Foreign Policy of Emerging Powers toward America: Accompanying or Balancing? (Case Study: BRICS)

Subject Areas :

Seyed Ahmad Fatemi Nejad ¹ (هیأت علمی- دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد)
Samaneh Shafi Zadeh ² (کارشناس ارشد علوم سیاسی دانشگاه تهران)
Fatemeh Daneshvar ³ (کارشناس ارشد روابط بین‌الملل دانشگاه فردوسی مشهد)

Received: 2015-08-04 Accepted : 2015-08-04 Published : 2015-08-01

Keywords: United States, Soft balance, Unilateralism, Multilateralism, BRICS,

Abstract :

Abstract: BRICS is a group of emerging powers consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa who are pursuing a revisionist foreign policy in challenge to the United States unilateralism in international relations. This group of countries is trying to strengthen economic, political and demographic potentials of themselves and can constitute the as main poles of a multi-polar structure of future world. Meanwhile the attempt of this group of countries for creating a multilateral system is a usual practice in international relations which is based on their potentials. The question raised by the present article is what is the foreign policy of BRICS towards the unilateralism practiced by the United States in international relations? The underlying hypothesis is that BRICS has chosen a kind of revisionist policy based on soft balancing against the United States unilateralism. The theory of soft balance should be a suitable approach to examine the hypothesis through two variables, i.e. “disparity of power” and “economic dependency”. Finding of the study shows that BRICS is indirectly trying to strengthen multilateralism in international relations.