A BRICS member has been under attack for months – and has subsequently wielded attacks of its own against fellow members. This coming weekend, those countries will all be in the same room, making a third attempt to find consensus on a war that has dominated global attention – and battered economies – this year. India hosts the BRICS Leaders’ Summit from Saturday, seeking to raise the bloc’s profile even as the United States-led war on Iran exposes divisions among its members, with Tehran and Abu Dhabi on opposing sides.
Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in New Delhi on Friday morning. The September 12-13 summit in New Delhi comes more than six months after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran, which has been a BRICS member since 2024. The United Arab Emirates also joined that year.
The grouping of emerging countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and in more recent years Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia – was created to challenge the Western-led order. Yet as the alliance nears its 20-year anniversary, analysts say that while BRICS has helped make the world more multipolar, it has struggled to build a coherent alternative to the West. The bloc has created a platform outside Western-led institutions, giving Global South countries greater bargaining power and economic alternatives.
But the dollar remains dominant, and divisions limit collective action on foreign policy and security, say analysts. However, some experts argue that the success of BRICS should not be measured by whether it can pose an alternative to West-led institutions, but by whether it makes Western dominance harder to exercise. The bloc emerged after the 2008 financial collapse and the failures of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Doha Round – trade negotiations that aimed to reform the international trading system in favour of Global South countries.
BRICS emerged from these countries’ efforts to pursue a common development agenda outside traditional international organisations and the United Nations – and, in that sense, its very origins challenged the Western-led order, the Brazilian scholars said. Emerging powers wanted greater influence over institutions they felt were dominated by the West. And that’s a major priority still uniting the group today, says Sean Burges, an associate professor of international studies at Canada’s Carleton University.
The analysts agreed that reform and greater autonomy have been far greater concerns for the BRICS bloc rather than overthrowing the unravelling liberal international order. BRICS has offered its member countries alternative pathways for channelling trade and investment that serve the interests of the member countries – largely national development and poverty alleviation, he explained. This has resulted in a surge of economic exchange not only within the BRICS, but within the Global South in general, he added.
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