DEEP POLITICS OF BRICS
DEEP POLITICS OF BRICS
Who speaks for the Global South?
BRICS has evolved from an economic acronym into a platform for emerging powers seeking greater influence in global governance. Its expansion strengthens its claim to represent the Global South, but also exposes a contradiction: the Global South is not politically unified.
The Global South and international groupings
Before examining BRICS, the session places it among wider international groupings and the Global South debate. The opening visuals introduce the Global South, major organisations and the historical Asia-Africa imagination behind post-colonial cooperation.
Getting the bricks in place
BRICS has evolved from an economic acronym into a platform for emerging powers seeking greater influence in global governance. Its expansion strengthens its claim to represent the Global South, but also exposes a contradiction: the Global South is not politically unified.
China seeks greater structural influence, India wants a multipolar BRICS within a multipolar world, Russia values strategic space, while Brazil and South Africa emphasise reform and representation. New members add weight but also complexity. De-dollarisation remains gradual, while the New Development Bank offers tangible institutional alternatives. The 2026 New Delhi summit will test whether diversity can become collective influence.
BRICS wants a multipolar world, but its real test is whether it can remain multipolar internally rather than becoming dominated by any one member. Expansion gives BRICS more global legitimacy and economic weight, but every new member also brings new rivalries, priorities and obstacles to meaningful consensus. BRICS does not truly speak for the Global South; its significance lies in giving competing Southern powers a table where they can negotiate influence.
From BRICS to BRICS+: power through expansion
BRICS began as an economic grouping but has evolved into an increasingly important geopolitical platform seeking greater influence over the emerging world order.
- Expansion has brought major powers from Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia into the grouping, dramatically widening its geographical and political reach.
- Its members now represent very different political systems, development levels, strategic interests, security concerns and relationships with the United States and Europe.
- BRICS is not a military alliance, common market or supranational organisation; its members cooperate without surrendering sovereignty or adopting a common foreign policy.
- Expansion increases BRICS' demographic, economic and diplomatic weight, strengthening its claim to represent developing and emerging economies.
- But the central paradox is clear: the larger and more representative BRICS becomes, the harder it becomes to produce meaningful political consensus.
Who really speaks for the Global South?
The Global South is not one political bloc: India, China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Africa, Iran and Ethiopia often have very different interests.
- China possesses unmatched economic scale and wants greater developing-country influence, but other members remain wary of replacing Western dominance with Chinese dominance.
- India supports global-governance reform while protecting strategic autonomy and preventing BRICS from becoming either China-dominated or explicitly anti-Western.
- Russia increasingly values BRICS as strategic space outside Western institutions and as evidence that Western diplomatic pressure does not equal global isolation.
- Brazil emphasises multilateral reform, development and Latin American influence, while South Africa seeks a stronger African voice in global decision-making.
- No single member therefore possesses an uncontested mandate to speak for the Global South - BRICS is better understood as a platform of competing Southern voices.
New members change the internal politics
BRICS expansion is not merely about adding countries; it brings entirely new regional rivalries, economic models, diplomatic traditions and strategic agendas into the organisation.
- Iran strengthens BRICS' geopolitical and anti-sanctions dimension, while the UAE and Saudi Arabia demonstrate strategic hedging rather than rejection of Western partnerships.
- Egypt connects Arab politics, Africa, the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, giving BRICS greater significance across critical trade and geopolitical corridors.
- Ethiopia strengthens the developmental and African dimension and reminds BRICS that the concerns of poorer economies differ from those of major emerging powers.
- Indonesia brings Southeast Asia, enormous demographic scale, commodities, manufacturing ambitions and a strong tradition of non-aligned strategic autonomy.
- The future of BRICS may therefore be shaped increasingly by middle powers refusing to choose between China, India, Russia, the West or any single geopolitical camp.
Money, de-dollarisation and the New Development Bank
Headlines about a common BRICS currency exaggerate the speed and depth of monetary integration among economies with vastly different currencies and financial systems.
- The more realistic agenda involves increased trade in national currencies, cross-border payment cooperation and gradually reducing vulnerability to external financial pressure.
