On September 29, the Global South in the World Order network discussed the prospects and pitfalls confronting the BRICS after the recent 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The BRICS originated in the context of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis as a reformist grouping that aimed to challenge Western dominance over Bretton Woods multilateral financial institutions. Since 2014, BRICS has taken on a geopolitical character, aiming to challenge the current world order, which is dominated by Western powers and has shown its limitations for the Majority World, to foster a more legitimate international system.
The Global South in the World Order network reflected on the BRICS as an alternative multilateral grouping that ought to inclusively represent the interests of the Global South. Despite different – and at times competing – interests, BRICS members share a common vision of a greater role for the Global South in the world. The group remains nonetheless an intergovernmental coalition guided by each member government’s national strategy, making the BRICS both a source of opportunities and challenges as the group navigates its members’ convergent and divergent interests. Yet, and despite the presence of major powers such as China and Russia, which seek to leverage their partnerships with Global South countries to advance their own agendas, BRICS members retain their agency and ability to advance their interests through negotiation.
Currently, the BRICS operates in tandem with other minilateral groupings, particularly the G20, as its presidency will move from India in 2023, to Brazil in 2024, and to South Africa in 2025. This notably raises the question of whether BRICS members can rely on the G20 to advance reform of major international financial institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The network discussion noted that the expanded BRICS, with six out of ten of the world’s top oil producers, provides a greater opportunity for the group to influence global energy. It also provides more opportunities for its members to diversity their partnerships, notably in terms of enabling technology transfer, advancing space research, and strengthening the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). The NDB is the sole institution created by BRICS, which, at the moment, holds relatively little capital for financing projects compared to traditional institutions like the World Bank; for now, therefore, the NDB struggles to compete.
The BRICS confronts other practical challenges. So far, the group has not clarified its expansion strategy — which would need to address criteria for adding potential new members — leaving the door open for an expansion at every new presidency cycle. This, in turn, will pose a challenge to maintaining consensus-based decision-making and will raise the question of the need for new BRICS institutions, such as a secretariat. Moreover, the BRICS has yet to define its objectives vis-à-vis non-member Global South countries, about forty of which have expressed interest in joining the group. Similarly, it is not yet clear what path BRICS members will take to advance multilateral organization reform.
Nonetheless, BRICS holds the potential to push for concrete proposals for reform of international governance if its members succeed in clarifying their overall objectives and developing a strategy to achieve them.
BRICS Expansion: An Opportunity or Challenge?
Ruchita Beri, Consultant, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, @BeriRuchita
The 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg in August 2023 has brought global attention to this informal grouping. The summit concluded with the landmark decision to include six new members—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates— which has been touted to be both an opportunity and a challenge for the BRICS member states.
This move showcases the BRICS’ efforts to be seen as an inclusive grouping representing the Global South — especially as both China and Russia have projected themselves as belonging to the Global South. As India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated at the summit, the BRICS has indeed become a platform for discussing various issues and concerns of the Global South. These include a push for sustainable development and reforming multilateral institutions.
The promotion of sustainable development is a key part of the BRICS agenda. BRICS leaders often emphasize the role of the BRICS in advocating for greater “stability, sustainable development and prosperity” in the world. In recent years, South-South cooperation has become an important channel for fostering global sustainable development, and the BRICS’ policy towards it is visible through India and China’s bilateral thrust towards less developed countries in Africa. In the case of India, for instance, the country’s development cooperation strategy with Africa is based on African countries’ priorities.
These efforts to promote sustainable development are notably achieved through the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). This bank’s main objective is to promote infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging and developing countries. Although it follows the same model as the World Bank, the NDB’s decision-making parameters are more democratic than that of the Bretton Woods institutions, notably as voting powers are equally distributed amongst the NDB’s partner countries. Additionally, the BRICS was also active in promoting South-South cooperation during the United Nations negotiations for developing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, the BRICS+ now includes six of the top ten oil producers in the world — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, UAE, Iran, and China — which together account for around 30 percent of global oil output. Moreover, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil are also top energy consumers. BRICS’ expansion will have implications for energy trade, as the BRICS will enable these countries to influence energy markets by fostering the harmonization of their interests, and potentially creating a united negotiation front on the world stage. But given the BRICS’ objective of promoting sustainable development and addressing climate change, it will be important to monitor how the inclusion of additional oil-producing countries will impact this agenda. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa asserted during the August BRICS Summit, “BRICS is an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world.” Despite concerns that the expansion of the BRICS may hamper the group’s cohesiveness, especially as it will make it more difficult for states to forge consensus, the group is uniquely positioned to support change if it succeeds in leveraging existing opportunities.
