The BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, concluded this week with leaders from an expanded group attempting to present something increasingly visible in international politics: the institutions created after the Second World War no longer reflect the distribution of economic and political power many emerging countries believe exists today. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have now been joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, while more countries are seeking closer relationships with the group. Vladimir Putin used the summit to demonstrate that Western attempts to isolate Russia after its invasion of Ukraine have not isolated it from much of the non-Western world. Xi Jinping presented BRICS as part of a more multipolar international system, while Narendra Modi again emphasised reform of global governance without allowing the organisation to become explicitly anti-Western. The expansion looks like evidence that the balance of international power is changing. Yet institutional power is not determined simply by adding countries, populations or GDP together. The real test is whether BRICS can convert dissatisfaction with the existing order into enough agreement about an alternative order to act collectively.
The economic scale is undeniably substantial. Expanded BRICS countries account for a very large share of the world’s population and, measured using purchasing-power parity, collectively represent a larger share of global output than the G7. That statistic has enormous symbolic value because institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and UN Security Council still reflect much more heavily the power distribution created during the twentieth century. China and India are now among the world’s largest economies, yet voting power and permanent representation across major international institutions have adjusted much more slowly. Developing countries can therefore make a legitimate argument that global governance contains an institutional lag: economic power changed faster than the organisations supposedly representing it.
This creates demand for alternatives even among countries that do not want to dismantle the existing system. India illustrates this particularly well. New Delhi wants greater influence in the IMF and World Bank, permanent membership of the UN Security Council and stronger representation for developing countries. It simultaneously maintains increasingly deep strategic relationships with the United States, Europe and Japan. India therefore does not need BRICS to replace Western institutions. It needs BRICS partly to increase its outside option when negotiating within them. The existence of alternative forums raises bargaining power even when those forums never become complete substitutes.
This is the same economic logic underlying competition between firms. A monopolistic supplier possesses leverage because customers lack alternatives. Create another credible supplier and the original institution needs to respond more seriously to customer demands. BRICS therefore can influence the international system without building a parallel United Nations or IMF. If emerging economies possess more financing options, diplomatic forums and trade relationships, Western-led institutions face greater pressure to reform.
The New Development Bank, established by BRICS in 2015, demonstrates this approach. Developing countries have long criticised the IMF and World Bank for governance structures dominated disproportionately by advanced economies and for lending conditions they sometimes consider intrusive. A BRICS-backed development bank provides another source of capital. It remains far smaller than the World Bank and cannot replace global capital markets, but complete replacement is unnecessary for it to affect bargaining dynamics. Competition matters at the margin.
This is why discussion of BRICS as though it must either “replace the West” or be irrelevant misses how institutional power works. International systems rarely switch overnight from one hegemonic architecture to another. Alternative institutions initially provide additional options. Those options gradually reduce dependency. Reduced dependency changes bargaining behaviour. Over decades, the accumulated effect can become structural.
The same logic explains BRICS interest in reducing dependence on the US dollar. Russia has particularly strong incentives after Western governments froze hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian central-bank assets following the invasion of Ukraine. Iran has lived under American financial sanctions for years. China recognises that a serious conflict with the United States, particularly over Taiwan, could expose Chinese financial relationships to similar pressure. These countries therefore view dollar dependence not merely as an economic arrangement but as a strategic vulnerability.
Yet the idea of a common BRICS currency remains far less plausible than political rhetoric sometimes suggests. A reserve currency requires much more than large aggregate GDP. Investors need deep and liquid financial markets, predictable property rights, freely transferable capital and confidence that enormous quantities of assets can be held safely. The United States provides a uniquely large supply of Treasury securities, while the dollar benefits from enormous network effects because governments, banks and companies already use it.
BRICS members themselves also lack the political integration required for a shared currency. The euro works because European states created a central bank, extensive common regulation and deep legal institutions after decades of integration. Even then, the eurozone experienced major tensions during its sovereign-debt crisis. BRICS contains democracies, authoritarian states, oil exporters, commodity importers and geopolitical competitors across several continents. India and China have an unresolved border dispute. Iran and the UAE possess different regional interests. Brazil has little reason to surrender monetary sovereignty to an institution heavily influenced by Beijing. A common currency therefore would require states to surrender policy autonomy to partners they do not trust sufficiently.
The more realistic trend is incremental de-dollarisation. Countries can settle a larger share of bilateral trade in national currencies, develop alternative payment systems and diversify central-bank reserves towards gold or other currencies. None of these actions requires replacing the dollar globally. They simply reduce exposure at the margin.
