The expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization and BRICS in 2023 is analyzed in the context of the
processes of transformation of the world order, as well as political
turbulence in the Near and Middle East region. Iran’s accession to the
SCO and BRICS not only indicates that this country has overcome
international isolation, but also serves as confirmation of the growth of
its geopolitical significance. Iran is one of the parties to the new
configuration of international actors, while its other participants are
China and Russia. The Russia-China-Iran triangle is a group whose
members are united by an understanding of common threats, which they
seek to mitigate through “soft balancing” of the policy of the hegemonic
superpower. For the SCO, the full integration of Iran, on the one hand,
again emphasizes that ensuring the security of Central Asia and
stabilizing Afghanistan remain a priority, but, on the other hand,
encourages this organization to focus its attention on conflicts in the
Near and Middle East region. The BRICS group is also focusing on this
region, with four of its five new members located in the Near and
Middle East. But beyond geopolitics, the expansion of BRICS forms a
“personal union” of this group with the leading members of OPEC. The
extensive growth of BRICS, with all the risks of complicating decisionmaking
processes, contributes to the expansion and consolidation of
various network interactions of non-Western international actors. In the
current international political conditions, this feature gives BRICS
advantages over “rigid” alliances with detailed regulation of formal
obligations and a system of informal obligations “built into” their
architecture, reflecting hierarchical interactions within blocs.
The coronavirus pandemic and related global socio-economic
problems, the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine that began
in February 2022, and the war between Israel and HAMAS that broke
out in October 2023 demonstrated the profound ineffectiveness of the
unipolar world order both in terms of economic performance and in
regard of ensuring international and regional security. Under these
conditions, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, and other
non-Western structures, institutions and forums of international
cooperation continued to form an alternative to the system of global governance based on the hegemony of one superpower. A striking
external manifestation of the ongoing changes was the expansion of the
number of SCO and BRICS participants in the summer of 2023. Along
with recording the general transformations of the world order, the
expansion of the SCO and BRICS also indicates significant
reconfigurations of forces in several regions of the planet, especially in
the Near and Middle East, Central Asia, as well as Africa. When
considering this entire range of issues, it is important to take into
account the resonance effect of the expansion of the SCO and BRICS
with the events of the second half of 2023, in particular, with the failure
of the Ukrainian “counter-offensive”, the victory of Azerbaijan in the
Karabakh conflict, the collapse of Paris’ dominance in the former
colonies in Western and Central Africa, the HAMAS terrorist attack on
Israel and the start of a military operation in the Gaza Strip.
World Majority; Global South; Shanghai Cooperation Organization; BRICS; crisis of the unipolar world order; Near and Middle East; soft balancing; transformation of the world economy.