Perspectives from Brazil on BRICS
Ana Saggioro Garcia, Associate Professor of International Relations, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro
The BRICS group is currently going through major political changes that may affect its role in the world order, should it succeed in clarifying its objectives and overcoming internal challenges. At the recent August Summit in South Africa, the group formalized its invitation to six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This expansion prompts questions about the future of the BRICS, which can be analyzed through three dimensions.
First, the “top-down” view reflects the geopolitical nature of the BRICS. From this perspective, the BRICS seeks to accumulate economic, political, and military capabilities vis-à-vis traditional powers, particularly the United States and Europe. International tensions — such as those stemming from the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the United States’ efforts to contain China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the burgeoning Russia-China alliance — and their repercussions on other BRICS members have encouraged the search for greater power. The “West versus East” dynamics arising from these events have also emphasized the geopolitical, rather than the initial economic, focus of the group.
Second, the “horizontal” (or lateral) perspective focuses on intra-bloc relations — convergences and asymmetries among countries. For instance, BRICS members have tried to increase their cooperation, establishing working groups and memoranda of understanding in diverse sectors such as health, finance, and energy. At the same time, economic asymmetries between group members, deriving notably from the economic preponderance of China, have established intra-BRICS trade relations similar to the traditional international division of labor, with China at its center. In the case of Brazil, this asymmetric interdependence has contributed to the deindustrialization of its economy in the medium term, as Brazil has lost its place to China as the main exporter of manufactured goods to other South American countries.
Third, the “vertical” (or bottom-up) view looks at how each BRICS member acts as a regional power, seeking to influence its region and accumulate more economic power through relations with other states on the “periphery” of the BRICS. For instance, the actions of large multinational companies from BRICS members in Africa and Latin America can sometimes reproduce practices of exploitation traditionally seen in West-Global South trade relations. This perpetuates wealth and income disparities, whether it is in the case of raw minerals and other natural resources extraction, or in the use of local labor.
For Brazil, changes within the BRICS are a time of opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, Brazil can leverage its position as a founding member of the group and as a regional leader in South America to strengthen its legitimacy and expand its influence both regionally and internationally. For instance, during climate negotiations, Brazil can push for a just energy transition of its economy and advocate for the spread of democracy and social rights, as the current Lula government intends to do. On the other hand, the inclusion of new non-democratic members in the BRICS, as well as major fossil fuel exporting countries, challenges Brazil’s objectives and may lead to more divergences within the group in the future. In this context, Brazil should maintain its relative autonomy in the face of international tensions between the major powers, while striving to negotiate better agreement conditions in intra-BRICS relations that not only benefit its members, such as technology transfer and joint ventures, but also avoid reproducing asymmetrical relations between the West and Global South countries.
The BRICS: China and India’s Quest for Leadership
Sanusha Naidu, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Global Dialogue, @SanushaNaidu
One of the highlights of the 15th BRICS Summit is the continuing quest for leadership in the Global South, which highlights competing interests among the BRICS members. That competition is notable between China and India.
For instance, India—and to some extent, Brazil—believe that an expanded BRICS would embolden and entrench China’s presence in the Global South. Indeed, the expansion will institutionalize Beijing’s global efforts to advance the Chinese government’s projects—such as the Global Development Initiative —that could establish alternative inclusive multilateral institutions.
Moreover, there have been debates about whether China is part of the Global South. This is a moot point. China’s historical role in supporting decolonization and independence movements, especially in Africa, and today in seeking to elevate the agency and voice of the Global South for a fairer and more equitable and inclusive international system, makes China a legitimate member of the Global South. The debate goes beyond how the Global South is defined. It is about how shared social justice and development struggles have historically separated the developed from the developing world. Today, arguments about China’s role in the global order tend to overlook these elements as a central part of the country’s identity and how they have contributed to its long-term relations with the South, long before the concept became prominent in the 1970s.
In the months leading up to the Summit, the issue surrounding the criteria, principles, and normative framework around the BRICS’ expansion proved difficult to find consensus on, despite this being a hallmark feature of the group’s decision-making process. Even though six new members were invited to join the group in January 2024, this was announced without a concrete policy to guide the group’s future expansion. That being said, the decision to expand illustrates that the group’s internal dynamics continue to be defined by a consensus-led approach, which is being shaped notably by the contest between China and India over power in the bloc. However, the other BRICS members are not passive actors. For instance, Russia considers BRICS’ expansion to be a way to deepen its power in the Eurasian economic corridor, while for Brazil and South Africa, it is about minimizing deeper divisions in the Global South.
