Navigating a tricky new era for Brics

Hindustan Times

09-07-2025

The 17th summit of the Brics group of emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, offered insights into an institution undergoing profound changes amid an extremely disorderly and unsettling international situation.
In form and shape, Brics is a transformed entity today. With the admission of Indonesia this year as a full member, Brics has morphed from a minilateral club of five nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — into a medium-sized multilateral entity with broader representation. The admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates inside the tent, and the presence of 10 more partner countries including Nigeria and Vietnam, which are apparently waiting in the wings to also come in, mean that the Brics family has multiplied and is embarking on a second innings since it was first founded in 2009.
Counting full members and partner countries together, Brics has 20 nations under its ambit, as if it were a parallel G20 comprising only EMDCs. It is in recognition of this expanded reality that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for redefining the very acronym Brics so as not to indicate the initials of the names of the five core members but to convey a shared functional purpose of 'Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability'.
The present-day Brics has more collective heft and legitimacy than before as a powerful block of EMDCs which is doubling down on the twin goals of advancing multilateralism and multipolarity. With the strength of numbers lending greater self-confidence and bringing more issue areas under its ambit, the Brics we saw in Rio appeared bolder in critiquing and opposing unilateral actions and coercive measures ranging from trade tariffs and economic sanctions by the US, to military attacks and violations of international law by Israel against Iran and the Palestinians.
Although Brics did not make massive headway on the longstanding push by China and Russia for creating an alternative global currency for de-dollarisation of the international financial system, the united front it put up at Rio against US President Donald Trump's trade wars and its emphatic call for multilateral solutions through consultation and inclusion of EMDCs and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), did get Trump's goat. His threat to impose additional trade tariffs on countries 'aligning themselves with the anti-American policies of BRICS' was timed as a pre-emptive strike to rattle leaders at the Rio summit.
As many Brics members are bilaterally negotiating with the US to ease Trump's wave of tariffs, a dual game is underway.
On the one hand, Brics as a whole is denouncing American trade protectionism and seeking to boost intra-Brics trade and investment flows. On the other, the bloc members are responding to Trump's warnings by professing that they are not seeking confrontation with the US and that Brics 'will never be directed against any third countries.'
In light of Trump's attempted forcible shift in the modalities of the international system to bilateralism, Brics is rallying around the principle of multilateralism. But in practice, individual Brics countries are pragmatic and are seeking to pacify the US on a one-on-one basis to preserve their respective economic interests. It will be a tricky balancing act and will place limits on Brics becoming overtly anti-American or anti-western.
India, in particular, has been wary of turning Brics into an ideological crusade against western imperialism. However, this does not mean India is status quoist and happy with the western-dominated global institutional architecture. At Rio, Modi presented the Global South as a 'victim of double standards' on developmental and security matters and likened international institutions lacking adequate representation of poor nations to 'a mobile with a SIM card but no network.' He even cited the expansion of Brics as an inspiration for implementing long overdue reforms in the United Nations and the Bretton Woods bodies.
Lobbying to mainstream the concerns and interests of the Global South is only going to increase as Brics expands and draws in more countries into its circle. The Global South is being put at the forefront of Brics not merely for rhetorical reasons but because it is the common denominator on which each and every Brics member will unhesitatingly concur.
Still, in spite of the clear signs of unity and consensus as reflected in the Rio Declaration of Brics, internal strains and divisions persist as the institution steps into a new era. The competition and rivalry between India and China is the central geopolitical fault line of Brics and will stay that way.
Modi shot two unmistakable arrows at China in Rio. His call that no country should use critical minerals 'solely for its own interests or as a weapon' was aimed at China's hardball tactics of imposing export restraints on rare-earth metals which have caused panic among businesses worldwide. He also slammed the strategy of 'giving silent consent to terrorism for personal or political gain', a dig at China's unrelenting support and shelter to Pakistan.
While the Rio Declaration avoided logjam on countering terrorism, unlike what happened at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Qingdao, China, the reinforced perception of Beijing as a stumbling block to New Delhi's rise means that this factor will inevitably impact intra-Brics politics and internal balancing within the expanded grouping.
It is fair to conclude that Brics has grown more relevant in world affairs as a result of its expansion. But its new avatar will be acutely tested, pulled and hauled in different directions during a period of global uncertainty and widening conflicts. Whether a brave new Brics has arrived to fundamentally and rapidly reorder the world remains to be seen.
Sreeram Chaulia is dean, Jindal School of International Affairs. The views expressed are personal.