By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

One of the biggest geopolitical stories of the 21st century is the emergence of a broad coalition of countries determined to dilute the West’s monopoly on global governance.

That coalition is officially known as BRICS, an acronym for its five original members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Although BRIC began as an investment term for four emerging economies, the group expanded to include South Africa and held its first BRICS summit in 2011. 

Since 2024, BRICS has expanded into an 11-member grouping that includes states as diverse as Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Ethiopia and Iran.

To many Americans, BRICS is little more than an anti-Western talking shop. But it is a mistake to dismiss a coalition that represents nearly half of humanity (the Group of Seven accounts for less than 10 percent), a growing share of global output, and an increasingly influential voice of the Global South. Whereas the G7 share of the world economy has steadily declined since the 1990s, BRICS’s share continues to rise.

Its growing influence reflects a profound reality: much of the non-Western world wants greater strategic autonomy and deeper economic cooperation beyond Western-led frameworks.

So the real question is not whether BRICS matters, but whether it can catalyze the development of a genuine alternative to the current U.S.-led world order. Its summit in New Delhi last weekend offered an illuminating answer.

The summit concluded with a 140-point New Delhi Declaration. Despite deep divisions, India brokered consensus among rivals by grounding the text in established U.N. legal frameworks and other standard multilateral principles.

But the summit also underscored a central paradox: BRICS members agree that the international system is unfair because it does not reflect today’s distribution of economic and political power. Yet they disagree deeply about what should replace it — or even how to begin overhauling it.

India and Brazil advocate reforming institutions such as the U.N. Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to give developing countries greater representation. They want to keep BRICS as non-Western but not to let it become anti-Western.

China and Russia, in contrast, are often more interested in building parallel structures to curtail Western influence altogether.

And then some newer members, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, maintain close security ties with the U.S., even as they deepen engagement with BRICS. The Emiratis and Saudis even host American military bases. Being part of BRICS allows these countries to diversify their geopolitical options and build alternative partnerships to help insulate themselves from Washington’s policy swings.

BRICS’s initiatives include local currency settlements, alternative payment mechanisms, and development financing through its New Development Bank. They are designed not so much to directly challenge the dollar’s global dominance — which in any case is eroding — as to reduce vulnerability to unilateral Western sanctions. BRICS essentially functions as a geopolitical hedge.

From Washington’s perspective, BRICS is best understood not as an anti-American alliance but as a coalition of countries seeking to reduce dependence on U.S.-led institutions. For many member states, BRICS is largely about expanding their diplomatic and economic choices.

Yet the New Delhi Declaration also exposed one of BRICS’s major weaknesses: its own double standards.

The declaration strongly condemns “unilateral coercive measures,” language aimed primarily at U.S. sanctions and trade levies such as the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. That criticism resonates across much of the non-Western world, where many governments view such unilateral action as something the Western-dominated international system makes possible.

But the declaration had one conspicuous omission: China is increasingly employing export restrictions on rare earths, critical minerals, manufacturing equipment and key industrial components as instruments of geopolitical leverage, including against its own BRICS partners.

For example, Beijing has recently imposed formal and informal India-specific export curbs, which have been widely interpreted as efforts to slow India’s emergence as an alternative global manufacturing hub. If unilateral economic coercion is objectionable when practiced by Washington, how can it be ignored when practiced by Beijing?

The answer has much to do with the mechanics of consensus diplomacy. Every BRICS declaration requires unanimous approval. So members are willing to collectively criticize external powers, but they have little space to name coercive behavior within their own ranks.

That, in turn, reveals an uncomfortable truth: BRICS is often united more by what it opposes than by what it practices — or by any shared vision of the alternative international order it hopes to build.

None of this means the U.S. should underestimate the organization. BRICS has already succeeded in signaling that the era of Western dominance is drawing to a close. More than three dozen countries have formally applied or expressed interest in joining BRICS, including states that remain close U.S. allies, such as Bahrain and Turkey, a NATO member.

The attraction is that BRICS helps broaden international options for governments, many of which increasingly want multiple centers of economic and diplomatic influence rather than reliance on a single superpower.

For Washington, ignoring legitimate demands for greater representation in global institutions would be counterproductive to its own interest in upholding the present international order. A willingness to reform multilateral governance may prove more effective than attempting to preserve structures designed in and for 1945.

The New Delhi summit may have demonstrated both the promise and the limits of BRICS. It is an influential coalition but not yet a unified alliance. It can coordinate diplomatic messaging but struggles to reconcile rival national ambitions. Its members share strong dissatisfaction with the current order but remain divided over the architecture of the next.

Such underlying strain does not diminish BRICS’s significance. The future order will likely be shaped by a diverse group of middle powers seeking a multipolar world in which no single nation or bloc writes all the rules, East or West.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”