The trajectory of the BRICS is increasingly becoming about how China and India perceive their agency within the grouping and more broadly across the Global South. This was illustrated at the G20 Summit under India’s Presidency — two weeks after the BRICS Summit — where New Delhi launched the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, which is seen as a countervailing program to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This trajectory in the BRICS has also led to India seeking to revitalize the India-Brazil-South Africa component as a sub-grouping in the BRICS. This effort also alludes to the Modi government’s use of strategic alignment and common interests with the West to challenge China’s dominance in the Global South. For India, it is about rightfully claiming its position as the leader of the Global South by no longer being seen as the shadow chasing the dragon’s tail. On their end, Brazil and South Africa must navigate this strategic competition between China and India to advance their interests, while managing the risks that such geo-political rivalries can pose for the wider BRICS’ agenda of overcoming the structural challenges in the global architecture.
As the next cycle of the BRICS begins, the group will continue to remain fluid as new members’ roles begin to clarify and new applications for membership may arise. The expansion will deepen the competition and rivalry between China and India as they vie for leadership in the BRICS. Undoubtedly, this will impact how China and India seek to utilize the BRICS to cement their identity as champions of the Global South. For the other members like Russia, the 2024 Presidency will be about galvanizing its position as a resurgent actor in the Global South. In the cases of Brazil and South Africa, their Global South identity will remain aligned with the reform of the multilateral system to recognize and elevate the role of the Global South in international affairs.
BRICS and the New Non-Alignment
Tim Sahay, Co-Director, Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab, Johns Hopkins
Developing countries are not passive victims of the polycrisis; they are actively trying to wrestle some control over their destinies and the direction of the world order. In his speech at the BRICS summit, Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva affirmed that the BRICS’ agenda to reform the global economic order will continue to be pushed by BRICS members at the Brazil-led G20 in 2024.
The dynamics I analyzed in my 2022 essay on the new non-alignment are still significant today. Although developing countries strive to advance their interests through global governance reform, absent tangible change, they leverage their positions by threatening to exit traditional Western-led multilateral organizations for China-dominated organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as Iran did in 2023. These states also resort to joining groupings like the BRICS and brokering bilateral agreements, thus using their ties with both the West and the new China-Russia bloc as a bargaining chip to advance their interests, such as:
- Accessing core technologies to power future growth
- Securing advanced military hardware for enhanced security
- Having the upper hand in trade negotiations with Europe, the United States, and the new Russia-China bloc
- Securing access to essential commodities like food, energy, metals, and fertilizers from the new Russia-China bloc
- Negotiating better terms to restructure their debt to Western and Chinese creditors during a global dollar debt crisis that threatens their sovereignty
Many Western commentaries have characterized BRICS as a grouping that has failed to achieve its objectives, is economically stagnant, and has little unity of purpose except to be performatively anti-United States. Yet, Western policymakers have multiplied their efforts to build bridges with the group’s members. For instance, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s diplomatic calendar—with visits to China, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in recent months—illustrates the frenzy of competitive deal-making with the non-aligned power players who are now part of BRICS. Moreover, Sullivan has lobbied Congress to streamline more US funding to the World Bank and IMF as “strategically necessary,” one of the issues on the BRICS’ agenda.
To be sure, strategic differences between BRICS member states over the organization’s purpose exist. China wants to sideline Western powers. Meanwhile, India prefers to reform existing architectures and wants to persuade other Global South nations to resist China’s geopolitical agenda. But despite clear areas of tension between BRICS members, there is common support for other issues on the grouping’s agenda, notably on issues surrounding the global financial architecture. Its shortcomings are a significant barrier to climate action in developing nations. Moreover, the outsized role of the US dollar in trans-border transactions means monetary policy enacted within the United States affects the whole globe. Nonetheless, a new BRICS currency was not mentioned in the summit communiqué; this project is at the moment unrealistic, as is the idea that China’s renminbi will supplant the US dollar while the Chinese government is still committed to capital controls. Rather, BRICS members will focus on conducting more trade and investment in local currencies, facilitated by BRICS members’ central banks, and possibly shifting reserves into other currencies.
