The leaders of the world’s most powerful nations outside the West met in Kazan, Russia, this year for the latest edition of the BRICS Plus Summit, which included newly-minted members Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia as well as dozens of prospective members and likeminded nations from around the world. Initially confined to a core of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, the BRICS has rapidly transformed from a Wall Street investment portfolio handle into a formidable geopolitical bloc. Goldman Sachs’ original ‘BRICS fund’ may have folded almost a decade ago amid mounting losses, but it has inspired a new power grouping, which seeks to supplant the Western Group of Seven (G7) coterie in the 21st century.
This year’s edition was particularly historic, since it included new members such as Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt as well as a dozen prospective members, including Malaysia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Composed of an extremely diverse group of nations, both in terms of political systems and economic development levels, the BRICS is far from a monolithic group. If anything, it remains to be seen if the group is sufficiently coherent to mount a decisive challenge to the US-led G7 grouping, which has undergirded the post-war global order for the past seven decades.
What makes this year’s summit particularly relevant, however, is its geopolitical implication. By hosting world leaders from across the Global South, including the United Nations’ Secretary General, Russian President Vladimir Putin directly challenged his isolation within the western world following his invasion of Ukraine two years earlier. No wonder then, the Kremlin touted the summit as “the largest foreign policy event ever held” by Russia, which has hosted G7 leaders in the past.
Leveraging his newfound diplomatic clout, Putin, now confidently surrounded by Global South powers, accused the West of engaging in “illegal unilateral sanctions, blatant protectionism, manipulation of currency and stock markets, and relentless foreign influence ostensibly promoting democracy, human rights, and the climate change agenda.”
In his concluding statements, he praised the summit of the BRICS bloc as a new counterweight to the West’s “perverse methods.” Russian media networks quickly touted the summit’s participants as constituting a “global majority” who are challenging Western hegemony. Yevgeny Popov, a popular Russian TV host, even went so far as boasting: “The West, the U.S., Washington, Brussels, London ended up isolating themselves.” Upon closer examination, however, what has made BRICS a more compelling force on the global stage is the West’s disastrous policies and geopolitical in recent years, most notably in the Middle East, which remains a focal point of international politics.
America’s Collapsing Standing
The U.S. has long presented itself as a ‘global policeman,’ a supposed anchor of a rules-based international order. And of all contemporary American presidents, Joseph Biden has been most unabashed about his country’s supposed centrality to international peace and prosperity.
As soon as he secured the presidency, Joseph Biden vowed to "make America respected around the world again." Few months later, he visited the US State Department, where he told American diplomats that he would “repair our moral leadership” following years of ‘Make America Great Again’ unilateralism and polarizing policies under the Trump administration.
Crucially, he also spoke of hosting a ‘Summit of Democracy’ to “rally the nations of the world to defend democracy globally, to push back the authoritarianism’s advance, we’ll be a much more credible partner because of these efforts to shore up our own foundations.” In his first State of the Union, Biden made it clear that competing with authoritarian superpowers would be his primary foreign policy goal.
Given Biden’s long stint in Washington DC’s foreign policy circles, and surrounded by veteran foreign policy hands, he had little trouble convincing countless allies, especially in Europe, and a whole host of non-aligned nations, including many in Southeast Asia. But the same US president is ending his term in office with a long list of foreign policy disasters, beginning with his catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan early in office to his direct military support for an ongoing military campaign, which has cost tens of thousands of civilian lives from Gaza to Beirut in contravention of international law.
Worse, the U.S.’ policies has made a total regional war, including a potential military conflict with regional powerhouse of Iran, a distinct possibility. Increasingly bogged down in the Middle East, America’s ability to compete with, and military confront, superpowers elsewhere will be massively circumscribed.
Charting A New World Order
On the surface, the BRICS is a formidable force, constituting about a third of the world’s land surface and as much as 45 percent of the global population. Crucially, they make up a combined Gross Domestic Product of close to $35 trillion in nominal terms. In Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, which measures domestic price differentials between the Western and Global South economies, BRICS overtook G7 as early as 2019.
The BRICS grouping has also established a number of institutions, including the New Development Bank, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, the BRICS pay. This year’s BRICS summit, however, produced little concrete developments on the economic front, given Putin’s high hopes for challenging the world’s western-dominated financial system.
As Brazilian academic Oliver Stuenkel explains: “On a substantive level, little was achieved,” with the exception of the creation of a new category of ‘BRICS Partner Country,’ which itself is also a bit of mystery since “it is not clear what exactly this [new category] entails. Probably not that much for now.” If anything, BRICS expansion has exposed internal faultlines: On one hand, there are the more developmentally-oriented Brazil, South Africa and India, which position themselves as globally non-aligned nations, while Russia and China are keen on turning the grouping into a more explicitly anti-Western geopolitical bloc.Nevertheless, the BRICS is gaining greater global influence and legitimacy these days, precisely because non-western powers as diverse as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are seeking membership in the grouping to hedge against the West’s failings. No less than the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has been publicly critical of America’s failed policies in the Middle East and beyond, attended the BRICS Summit, underscoring the grouping’s growing geopolitical significance. To be fair, the UN chief raised his concern with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and called for “a just peace” as a long-term solution to the ongoing crisis, while echoing BRICS’ members demand for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.
The ultimate winner, however, was Putin, who relished the strategic embrace of much of the Global South powers. Boosted by the BRICS Summit’s symbolic success, he even fancied more constructive relations with the West should Donald Trump return to the White House next year.
“What Mr. Trump said recently, what I heard, (is) he spoke about the desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine,” the Russia leader said. “It seems to me that he said it sincerely. We certainly welcome statements of this kind, no matter who makes them,” he added, signaling a thaw in relations with Washington down the road.
Overall, Putin’s ‘de-stigmatization’ is the upshot of the West’s real and perceived double-standards as well as geopolitical blunders, most dramatically amid the massive humanitarian crisis in the Middle East. Thus, the steady rise in BRICS’ prominence is a direct result of the steady decline of American global and moral leadership.
