The BRICS: Paradigm Shift in Dealing with New Challenges

Abstract

The mankind has been actively using a relatively new geopolitical space: the space of information. Obviously, the economic and scientific progress opens new horizons and possibilities, still not clearly understood by people. This brings about many changes, with either good or bad consequences, depending on who uses the information and what aims are pursued. The present system of international relations is characterized by many new features; it’s becoming more “unpredictable” and “chaotic”. Information wars and “fake” news contribute in its turn to the turbulent character of international relations, pushing forward misconceptions and distorted visions of different situations, and thus provoking conflicts. At the same time, the world is badly short of new ideas, which could more adequately answer the global problems. These new ideas could hardly be produced by the “old”, traditional actors. At the same time, the BRICS countries, representing the new “ascending” civilizations of non-Western nature and not being bound in this sense by the rules of “Euro-Atlantic solidarity”, could collectively propose some new approaches to the global issues. BRICS, as a format of states with accelerated economic indices, should lay a wider conceptual platform for its further dynamics. It should provide a more active information policy and elaborate a “new” conceptual basis, founded on rather traditional and “old” principles - common respect for the international law, derived from political and juridical cultures, historic and social practices.

Keywords

• geopolitics
• global problems
• global security
• informatics space
• information security
• BRICS
• world civilizations
• “multi-civilizational” approach
• international law
• political and juridical cultures