BRICS 2025: Mere Symbolism And Rhetoric
The 17th BRICS summit is due at Rio de Janeiro on July 6-7. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend, besides officially visiting four African and Caribbean nations.
British economist Jim O’Neill in 2001 foresaw Brazil, Russia, India and China as promising emerging markets, and christened it BRIC. Their first summit was in 2009, with South Africa joining the next year, making it BRICS. Next expansion, to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE occurred in 2024, with Indonesia joining the following year. However, geopolitics are never static. Joseph Nye correctly sensed “intra-organisational rivalries”. The 2020 Galwan military standoff between India and China is one example. Another is the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 and Ukraine six years later, a conflict still raging. South Africa-US relations got strained over the former targeting Israel for massacring civilians in Gaza. President Donald Trump played a wrong tape, with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa beside him in White House, alleging undiplomatically an anti-White crusade.
Finally, the Pahalgam terror attack, which led to the 4-day India-Pakistan armed conflict, escalated distrust between India and China. Consequently, a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) resolution was vetoed by India over non-inclusion of the terror attack. The SCO was originally created to generate counterterrorism cooperation.
Furthermore, the BRICS summit is being held following the trade was unleashed by US President Donald Trump, employing irrationally exaggerated tariffs on exports of its trading partners. Ironically, the US-announced a 90-day respite, to enable trade deals getting finalised, coincides with the Rio summit dates. The BRICS members' share in global trade and GDP is constantly growing, besides producing 30% of global oil and 45% of the world’s agricultural products. Their share of the global GDP is now 30% against the G-7 nations’ 40%. President Trump’s disruption of the recent Canadian G-7 summit, by premature exit, underscores the current global uncertainty.
The four founding members, i.e. Brazil, Russia, India and China, sought via the group increased strategic and economic space without becoming anti-US or anti-West. South Africa extended its trans-continental reach, as Latin America, Asia and Eurasia were already represented. Two early achievements were the establishment of the New Development Bank (NDB) in 2015 and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement in 2014. The bank sought to finance projects and innovate solutions for a “more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet”. Until now, 120 projects worth $39 billion have been approved. Headquartered in Shanghai, China plays a predominant role in its operations. China, meanwhile, has scaled back its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) commitments. The NDB approved $500 million for the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit project. Project funding without political conditions has drawn nations to BRICS.
At the last summit at Kazan, Russia, the declaration sought “a more democratic, inclusive, and multipolar world”. Implicit was the desire to reduce America’s hegemony. For India, multipolarity has been a key objective. China, with growing Russian dependence on it due to the Ukraine war, instead seeks a world with itself and the US as the two poles. BRICS’ expansion was resisted by India and Brazil. The Indian experience of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) had been that when organisations expand, the core objectives become less achievable. China is the biggest trading partner of Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE. All five were added when BRICS was expanded. India and Brazil have had to exert themselves to keep the organisation from becoming anti-US.
Until President Trump, the US leaders allowed leeway to BRICS members like India. A controversial issue has been “dedollarisation” or diminishing the US currency's role in global commercial and financial transactions. China led the move. Although the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, dismissed it as impractical, President Trump threatened in November last a 100% tariff on any country supporting it. In February 2025, he pronounced that “BRICS is dead”. Therefore, the past US tolerance may be over.
India also faces a fresh distraction, as Pakistan has successfully employed its military standoff with India to resurrect the Kashmir issue and canvass international support. As of July 1, it chairs the UN Security Council for one month. A meeting of China with Pakistan and Bangladesh created speculation of China forming a new group, with some members of the non-functional SAARC. It would be a Sino-Pak response to India creating the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). Again, at the SCO meeting China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan held a closed-door meeting, without India.
Between Russia and Iran, too, differences are emerging. Ali Motahari, deputy of the Iranian Majlis, denounced the Russian unwillingness to sell S-400 systems or Su-35 fighter planes. Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, Chief of Staff of Iranian armed forces, and his Pakistani counterpart, Field Marshal Asim Munir, spoke on the phone. Iran praised Islamabad’s “courageous stance” in condemning the Israeli attacks on Iran.
The Rio summit would face these rivalries and suspicions amongst its ten members. Russia and China may use Iran to criticize the US for supporting Israel’s attacks on Iran and even joining them. The declaration would have to weave its way through this complex web. But Trump will resist American friends and rivals combining to challenge the American hegemony on the pretext of financial reform, developmental assistance for the Global South or forging new channels for sharing technology.
India must realise that many assumptions, behind its decade-old diplomacy, are now invalid. One, the US may no longer see India as vital for containing China. Thus, special treatment may be out. Two, its ideological empathy for a Zionist regime in Israel, combined with its domestic communal orientation, now constricts its ability to contain Pakistan’s outreach to the Islamic nations, especially Iran and Türkiye. Jim O’Neill earlier assessed that BRICS only generated rhetoric and symbolism. After Trump 2.0 and wars in Ukraine, Gaza and between Iran and Israel, BRICS may perform even worse.
KC Singh is former secretary, Ministry of External Affairs.
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