BRICS decided this week to invite six additional countries into the organisation. Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa from January next year, potentially transforming a five-country grouping into an eleven-member forum spanning major energy exporters, emerging economies and some of the largest populations in the developing world. The expansion will inevitably be interpreted as evidence that a new anti-Western bloc is emerging. That interpretation captures part of the geopolitical shift taking place, but it probably exaggerates how coherent the countries inside BRICS actually are.
The organisation matters because it reflects a genuine dissatisfaction with the distribution of power inside the post-1945 international system. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United Nations Security Council were designed around a global distribution of economic and political power that has changed substantially. European countries retain disproportionate influence across several institutions, the United States remains uniquely powerful, and emerging economies have repeatedly argued that governance structures have not adjusted quickly enough to their growing economic weight. BRICS gives those states a platform through which to demand reform without waiting for existing powers to provide it voluntarily.
That grievance is not invented by China or Russia. India has argued for decades that institutions such as the Security Council require reform, including a permanent Indian seat. African governments reasonably question why a continent of more than a billion people possesses no permanent Security Council representation while Britain and France each retain vetoes. Emerging economies have sought greater voting power in international financial institutions as their shares of global output have increased. The legitimacy problem of global governance therefore exists independently of whether every BRICS proposal offers a good solution.
This distinction matters because Western commentary often interprets demands for institutional reform primarily through geopolitical competition with China. If every criticism of the existing order is treated as evidence of Chinese influence, Western governments risk conceding the argument before it begins. Countries can believe the international system is disproportionately Western without wanting a Chinese-led replacement.
India is the clearest example. It is simultaneously a member of BRICS and the Quad, maintains a strategic partnership with the United States, participates in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and buys substantial quantities of Russian energy. New Delhi does not appear to see these relationships as contradictory because it is not organising foreign policy around membership in one permanent bloc. BRICS is useful when it increases Indian bargaining power or advances reform of global institutions; the Quad is useful when cooperation with the United States, Japan and Australia serves Indian interests in the Indo-Pacific.
This is multi-alignment rather than non-alignment. Traditional non-alignment emphasised avoiding formal incorporation into great-power blocs. Multi-alignment goes further by participating in several overlapping institutions simultaneously and using each for different purposes. India does not need BRICS to become an alliance for BRICS to remain valuable. In fact, an explicitly anti-American BRICS could become less useful to India because it would constrain precisely the strategic flexibility New Delhi wants to preserve.
Brazil has similar reasons for resisting a rigid anti-Western identity. President Lula wants greater influence for developing countries and has criticised aspects of Western policy, particularly around Ukraine and global economic governance. Brazil nevertheless possesses extensive trade and investment relationships with the United States and Europe and has little strategic interest in subordinating its foreign policy to Beijing or Moscow. BRICS can increase Brazil’s diplomatic leverage without requiring Brazil to choose a geopolitical camp.
The new membership makes this diversity even more obvious. Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations only this year after years of intense regional rivalry. Egypt and Ethiopia have serious disagreements over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Nile waters. India and China have an unresolved border dispute and experienced deadly clashes as recently as 2020. Saudi Arabia remains a major American security partner even while developing closer relationships with China. The UAE similarly maintains extensive Western economic and security ties.
Calling this an alliance therefore stretches the term beyond usefulness. Alliances normally involve substantial agreement about threats and commitments to respond collectively. BRICS members do not even agree on who the principal geopolitical threat is. India views China itself as a major strategic challenge. Iran views the United States as a central adversary. Saudi Arabia wants to diversify beyond Washington without necessarily replacing America with Beijing. Brazil generally wants autonomy from great-power confrontation rather than participation in it.
What unites these states is therefore less shared ideology than shared dissatisfaction with hierarchy.
That can still produce meaningful cooperation. Countries do not need identical interests to coordinate around areas where their preferences overlap. They can demand greater representation for emerging economies, increase trade in local currencies, finance infrastructure through the New Development Bank and create diplomatic forums in which Western governments are not automatically central.
The New Development Bank is particularly important because it demonstrates what institutional competition can look like. The World Bank and other established lenders provide enormous development financing but attach procedures and, in some contexts, governance or policy conditions that borrowers can find intrusive. A development bank backed by emerging economies creates another source of finance and therefore another option.
