INTERMEDIATE STATES, REGIONAL LEADERSHIP AND SECURITY

After the end of the Cold War, new demands and possibilities arose for intermediate contries to share responsibilities and to play more assertive roles in international politics. Brazil, India and South Africa are widely recognized as key players in their own regions and share several attributes and domestic and international challenges. The launching of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum, also known as IBSA, in 2003, was an initiative by the three contries to join efforts to respond to these challenges. The IBSA initiative pursues a broad political agenda, but poses a unique opportunity to study the potential and actual roles of key intermediate states in international security and the prospects for South-South cooperation in this field. It also allows for a deeper understanding of their regional security contexts, their international strategies as expressed in foreign and defense policies, the feasibility of defense cooperation among them and the prospects for coalitions of intermediate states in contemporary international politics. These are the issues that comprise the present volume. These issues were intensively studied in the context of a research project encompassing three major institutions in the field of international relations in Brazil, India and South Africa - respectively, the Institute of International Relations of the University of Brasilia, the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) and the School of International Affairs of the Jawaharlal Nehru University - with the participation of other national experts and institutions and the support of the Ford Foundation to follow up the initial steps of IBSA in the implementation of its security agenda and to assess its mid and long term prospects.