- India particularly supports greater financial autonomy without simply replacing dependence on the US dollar with dependence on China's renminbi.
- The real transformation may therefore be currency diversification rather than the sudden disappearance of the dollar from global trade and finance.
- The New Development Bank is BRICS' most tangible institution, providing infrastructure and sustainable-development financing while expanding membership beyond the original founders.
- BRICS becomes strategically consequential when it moves beyond declarations and creates alternative institutions, financing channels and practical economic choices for developing countries.
Internal fault lines and the New Delhi 2026 test
India-China competition remains the most important internal strategic tension: both support multipolarity, but neither wants the other to dominate the emerging order.
- Another divide concerns purpose: some members prefer reforming existing global institutions, while others want BRICS to assume a more explicitly counter-Western geopolitical character.
- Middle Eastern rivalries, especially differences involving Iran and Gulf states, demonstrate how expansion can import external conflicts directly into BRICS deliberations.
- BRICS must also reconcile its ambition for greater cooperation with very different positions on wars, sanctions, security partnerships, trade and relations with Western powers.
- India's 2026 presidency and the New Delhi summit will test whether BRICS can convert expansion into practical cooperation on finance, technology, trade, development and governance reform.
- The decisive question is not whether BRICS can issue stronger declarations, but whether an internally divided organisation can transform diversity into sustained global influence.
Conclusion
BRICS matters not because it speaks with one voice, but because it brings competing voices of the Global South into the same arena.
China has scale, India has balancing legitimacy, Russia seeks geopolitical space, while Brazil, South Africa and newer members resist domination by any power.
Its future will depend less on anti-Western rhetoric than on practical delivery: development finance, payments, technology, connectivity, climate cooperation and institutional reform. Expansion gives BRICS legitimacy but makes consensus harder.
The central test is clear: can BRICS remain internally multipolar while becoming globally influential, without claiming to represent countries that never authorised it?
Glossary and related terms
- BRICS
- A grouping of major emerging economies that has become a platform for political, economic and global-governance coordination.
- BRICS+
- A shorthand for the expanded BRICS format that includes newer members and partner countries beyond the original five.
- Global South
- A broad political and economic term for developing and emerging countries, especially those seeking greater voice in global institutions.
- Multipolarity
- A world order in which influence is distributed among several major powers rather than concentrated in one dominant centre.
- Strategic autonomy
- A state's ability to make independent foreign-policy choices without being fully tied to any single power bloc.
- De-dollarisation
- Efforts to reduce reliance on the United States dollar in trade, reserves, payments or financial settlement.
- Currency diversification
- Using a wider mix of currencies for trade and finance to reduce dependence on one dominant currency.
- New Development Bank
- A BRICS-created development-finance institution that supports infrastructure and sustainable-development projects.
- AIIB
- The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a China-initiated multilateral development bank focused on infrastructure investment.
- Geopolitical hedging
- Maintaining working relationships with rival powers to avoid excessive dependence on one side.
- Middle powers
- States that are not superpowers but can shape regional or international outcomes through diplomacy, resources or strategic location.
- Consensus
- A decision-making approach in which members avoid formal disagreement, often requiring compromise among competing interests.
- Global governance reform
- Efforts to change international institutions so that they better reflect current power, population and development realities.
- Sanctions
- Economic, financial or diplomatic restrictions imposed to pressure a state, organisation or individual to change behaviour.
- Geopolitical corridor
- A trade, transport or strategic route whose location gives it wider political and economic significance.
- Non-alignment
- A foreign-policy tradition of avoiding formal alignment with rival great-power blocs while preserving independent choices.
Conceptual references
- BRICS as an expanded platform for emerging-economy cooperation and Global South representation.
- Debates on multipolarity, strategic autonomy and reform of global-governance institutions.
- Currency diversification, national-currency trade and de-dollarisation discussions within BRICS.
- The role of multilateral development banks such as the New Development Bank and AIIB.
- Internal fault lines created by India-China competition, Middle Eastern rivalries and differing attitudes towards the West.
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