This is another example of de-risking rather than decoupling. Russia cannot easily remove itself from the dollar-based financial system without substantial costs. China does not want to destroy a global trading system from which it has benefited enormously. India certainly does not want a financial world divided rigidly into Western and Chinese blocs. But each can rationally seek enough alternative infrastructure that exclusion from one network no longer produces catastrophic consequences.
Western sanctions themselves therefore create incentives for the infrastructure that could eventually weaken sanctions. This is the weaponisation-of-interdependence paradox again. The United States can impose powerful financial restrictions because global finance depends heavily on institutions under American or allied jurisdiction. Every aggressive use of that leverage gives potential targets another reason to reduce dependence on those institutions.
That does not mean sanctions are therefore mistakes. If financial leverage can never be used because using it might encourage adaptation, it ceases to provide meaningful leverage. The relevant question is whether sanctions are used selectively enough that ordinary countries continue regarding the benefits of participation as greater than the geopolitical risks.
Russia’s presence in Kazan illustrates the trade-off. Western sanctions have imposed genuine economic and technological costs, particularly by restricting access to advanced components and finance. Yet they have not produced complete international isolation. Putin hosted leaders and delegations from countries representing a substantial share of humanity, including major economies whose governments reject Russia’s invasion in varying degrees but also reject the idea that relations with Moscow should therefore cease entirely.
This is where the phrase “Global South” becomes both useful and misleading. Many developing states share dissatisfaction with Western dominance of international institutions and resist being forced into US-China or Russia-West camps. That does not mean they constitute one geopolitical bloc. India and China have major strategic tensions. Saudi Arabia and Iran remain competitors despite diplomatic normalisation. Brazil’s foreign-policy priorities differ substantially from Ethiopia’s. The Global South is better understood as a bargaining category than an alliance.
BRICS contains the same contradiction. Its members agree more strongly about what they oppose than what they support. They want more representation for developing states, less dependence on Western institutions and greater respect for national sovereignty. Agreement becomes weaker when determining the architecture that should replace the current imbalance.
China’s economic size creates the most obvious problem. If BRICS institutions expand substantially, Beijing will naturally possess enormous influence simply because its economy dwarfs those of most other members. Smaller states seeking escape from Western dominance may therefore ask whether they are building a genuinely multipolar institution or merely increasing dependence on another great power.
India has especially strong incentives to prevent the second outcome. New Delhi wants a multipolar world, not a China-centred Asia. BRICS is useful partly because it gives India institutional access to China while allowing coalitions with Brazil, South Africa, the UAE and others to dilute Chinese dominance. India therefore supports expansion and reform while resisting attempts to turn BRICS into an explicitly anti-Western geopolitical organisation.
Modi’s behaviour throughout 2024 makes that strategy clear. He visited Moscow in July, Kyiv in August, maintains expanding strategic cooperation with Washington and now attends a summit hosted by Putin alongside Xi Jinping. These actions appear contradictory only if foreign policy is assumed to require one permanent bloc. India’s strategy assumes that optionality itself creates power.
The same applies to several Gulf states. The UAE maintains extensive security and commercial relationships with the United States while deepening economic ties with China and joining BRICS. Saudi Arabia has been invited into the expanded grouping while maintaining one of Washington’s most important Middle Eastern relationships. These countries are not necessarily abandoning America. They are reducing the exclusivity of American partnership.
This is one of the defining characteristics of emerging multipolarity: middle powers increasingly refuse exclusivity. During the Cold War, military alliances and ideological blocs structured much of international politics. Today’s system is denser. A country can purchase American weapons, Chinese infrastructure and Russian energy simultaneously. It can participate in BRICS and conduct military exercises with NATO states. It can disagree with Washington on Gaza while cooperating on Iran.
Multipolarity therefore is not simply the number of great powers.
It is the number of credible relationships available to states below the great-power level.
More options increase bargaining leverage.
That can benefit developing countries because competition among larger powers encourages them to offer better financing, technology and diplomatic concessions. African governments can compare Chinese infrastructure finance with Western development programmes and Gulf investment. Southeast Asian states can attract American, Japanese, Chinese and Korean manufacturing simultaneously.
Competition between great powers can therefore produce a kind of geopolitical consumer surplus for smaller states.
But the benefit depends on maintaining competition rather than becoming dependent on the highest bidder. Chinese infrastructure finance can create debt or political dependence. Western security partnerships create their own conditions. Russian military relationships can generate different vulnerabilities.
Strategic autonomy therefore requires diversification rather than simply switching patrons.