Options increase bargaining power.
If a country has only one potential lender, the lender can impose stronger conditions. If several institutions compete to finance the same infrastructure project, borrowers can compare terms. This is the same logic India uses in foreign policy: dependence decreases when alternatives increase.
Competition between international institutions can therefore be beneficial if it forces lenders to become more responsive and efficient. The danger is that competition could instead reduce standards if governments shop for whichever institution asks the fewest questions about debt sustainability, corruption or environmental consequences.
Again, conditionality is neither automatically good nor automatically imperialistic. Conditions can protect lenders and citizens from governments undertaking economically disastrous projects. They can also become mechanisms through which powerful states impose policy preferences on weaker ones. The relevant question is who designs the conditions, whether they are transparent and whether borrowing governments retain meaningful alternatives.
BRICS expansion therefore represents part of a broader movement towards institutional multipolarity. The international system is no longer organised simply around one set of Western institutions and a clearly separate rival bloc. Instead, states increasingly participate in overlapping organisations whose memberships and purposes intersect.
India belongs to BRICS and the Quad.
Turkey belongs to NATO while cooperating extensively with Russia.
Saudi Arabia remains closely connected to Washington while seeking BRICS membership and deepening relations with Beijing.
Institutional membership no longer tells us automatically which geopolitical “side” a country occupies.
This makes international politics messier but may give middle powers greater agency. During the Cold War, alignment with one superpower often constrained relationships with the other. In a more multipolar system, countries can auction cooperation across issues. A government can negotiate security with Washington, infrastructure with Beijing, energy with Moscow and development finance through several institutions.
That creates leverage because great powers increasingly have to compete for partnership rather than assume loyalty.
The United States sometimes appears uncomfortable with this because its post-Cold War dominance made alignment relatively inexpensive for partners. Countries seeking access to Western markets, institutions and security guarantees often had limited alternatives. China’s economic rise has changed that environment by giving governments another enormous source of trade, investment and financing.
BRICS expansion institutionalises part of that choice.
But increasing membership also creates a collective-action problem. Organisations become more representative when they contain more states, but decision-making becomes harder because preferences become more diverse. Five countries already struggled to agree on major questions. Eleven will contain even more conflicting interests.
This is the fundamental trade-off between scale and cohesion.
A small organisation can coordinate more easily but represents fewer interests.
A large organisation gains legitimacy and economic weight while becoming harder to coordinate.
The European Union experiences this continuously. Expanding from a relatively small Western European community towards twenty-seven members increased its geographical and economic reach but made unanimity on foreign policy much harder. NATO faces similar problems when members possess different threat perceptions.
BRICS will face an even larger version because it lacks the EU’s supranational institutions and NATO’s shared defence commitment.
This means aggregate statistics can become misleading. An expanded BRICS may represent an enormous share of world population, oil production and GDP. Those numbers describe the resources located inside member states. They do not demonstrate that those resources can be mobilised collectively.
Potential power is not coordinated power.
Saudi oil production does not automatically become an instrument of Indian foreign policy because both countries belong to BRICS. Chinese manufacturing capacity does not become Brazilian industrial capacity. Iranian military interests do not become South African military interests.
International organisations become powerful when members can convert aggregated resources into coordinated action.
That requires agreement.
The European Union’s economic weight becomes geopolitical power when twenty-seven states agree on sanctions or trade rules. When they do not, the same aggregate GDP produces much less political leverage.
BRICS therefore needs to be evaluated through what members actually coordinate rather than the combined size of their economies.
Currency is a good example. Discussion about a potential BRICS currency or reducing dependence on the US dollar has generated enormous attention. Several members have genuine reasons to increase trade using local currencies, particularly Russia and Iran because Western sanctions make dollar-based finance more difficult.
But replacing the dollar as the world’s dominant reserve currency requires much more than political desire. Investors need deep and liquid financial markets, confidence in legal institutions, freedom to move capital and a large supply of safe assets. The United States possesses those advantages despite its own political dysfunction.
