as reflected by the statement of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa: "We continue to see Russia as a valued ally, a valued friend, who supported us right from the beginning from the days of our struggle against Apartheid." The two countries which bore the brunt of Western sanctions are Iran and Russia and both are SCO members. The SCO summit in its final communiqué criticised the imposition of unilateral sanctions and called it detrimental to international law.

Because of three main reasons, BRICS and SCO can serve as catalysts for a multipolar world to emerge.

First, the two core countries of SCO and BRICS - Russia and China - are determined to challenge the US-led world order. Other members of SCO and BRICS like India, Iran, South Africa and Brazil also harbour ambitions to play a leadership role in the world, but they somehow feel constrained to accomplish their objective. Both BRICS and SCO represent more than half of the world population and 40% of the global GDP. If China overtakes the US as world's number one economy and India climbs to number 3, overtaking Germany and Japan in coming years, it would mean the decline of the West in the world of geo-economics.

Second, other members of SCO and BRICS must focus on strengthening their economy, regional security and cooperation by promoting connectivity in the world of information technology and investments. But, SCO and BRICS must seriously take steps to manage inter and intra-state conflicts. Peace and stability in SCO and BRICS cannot be ensured unless the member countries focus on issues which tend to escalate conflicts and impede the process of cooperation. Moving beyond just holding summits, the expanded BRICS must seriously strive to deal with issues that threaten regional peace, security and stability. Like SCO, BRICS has also transformed its mandate and now calls for a fundamental change in the world order which also takes into consideration the interests of global south.

Finally, the SCO and BRICS summits tend to give a message to the US-led Western powers that the day is not far when their monopoly over global economic, military and technological spheres will be a thing of the past. Yet, a major challenge for SCO and BRICS in emerging as a global powerful bloc is an utter anti-West stance of Russia and Iran. Sanctions-ridden Moscow and Teheran want to break the monopoly of the dollar and the swift banking system dictated by the West, but it is not that easy. At the Kazan summit, the final communiqué talked about facilitating trade, including an alternate payment system to the dollar. The Kazan declaration, spanning 43 pages, also talked about the need to end the war in Ukraine and condemned Israel's brutal use of force against Palestinians in Gaza. The summit was used by Russia and China to present an alternate global leadership and by India and China to talk about mending fences in their tension-ridden ties. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping called for promoting cooperation and managing their conflicts by maintaining mutual trust and confidence.

While one can figure out overlapping in the final communiqués of SCO and BRICS, both organisations must make sure that the core countries - Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa - representing different continents of the world focus on geo-economics, information technology, climate change and connectivity by promoting people to people interaction.