The Future of BRICS: Between Objectives and Challenges
Global South Experts Turn the Tables
By Aude Darnal Lead Author • Ruchita Beri • Ana Saggioro Garcia • Sanusha Naidu • Tim Sahay • Mir Mohiuddin
Grand Strategy
Every month, The Global South in the World Order Project convenes a meeting of experts from across the Global South to discuss international relations from their perspectives, disrupt conventional thinking, and inject non-Western viewpoints into prominent policy circles in Washington. This publication is part of the Global South Experts Turn the Tables series, which highlights insights from select participants in these discussions.
On September 29, the Global South in the World Order network discussed the prospects and pitfalls confronting the BRICS after the recent 15th BRICS Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The BRICS originated in the context of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis as a reformist grouping that aimed to challenge Western dominance over Bretton Woods multilateral financial institutions. Since 2014, BRICS has taken on a geopolitical character, aiming to challenge the current world order, which is dominated by Western powers and has shown its limitations for the Majority World, to foster a more legitimate international system.
The Global South in the World Order network reflected on the BRICS as an alternative multilateral grouping that ought to inclusively represent the interests of the Global South. Despite different – and at times competing – interests, BRICS members share a common vision of a greater role for the Global South in the world. The group remains nonetheless an intergovernmental coalition guided by each member government’s national strategy, making the BRICS both a source of opportunities and challenges as the group navigates its members’ convergent and divergent interests. Yet, and despite the presence of major powers such as China and Russia, which seek to leverage their partnerships with Global South countries to advance their own agendas, BRICS members retain their agency and ability to advance their interests through negotiation.
Currently, the BRICS operates in tandem with other minilateral groupings, particularly the G20, as its presidency will move from India in 2023, to Brazil in 2024, and to South Africa in 2025. This notably raises the question of whether BRICS members can rely on the G20 to advance reform of major international financial institutions, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The network discussion noted that the expanded BRICS, with six out of ten of the world’s top oil producers, provides a greater opportunity for the group to influence global energy. It also provides more opportunities for its members to diversity their partnerships, notably in terms of enabling technology transfer, advancing space research, and strengthening the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). The NDB is the sole institution created by BRICS, which, at the moment, holds relatively little capital for financing projects compared to traditional institutions like the World Bank; for now, therefore, the NDB struggles to compete.
The BRICS confronts other practical challenges. So far, the group has not clarified its expansion strategy — which would need to address criteria for adding potential new members — leaving the door open for an expansion at every new presidency cycle. This, in turn, will pose a challenge to maintaining consensus-based decision-making and will raise the question of the need for new BRICS institutions, such as a secretariat. Moreover, the BRICS has yet to define its objectives vis-à-vis non-member Global South countries, about forty of which have expressed interest in joining the group. Similarly, it is not yet clear what path BRICS members will take to advance multilateral organization reform.
Nonetheless, BRICS holds the potential to push for concrete proposals for reform of international governance if its members succeed in clarifying their overall objectives and developing a strategy to achieve them.
BRICS Expansion: An Opportunity or Challenge?
Ruchita Beri, Consultant, Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, @BeriRuchita
The 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg in August 2023 has brought global attention to this informal grouping. The summit concluded with the landmark decision to include six new members—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates— which has been touted to be both an opportunity and a challenge for the BRICS member states.
This move showcases the BRICS’ efforts to be seen as an inclusive grouping representing the Global South — especially as both China and Russia have projected themselves as belonging to the Global South. As India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated at the summit, the BRICS has indeed become a platform for discussing various issues and concerns of the Global South. These include a push for sustainable development and reforming multilateral institutions.
The promotion of sustainable development is a key part of the BRICS agenda. BRICS leaders often emphasize the role of the BRICS in advocating for greater “stability, sustainable development and prosperity” in the world. In recent years, South-South cooperation has become an important channel for fostering global sustainable development, and the BRICS’ policy towards it is visible through India and China’s bilateral thrust towards less developed countries in Africa. In the case of India, for instance, the country’s development cooperation strategy with Africa is based on African countries’ priorities.
