Emerging Powers in a Changing World

This is the second collective effort from the Center for Euro-Atlantic Studies to address global issues that are largely unfamiliar to the Greek international affairs community. Last year we dealt with the new challenges that will likely have an impact on European Security in the near future. This year we decided to extend our scope beyond Greece’s neighborhood and examine different countries that are collectively called as ‘Rising Powers’. Selectively, we decided to pick and examine the topics we considered as the most important for this year from each of the following six countries: China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico. Studying the emerging powers of our time is a challenging and tricky task. The ‘BRICS’ term was originated 13 years ago and the international system is since changing. Many more acronyms were invented by scholars according to their appetite and their arguments. We partly disagree with this approach considering even the ‘BRICS’ term misleading in some cases. All five countries have the common aspiration to increase their share of global power and influence but are very different in almost everything else. Some of them rely on exports while other on imports. Some face almost inevitable decline while others sluggish growth.