Soft Balance: BRICS and Challenge of US Supremacy

A new era started as the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The US claimed the leadership of hegemonic uni-polar international system. The supremacy has faced new challenges that have undermined the role of the US in global developments. A new order is being formed in which emerging powers play a key role، thus many thinkers talk about a multi-polar system. The question raised here is: How do the emerging powers of BRICS (Brazil، Russia، India، China and South Africa) seek to confront the US supremacy and upgrade their position in the structure of international system? We suppose that the BRICS countries try to confront the US supremacy and upgrade their position in international system through adopting the strategy of soft balance. Given their population and growing economic power، the BRICS countries are the main emerging powers of international system that understand the undesirable consequences of hard balance and direct confrontation to the US supremacy، so they use the strategy of soft balance in order to confront uni-polar system and increase their influence in world equations. Therefore by using descriptive method، we examine the formation of BRICS and the instruments by which these countries try to acquire a soft balance versus the US.