The European Union against a BRICS Wall? The Case of the Syrian Crisis

This paper seeks to contribute to the debate on whether the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are emerging into a coherent political bloc that can challenge the European Union (EU) as a global actor. The Syrian crisis, which erupted in 2011 and is still ongoing, is chosen as a case study to compare the responses of the BRICS and the EU.

The paper explores to what extent the BRICS have adopted a cohesive foreign policy position on the Syrian crisis and to what degree this challenges the position of the EU on the issue.

In order to examine and compare the positions of the BRICS and the EU, the study conducts an analysis of their official foreign policy discourses and their voting patterns in the United Nations between March 2011 and March 2015.

The analysis shows that while the BRICS have strongly opposed military intervention as an option for resolving the crisis, their overall positions were not very cohesive. The main conclusion is that the BRICS have not (yet) developed into a bloc able to challenge the EU.

• Primary Source

College of Europe: The EU’s Human Rights Promotion in China and Myanmar: Trading Rights for Might? [PDF] https://www.coleurope.eu/sites/default/files/research-paper/edp_5_2014_borreschmidt.pdf

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