These efforts to promote sustainable development are notably achieved through the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB). This bank’s main objective is to promote infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging and developing countries. Although it follows the same model as the World Bank, the NDB’s decision-making parameters are more democratic than that of the Bretton Woods institutions, notably as voting powers are equally distributed amongst the NDB’s partner countries. Additionally, the BRICS was also active in promoting South-South cooperation during the United Nations negotiations for developing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, the BRICS+ now includes six of the top ten oil producers in the world — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, UAE, Iran, and China — which together account for around 30 percent of global oil output. Moreover, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil are also top energy consumers. BRICS’ expansion will have implications for energy trade, as the BRICS will enable these countries to influence energy markets by fostering the harmonization of their interests, and potentially creating a united negotiation front on the world stage. But given the BRICS’ objective of promoting sustainable development and addressing climate change, it will be important to monitor how the inclusion of additional oil-producing countries will impact this agenda. As South African President Cyril Ramaphosa asserted during the August BRICS Summit, “BRICS is an equal partnership of countries that have differing views but a shared vision for a better world.” Despite concerns that the expansion of the BRICS may hamper the group’s cohesiveness, especially as it will make it more difficult for states to forge consensus, the group is uniquely positioned to support change if it succeeds in leveraging existing opportunities.
Perspectives from Brazil on BRICS
Ana Saggioro Garcia, Associate Professor of International Relations, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro
The BRICS group is currently going through major political changes that may affect its role in the world order, should it succeed in clarifying its objectives and overcoming internal challenges. At the recent August Summit in South Africa, the group formalized its invitation to six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This expansion prompts questions about the future of the BRICS, which can be analyzed through three dimensions.
First, the “top-down” view reflects the geopolitical nature of the BRICS. From this perspective, the BRICS seeks to accumulate economic, political, and military capabilities vis-à-vis traditional powers, particularly the United States and Europe. International tensions — such as those stemming from the election of Donald Trump in the United States, the United States’ efforts to contain China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the burgeoning Russia-China alliance — and their repercussions on other BRICS members have encouraged the search for greater power. The “West versus East” dynamics arising from these events have also emphasized the geopolitical, rather than the initial economic, focus of the group.
Second, the “horizontal” (or lateral) perspective focuses on intra-bloc relations — convergences and asymmetries among countries. For instance, BRICS members have tried to increase their cooperation, establishing working groups and memoranda of understanding in diverse sectors such as health, finance, and energy. At the same time, economic asymmetries between group members, deriving notably from the economic preponderance of China, have established intra-BRICS trade relations similar to the traditional international division of labor, with China at its center. In the case of Brazil, this asymmetric interdependence has contributed to the deindustrialization of its economy in the medium term, as Brazil has lost its place to China as the main exporter of manufactured goods to other South American countries.
Third, the “vertical” (or bottom-up) view looks at how each BRICS member acts as a regional power, seeking to influence its region and accumulate more economic power through relations with other states on the “periphery” of the BRICS. For instance, the actions of large multinational companies from BRICS members in Africa and Latin America can sometimes reproduce practices of exploitation traditionally seen in West-Global South trade relations. This perpetuates wealth and income disparities, whether it is in the case of raw minerals and other natural resources extraction, or in the use of local labor.
For Brazil, changes within the BRICS are a time of opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, Brazil can leverage its position as a founding member of the group and as a regional leader in South America to strengthen its legitimacy and expand its influence both regionally and internationally. For instance, during climate negotiations, Brazil can push for a just energy transition of its economy and advocate for the spread of democracy and social rights, as the current Lula government intends to do. On the other hand, the inclusion of new non-democratic members in the BRICS, as well as major fossil fuel exporting countries, challenges Brazil’s objectives and may lead to more divergences within the group in the future. In this context, Brazil should maintain its relative autonomy in the face of international tensions between the major powers, while striving to negotiate better agreement conditions in intra-BRICS relations that not only benefit its members, such as technology transfer and joint ventures, but also avoid reproducing asymmetrical relations between the West and Global South countries.
The BRICS: China and India’s Quest for Leadership
Sanusha Naidu, Senior Research Associate, Institute for Global Dialogue, @SanushaNaidu
One of the highlights of the 15th BRICS Summit is the continuing quest for leadership in the Global South, which highlights competing interests among the BRICS members. That competition is notable between China and India.
For instance, India—and to some extent, Brazil—believe that an expanded BRICS would embolden and entrench China’s presence in the Global South. Indeed, the expansion will institutionalize Beijing’s global efforts to advance the Chinese government’s projects—such as the Global Development Initiative —that could establish alternative inclusive multilateral institutions.
Moreover, there have been debates about whether China is part of the Global South. This is a moot point. China’s historical role in supporting decolonization and independence movements, especially in Africa, and today in seeking to elevate the agency and voice of the Global South for a fairer and more equitable and inclusive international system, makes China a legitimate member of the Global South. The debate goes beyond how the Global South is defined. It is about how shared social justice and development struggles have historically separated the developed from the developing world. Today, arguments about China’s role in the global order tend to overlook these elements as a central part of the country’s identity and how they have contributed to its long-term relations with the South, long before the concept became prominent in the 1970s.
