BRICS Security Agenda and Prospects for the BRICS Ufa Summit

As a recent phenomenon, the BRICS continues to provoke heated discussions about its prospects and its sustainability asa community of like-minded actors. While observers can recognize common goals regarding international financial andeconomic architecture reform, the BRICS security agenda occupies a grey area of uncertainty. Meanwhile, as host of theBRICS in 2015–16, Russia sees as its main priority the transformation of the group from a loose forum into a full-fledgedmechanism for economic and political coordination and cooperation. Peace and security issues are thus included, and atleast lead to a limited conversion at the level of lowest common denominator. This limited conversion derives from a varietyof factors – geographical and geopolitical positions, diverse political historic tradition, different international political statuswithin current political governance system, close economic and political ties and complicated form of cooperation/competitionwith the established western powers, as well as differences in understanding and promoting their own global ambitionsand priorities. In this article, the evolution of Russia’s approaches toward the importance of the BRICS and its place withinRussian foreign policy priorities is considered, with attention given to political security, international law and global governance.While a number of problems would receive only minor attention and are more relevant to only some participants (suchas fighting illegal drugs or maritime security or certain regional conflicts), other issues need to be handled at the lowest commondenominator (such as reform of the United Nations Security Council or non-proliferation). BRICS members continueto find new areas of possible cooperation and take small but sure steps toward a mechanism of coordination among the fivecountries. The BRICS are vested with additional responsibility given that their cooperation and achievements in global politicaland economic governance reform offer an alternative to the domination of the advanced economies and a new modelof equal and mutually beneficial cooperation by the majority of developing countries