China’s renminbi is the most plausible major alternative among BRICS currencies, but China’s capital controls and financial system limit its international role. India is unlikely to want the renminbi replacing the dollar if that simply shifts monetary dependence from Washington towards Beijing.
Again, BRICS unity disappears once the alternative becomes specific.
Members can agree that dollar dominance gives the United States excessive financial influence.
They may not agree on what should replace it.
This may become the defining characteristic of BRICS: agreement about dissatisfaction is easier than agreement about institutional replacement.
That does not make the organisation meaningless. Opposition coalitions can influence systems even when members disagree about the ideal alternative. Developing countries coordinating demands can increase pressure for reform of IMF quotas, World Bank governance or Security Council representation.
The mistake would be assuming that because BRICS challenges aspects of Western dominance, it therefore possesses one coherent vision of a post-Western order.
China probably wants institutions reflecting its status as a near-peer competitor to the United States.
India wants institutions recognising India as an independent pole.
Brazil wants greater influence for Latin America and the developing world.
South Africa wants stronger African representation.
Russia increasingly wants institutions capable of reducing Western economic and diplomatic pressure.
Those objectives overlap.
They are not identical.
The admission of Ethiopia and Egypt also makes African representation inside BRICS substantially larger, which may strengthen the organisation’s claim to speak for parts of the Global South. Yet the phrase “Global South” itself should be used cautiously. It groups together countries with radically different income levels, political systems and strategic interests.
Singapore and Niger are both geographically outside the traditional West but face completely different developmental challenges. Saudi Arabia is a wealthy hydrocarbon exporter. Ethiopia is a lower-income country with a very different fiscal and demographic structure. India is a continental-scale nuclear power. Treating them as one political constituency can obscure more than it explains.
The Global South is therefore most useful as a description of shared structural grievances, not shared policy preferences. Many states believe global institutions give insufficient weight to developing countries, that Western governments apply international rules selectively and that the economic order should provide greater development finance and policy autonomy.
Those complaints can create cooperation without producing ideological unity.
Western governments should take that seriously. The strongest response to BRICS expansion is probably not trying to prevent countries from joining. That would reinforce the argument that Western powers want developing countries to choose sides.
The more effective strategy is making existing institutions more representative and Western partnerships more attractive.
If countries join BRICS because they want additional financing, offer competitive financing.
If they want greater representation, reform governance.
If they resent inconsistent application of international norms, reduce the inconsistency.
Institutional competition should create incentives for improvement rather than demands for loyalty.
China faces the same challenge. Beijing may welcome BRICS expansion because it appears to increase the influence of institutions in which China plays a central role. Yet if China attempts to dominate the expanded organisation too visibly, other members have incentives to resist precisely because they joined partly to escape hierarchical dependence.
A multipolar institution cannot function effectively if it simply replaces one centre with another.
India will be particularly important in preventing that outcome. Its rivalry with China means New Delhi has little interest in allowing BRICS to become an instrument of Chinese leadership. At the same time, India benefits from BRICS remaining significant enough to increase its bargaining power with Western institutions.
That creates a subtle strategy: strengthen the institution while preventing any one member from controlling it.
This resembles India’s wider foreign policy almost perfectly.
BRICS expansion therefore tells us less about the creation of a new anti-Western alliance than about the fragmentation of international authority. Countries increasingly want several institutional options rather than one dominant system.
That can make global coordination harder.
It can also make the international order more representative.
The outcome depends on whether competing institutions become complements, providing different routes for cooperation, or rival blocs that increasingly duplicate and undermine one another.
The first would produce pluralistic multipolarity.
The second could produce economic fragmentation.
As of this week, BRICS remains much closer to the first than the second. Its members trade extensively with Western countries, participate in Western-led institutions and disagree profoundly among themselves. Expansion increases its political significance without eliminating those contradictions.
That is why the headline numbers should be treated cautiously.
More countries.
More population.
More oil.
More GDP.
Those increase potential influence.
They also increase the number of interests that need to be reconciled before that influence can be used.
BRICS is becoming larger.
Whether it becomes stronger will depend on whether eleven very different countries can agree on what they actually want their collective power to do.