In the months leading up to the Summit, the issue surrounding the criteria, principles, and normative framework around the BRICS’ expansion proved difficult to find consensus on, despite this being a hallmark feature of the group’s decision-making process. Even though six new members were invited to join the group in January 2024, this was announced without a concrete policy to guide the group’s future expansion. That being said, the decision to expand illustrates that the group’s internal dynamics continue to be defined by a consensus-led approach, which is being shaped notably by the contest between China and India over power in the bloc. However, the other BRICS members are not passive actors. For instance, Russia considers BRICS’ expansion to be a way to deepen its power in the Eurasian economic corridor, while for Brazil and South Africa, it is about minimizing deeper divisions in the Global South.
The trajectory of the BRICS is increasingly becoming about how China and India perceive their agency within the grouping and more broadly across the Global South. This was illustrated at the G20 Summit under India’s Presidency — two weeks after the BRICS Summit — where New Delhi launched the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, which is seen as a countervailing program to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This trajectory in the BRICS has also led to India seeking to revitalize the India-Brazil-South Africa component as a sub-grouping in the BRICS. This effort also alludes to the Modi government’s use of strategic alignment and common interests with the West to challenge China’s dominance in the Global South. For India, it is about rightfully claiming its position as the leader of the Global South by no longer being seen as the shadow chasing the dragon’s tail. On their end, Brazil and South Africa must navigate this strategic competition between China and India to advance their interests, while managing the risks that such geo-political rivalries can pose for the wider BRICS’ agenda of overcoming the structural challenges in the global architecture.
As the next cycle of the BRICS begins, the group will continue to remain fluid as new members’ roles begin to clarify and new applications for membership may arise. The expansion will deepen the competition and rivalry between China and India as they vie for leadership in the BRICS. Undoubtedly, this will impact how China and India seek to utilize the BRICS to cement their identity as champions of the Global South. For the other members like Russia, the 2024 Presidency will be about galvanizing its position as a resurgent actor in the Global South. In the cases of Brazil and South Africa, their Global South identity will remain aligned with the reform of the multilateral system to recognize and elevate the role of the Global South in international affairs.
BRICS and the New Non-Alignment
Tim Sahay, Co-Director, Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab, Johns Hopkins
Developing countries are not passive victims of the polycrisis; they are actively trying to wrestle some control over their destinies and the direction of the world order. In his speech at the BRICS summit, Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva affirmed that the BRICS’ agenda to reform the global economic order will continue to be pushed by BRICS members at the Brazil-led G20 in 2024.
The dynamics I analyzed in my 2022 essay on the new non-alignment are still significant today. Although developing countries strive to advance their interests through global governance reform, absent tangible change, they leverage their positions by threatening to exit traditional Western-led multilateral organizations for China-dominated organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as Iran did in 2023. These states also resort to joining groupings like the BRICS and brokering bilateral agreements, thus using their ties with both the West and the new China-Russia bloc as a bargaining chip to advance their interests, such as:
Many Western commentaries have characterized BRICS as a grouping that has failed to achieve its objectives, is economically stagnant, and has little unity of purpose except to be performatively anti-United States. Yet, Western policymakers have multiplied their efforts to build bridges with the group’s members. For instance, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s diplomatic calendar—with visits to China, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in recent months—illustrates the frenzy of competitive deal-making with the non-aligned power players who are now part of BRICS. Moreover, Sullivan has lobbied Congress to streamline more US funding to the World Bank and IMF as “strategically necessary,” one of the issues on the BRICS’ agenda.
To be sure, strategic differences between BRICS member states over the organization’s purpose exist. China wants to sideline Western powers. Meanwhile, India prefers to reform existing architectures and wants to persuade other Global South nations to resist China’s geopolitical agenda. But despite clear areas of tension between BRICS members, there is common support for other issues on the grouping’s agenda, notably on issues surrounding the global financial architecture. Its shortcomings are a significant barrier to climate action in developing nations. Moreover, the outsized role of the US dollar in trans-border transactions means monetary policy enacted within the United States affects the whole globe. Nonetheless, a new BRICS currency was not mentioned in the summit communiqué; this project is at the moment unrealistic, as is the idea that China’s renminbi will supplant the US dollar while the Chinese government is still committed to capital controls. Rather, BRICS members will focus on conducting more trade and investment in local currencies, facilitated by BRICS members’ central banks, and possibly shifting reserves into other currencies.
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