Suchergebnisse

International support for democracy and human rights faces a serious challenge", Thomas Carothers and Saskia Brechenmacher argue in a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. According to them, a growing number of governments are erecting legal and logistical barriers to democracy and rights programs, "publicly vilifying international aid groups and their local partners, and harassing such groups or expelling them altogether."

This article assesses the BRICS' position on the emerging global norm of the Responsibility to Protect, analyses the year 2011, when all the BRICS occupied a seat on the UN Security Council, and asks how the rise of the BRICS will affect R2P's prospects of turning into a global norm. It argues that while it is generally thought that 'non-Western' emerging powers are reluctant to embrace R2P, rising powers' views on the norm in question are far more nuanced. Common accusations depicting the BRICS as 'irresponsible stakeholders' are misguided, as emerging powers have supported R2P in the vast majority of cases. The BRICS are in fundamental agreement about the principle that undergirds R2P, and their support for R2P's pillar I and II is absolute. Regarding pillar III, the BRICS at times diverge from Western countries not about the existence of the norm, but about when and how to apply it.

Why did the leaders of four very different countries-Brazil, Russia, India, and China-decide to hold a summit in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, thus transforming "the BRICs" from a financial category into a political grouping? I argue that the main driver for the first summit to take place and succeed was to strengthen each member country's international status. The 2009 BRICs summit was successful in that it led to the birth of a political platform during highly unusual international economic and political circumstances. In a global economy in the midst of a recession and widespread uncertainty, the BRICs' relative economic stability and capacity to respond to the crisis was decisive and lent credibility to their call for reform of the international system. The United States' temporarily reduced legitimacy also provided a window of opportunity for emerging powers to act as aspiring guarantors of stability in tomorrow's world. While measureable gains from cooperation and stronger rhetoric that delegitimized the global order did occur in the following years, they were not the primary drivers for the first summit to take place and succeed. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

Resenha de: G. John Ikenberry, The Crisis of American Foreign Policy, Wilsonianism in the 21st Century. Tradução de Oliver Stuenkel, Princeton University Press, Princeton e Oxford, 2009