This is where BRICS expansion could become useful if it remains flexible. A forum connecting states without demanding alliance discipline provides diplomatic space unavailable inside tighter military blocs. Countries can cooperate on development finance, trade and institutional reform without agreeing on every security issue.
The weakness is that flexibility limits collective action.
NATO can act coherently because members have explicit security commitments.
The EU can regulate a common market because members surrendered significant sovereignty to shared institutions.
BRICS preserves sovereignty almost completely.
That makes membership politically easy.
It also makes enforcement difficult.
This is the breadth-versus-depth trade-off of international institutions. The easier an organisation is to join, the fewer binding obligations it can usually impose. Expansion increases representativeness while increasing preference diversity. Preference diversity makes agreement harder.
BRICS therefore may become larger while becoming less capable of coordinated policy.
That is not necessarily failure if its purpose is primarily consultation and bargaining coordination rather than supranational government. Problems emerge only when observers measure it against institutions it was never designed to replicate.
The Kazan summit’s declaration reflects this broad approach: reform global institutions, increase the role of developing countries, expand economic cooperation and criticise unilateral sanctions while avoiding commitments requiring members to align completely on major wars. The language can appear vague precisely because vagueness is the price of keeping such different countries together.
This is constructive ambiguity at institutional scale.
India can interpret multipolarity as reforming the current order.
Russia can interpret it as weakening Western power.
China can interpret it as accelerating a post-American system.
Brazil can interpret it as greater representation for developing economies.
All can sign the same declaration because the language does not force them to resolve those differences.
Ambiguity therefore increases coalition size.
It decreases policy precision.
Again, institutional design involves trade-offs rather than perfection.
The United States and Europe should therefore avoid two opposite mistakes. The first is dismissing BRICS as incoherent and therefore irrelevant. Incoherent coalitions can still change bargaining power by creating alternative networks. The second is treating BRICS as a unified anti-Western alliance. That interpretation could become self-fulfilling if Western governments respond by forcing members to choose.
The more effective strategy is competitive reform.
Give emerging economies greater representation inside the IMF and World Bank.
Expand development financing.
Reform the UN Security Council.
Maintain attractive trade and technology relationships.
Make participation in Western institutions valuable enough that countries prefer diversification to departure.
Institutional dominance survives longer through attractiveness than coercion.
This is particularly important because many complaints driving BRICS are legitimate. The permanent UN Security Council membership still reflects the power distribution of 1945. India, now the world’s most populous country and one of its largest economies, lacks a permanent seat. Africa has no permanent representative despite containing more than a billion people and more than fifty states. IMF voting power remains weighted heavily towards advanced economies.
An international order claiming universal legitimacy cannot preserve institutional structures indefinitely after the underlying distribution of power changes.
This is the representation gap of global governance.
Institutions either adapt peacefully or alternative institutions gain demand.
BRICS is partly that demand becoming organised.
Its future therefore depends less on whether it can defeat the G7 than whether existing institutions respond to the competitive pressure it creates.
The world is unlikely to divide neatly into one Western and one BRICS system. India, the UAE, Brazil and many others have little interest in choosing one permanently. The more plausible future is a layered order where countries participate simultaneously in overlapping institutions and shift coalitions according to the issue.
China and India cooperate in BRICS while competing in Asia.
India and America cooperate in the Quad while disagreeing over Russia.
Brazil works with China on development while remaining deeply integrated with Western markets.
The UAE hosts American military forces while expanding Chinese trade.
This looks inconsistent under bloc politics.
It looks entirely rational under network politics.
Kazan therefore matters because it demonstrates that the world outside the traditional Western alliance system is becoming more organised without becoming unified.
That distinction may define the next international order.
The West is losing some monopoly over institutions.
China is gaining influence without acquiring uncontested leadership.
Russia can resist isolation without recreating Soviet-style bloc power.
Middle powers gain options.
And countries such as India increasingly possess enough economic weight to refuse the demand that every geopolitical crisis determine all of their relationships.
That is what multipolarity actually looks like.
Not several perfectly organised camps.
More actors with more outside options.
BRICS will matter if it expands those options.
It will matter less if internal contradictions prevent members from converting them into usable institutions.
The Kazan summit therefore does not prove that a new world order has arrived.
It shows why demand for one exists.
The existing system still possesses enormous financial, military and institutional advantages.
But institutions survive shifts in power most successfully when they reform before dissatisfied members decide building alternatives is easier than changing the original.
BRICS is becoming the clearest reminder that this choice is no longer theoretical.
