A Bigger Clubhouse

Each of the individual players also sees membership in the collective effort as a way to advance their national goals. Brazil and India, already collaborating effectively in blunting EU and U.S. pressure in the Doha trade negotiations, want a place at the table in the U.N. Security Council. Russia wants in to the WTO. China seeks to define its role as a great power and to legitimize itself through this alliance with democracies like India and Brazil. All want to have a say in creating new institutions on climate change, revamping the Non-Proliferation Treaty, upgrading the WTO and revitalizing the United Nations.

The need for broad global engagement around not only the financial crisis but many other world challenges will almost certainly lead the Obama administration to more actively engage the BRICs. One challenge for the emerging powers and for the Obama team will be reconciling the differences of various members of this evolving alliance. China is not eager to have India on the U.N. Security Council. Russia has no sense of urgency for others to join the G8. India has clashing security concerns with China in Asia. But for all these differences, circumstances have brought this group together in ways that ensure it must be reckoned with.

A senior diplomat from one of the BRICs recently commented on their differences and their alignments by paraphrasing the "Thousand and One Nights," characterizing the new players as "bedfellows sometimes dreaming different dreams but sleeping in the same tent." Given their rising status, the Obama administration, the leaders of the EU and others who will play a role in devising the economic and political order of the 21st century must recognize that we have entered an era in which the dreams of new powers, shared and otherwise, will play a central role in defining our collective future.

Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of “Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making.”

© 2008