NEW CENTRE OF POWER

The Ufa summits of BRICS and the SCO are some of the latest landmark events in international politics. In essence, they demonstrate an imposing aspiration by a number of Eurasian countries to establish an independent pole of global power.

The conflux of the summits in the capital of Bashkortostan did not happen by accident. This year Russia presides over both the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) association and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Therefore, it could not but take advantage of such a convenient opportunity to once again testify its great-power impact on Eurasian and global politics. There is something to testify indeed.

The BRICS association represents 40 per cent of the world's population and 30 per cent of global GDP. The claims of "the five" to an independent pole of power were confirmed in Ufa by a number of decisions taken. The most significant of them is the decision to create the BRICS Development Bank with a starting capital of 100bn dollars.

It is planned that as soon as the spring of 2016, the bank will start to finance infrastructure projects aimed at maintaining economic growth in the member countries of the association.

One more indicial decision is one to confirm "the presence of the potential to expand the practice of reciprocal payments using national currencies among the BRICS countries". The relevant state bodies of "the five" have been instructed to continue discussing the possibility of a wider use of the national currencies in mutual trade. The very discussion of this issue is extremely important given the fact that through BRICS an attempt is being made towards the integration of the Silk Road and the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) projects. In fact, this is about, inter alia, the establishment of an East-West trade corridor, which implies the construction of a transport route from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea. Declaring their intention to implement such a grandiose project based on the use of national currencies, BRICS confirms its aspiration to change the role of the dollar as accounting currency for investment and trade between "the five" countries and the EU (and in the long term, all of the West).

Overall, the demonstration of opposition to US hegemony in global politics and economy is one of the most remarkable manifestations of the Ufa summits. This is also indicated by the hope BRICS expressed that the United States would very soon ratify the reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was agreed on back in 2010. BRICS's Ufa declaration stresses that the refusal of the United States to ratify the IMF reform package undermines the credibility of the fund and limits its legitimacy and effectiveness. This fact prevents revision of quotas and votes within IMF in favour of developing countries and emerging markets, something that was agreed on by an overwhelming majority of members, including the United States.

This consolidated position of BRICS can be viewed as a challenge to the US leadership in the global financial system. In the run-up to the Ufa summit there was a lot of talk that Brazil would probably break away from this process. The reason for this was the recent visit by the president of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, to the United States, which was marked by the signing of bilateral agreements, including military ones. People immediately started saying that "Dilma has betrayed Putin and BRICS" and that Brazil opted for rapprochement with Washington altogether. However, during the Ufa summit the Brazilian leader did not show even a sign of strikebreaking. No, she did not demonstrate any aspiration to aggravate relations with the USA, but she made it clear that she would continue to follow the strategy of stepping up relations, primarily with Russia and China. The latter is Brazil's main trade and economic partner, and for this reason many experts predict that it is cooperation between China and Latin America's largest country that will serve as a basis for the activities of BRICS.

The China factor is the cornerstone of Eurasian politics and, one can say, even global politics now. China along with Russia is one of the pillars of both BRICS and the SCO. There is no doubt that it is Beijing's policies on which prospects will depend for the activities of both "the five" and the SCO of which Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are members. Prior to the Ufa summit of the SCO, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan had observer status in the organization, while Belarus, Turkey and Sri Lanka were "dialogue partners". At the summit, they agreed to raise Belarus's status of participation in the work of the organization to that of observer. In addition, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal have joined "the SCO family as dialogue partners". It also became known that Iran had submitted a formal request for membership of the organization.

The Iran topic in the SCO is indicative for a number of reasons. The thing is that the Islamic Republic cannot join the organization as long as UN sanctions imposed on this country are not lifted. At a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Russian leader expressed his wish for a speedy lifting of sanctions imposed on the IRI. Putin's position played its role in that the SCO spoke in favour of a full abolition of the sanctions imposed on Iran, because they should not be a way of resolving international problems. However, it is clear that through his statements on Iran, Putin once again sent a message to the West about the need to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia. Meanwhile, his support for accession to the SCO of India and Pakistan speaks of his readiness - amid growing confrontation in relations with the USA and the EU as well as the toughening of the West's anti-Russia sanctions - to fundamentally re-orient Moscow's foreign policy towards the East.

Many experts believe that the signing at the Ufa summit of a document on the start of the procedure to admit India and Pakistan to the SCO is an event capable of changing the global geopolitical balance. As the influential US magazine Newsweek has put it, this is about the SCO's claim that it is "a counterbalance to the Western-dominated international institutions that have held sway since the end of the Second World War".

Undoubtedly, the SCO does stand the chance of becoming the largest Eurasian organization. Not least because that it, with India and Pakistan admitted, has already brought together four nuclear powers (including Russia and China). The SCO has taken a step towards a multipolar world, and its ambitions are very clearly evident in the organization's "Development Strategy" until 2025, which was adopted at the Ufa summit. The document stresses that the SCO countries "respect the right to choose the path of political, economic, social and cultural development taking into account the historical experience and national features of each state, contribute to dialogue among civilizations, common peace, progress and harmony, and are guided by the principles of non-interference in internal affairs and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the SCO member states, and do not support the use of unilateral measures of pressure without approval from the UN Security Council". The SCO countries said they favoured reform of the UN Security Council through an increase in the representation of developing countries.

However, it should be acknowledged that the SCO's attempt to achieve a geopolitical potential equal to that of the West will face great difficulties. To see this, just look at statistics. The aggregate Gross Domestic Product of the SCO countries is 11.6 trillion dollars. At the same time, the aggregate GDP of the USA, the EU, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - which are conventionally considered the avant-garde part of the West - totals 43.5 trillion dollars.

In addition, obvious is the insufficient extent of integration within the SCO and BRICS. These organizations are yet to go a long way to become a coherent system and not to become just a big PR campaign. The latter thing is what many suspect that Russia, which has effectively become an outcast in the West, is seeking. Expelled from the "big eight" of the leading Western powers amid the developments in Ukraine, Russia seems to be trying to compensate for its image losses (not to mention political and economic ones) through declarations about the formation of unions that genuinely operate in the East - namely, BRICS and the SCO. In this context, a statement by Russian presidential aide Yuriy Ushakov is noteworthy: "We will have a kind of our own 'eight', which, obviously, will enlarge later, with Iran joining." However, a genuine alternative to Western leadership in the world can only be offered by a full-fledged and coherent centre of power in Eurasia, aspiration to form which, albeit proclaimed in Ufa, is yet to find specific confirmation in real politics, in the interests of the old and new members of the above-mentioned associations.