Russia’s vision of the role of BRICS+ and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the design of the new international order
The ‘world majority’ is not an institutionalised alliance but rather a symbolic and imagined community encompassing countries in the Global South and East that, from Moscow’s perspective, share the desire to liberate themselves from the Western world. It is more of a political than an empirical concept. The term ‘world majority’ carries a threefold connotation: (a) ideological, by advancing an inclusive narrative that legitimises Russia’s isolation; (b) rhetorical, by transforming its status from ‘sanctioned minority’ to ‘emancipatory vanguard’; and (c) diplomatic, by justifying the search for flexible and pragmatic alliances with States that do not necessarily share an explicitly anti-Western agenda.
Moscow has turned its war on Ukraine into an essential instrument for reshaping the international order. Apart from the mere territorial conquest of a neighbouring state, its goal is to inculcate a multipolar world that challenges the West’s liberal and democratic principles.
Russia portrays itself as having its own civilisation, distinct from the West’s. The civilisational approach serves to legitimise a multipolar order based on spheres of influence. Russian rhetoric maintains that the world is moving towards a multipolar order organised around civilisations and not around States, which justifies Russian claims to a hierarchical leadership in its neighbourhood, the strengthening of the Russkiy Mir and the rejection of Western universalism.
The State-civilisation narrative expresses Russia’s post-Western messianic strategy. This ideological framework enables Moscow to reject the liberal order that emerged after 1991; to align itself with revisionist ‘civilisations’ such as China, India and Iran; and to project itself as a military guarantor of a new and more fragmented and plural new world order, where a greater role is played by the Global South and a lesser one by the West.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) are Russia’s two mainstays of the post-Western order. The two institutions have become the multipolarity laboratory and the political vanguard of the ‘world majority’. Russia sees both frameworks as a complementary institutional ecosystem: the SCO reorganises Eurasia along sovereignty and civilisational lines, while the BRICS transmit this transformation to the global stage by means of alternative institutions that erode the West’s normative hegemony.
The war in Ukraine marks the end of the liberal cycle and accelerates the break-up of the international order. The conflict has consolidated the rupture between Russia and the West, strengthened the convergence between revisionist powers and reinforced the perception in the Global South that the liberal order is unequal and excessively Western.
The EU faces a structural challenge to its political, economic and normative model. The fragmentation of the liberal order weakens its foreign policy, limits its influence in the Global South, increases its economic and energy vulnerabilities and obliges it to construct new strategic autonomy capabilities in an environment characterised by non-Western economic and security networks.
Spain faces specific risks in its neighbourhood and in Latin America, but also opportunities if it acts as a bridge. The Euro-Asiatic axis alters the balance in the Mediterranean and the Sahel, while the Russian narrative reduces the European influence in Latin America. Spain should strengthen security in its southern flank, renew its Ibero-American strategy, diversify its energy sources and position itself as a focal point between the EU and the Global South.
For the time being, the challenge posed by the ‘world majority’ is more narrative and symbolic than military and economic. Europe and Spain need to demonstrate that their political model continues being capable of generating legitimacy and cooperation in a plural world. The response to the civilisational order advocated by Russia cannot be based on a nostalgic defence of liberalism but rather a strategic overhaul. This means a less Eurocentric, more autonomous Europe, capable of competing for global recognition by means of coherence, innovation and reciprocity.
Europe needs to accept that multipolarity is not a transient scenario but rather the structure of the new global order. It is necessary to redefine strategic autonomy in a comprehensive, military, technological, energy and cognitive way, thereby contributing to a more balanced transatlantic relationship.
The EU and Spain need to counteract the attractiveness of the world majority narrative by means of a less moralistic and more relational foreign policy based on reciprocity and shared interests. To this end it is worth fostering: (a) associations with Africa and Latin America aimed at sustainable development, education and technological innovation; (b) a reformulation of cooperation policy so that it competes with the offer of the BRICS+ in the financing of infrastructure, prioritising institutional quality, environmental sustainability and the transfer of know-how, c) support for the reform of multilateral institutions to bolster the representation of the Global South and reduce the scope for legitimacy that Russia exploits.
Spain, as a mid-ranking power that aspires to act as a bridge, should: consolidate itself as a European champion of the Global South connecting the EU to Latin America, the Maghreb and West Africa; prioritise security in its southern flank by cooperating with Morocco, Algeria and the Sahel countries; devise an overhauled Ibero-American strategy that harnesses the value of Spanish as a language of power and promotes technology and energy alliances in Latin America, and bolsters energy diversification by means of interconnections with North Africa that consolidates Spain as a European gas and renewable energy hub.
Strengthening strategic and forward-thinking diplomacy: the reconfiguration of the international order requires a more forward-thinking and multidimensional style of strategic intelligence. It is essential to endow centres of analysis and public diplomacy with the ability to understand the narratives of the Global South and to counteract Russian and Chinese disinformation; to foster training in comparative strategic culture and foreign policy, especially in Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific, and to orchestrate a structured Euro-Asiatic dialogue that enables the dynamics of the BRICS+ and the SCO to be understood and, whenever possible, influenced from a realist and not purely reactive perspective.
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