Another BRICS in the wall. The emblematic Pink Floyd song that infected an entire generation with rebellion synthesizes the ambitions of the large emerging markets associated in an increasingly powerful club. But also its famous and catchy chorus (Hey! Teacher! Leave us kids alone!) symbolizes the transgressive message that the BRICS + convey to the G-7, the group of industrialized powers that governs the Western hegemonic power in the world order.
The meeting in Kazan (Russia) this week has revealed that its diplomatic and economic capacity remains intact. This is the first major act of the BRICS + after its staging in South Africa, in August 2023, with the incorporation of Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Ethiopia into its ranks, which left Saudi in limbo Saudi, who still reserves to be a full partner, and suffered the resignation of Argentina after landing at Javier Milei’s Casa Rosada. This club of countries is consolidated despite frequent internal disputes between the founding quartet – Brazil, Russia, India and China – about their place in the world or the supposed isolation of Vladimir Putin from the international stage.
However, nothing seems to disturb its great challenge, signed in Kazan, to establish itself as an alternative to Western power and with enough muscle to shake up, even more, the “chaotic” world order created by the industrialized powers.
Perhaps the greatest spark left by his appointment in Russia is the extensive list of delegations (32) that shows that the image that Putin, who did not go to Johannesburg due to the search and arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC), did not has been precisely vilified. This is attested to by the fact that 15 nations have officially knocked on their doors – Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Nicaragua, Algeria and Turkey, among others – about thirty applicants.
“The US has stopped seeing the BRICS + as a box of surprises and is beginning to perceive resentment in them for Western hypocrisy and hegemonic desires to free themselves from the yoke of the G-7 and their allies,” says Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy.
Acceptance of this doctrine is inseparable from obtaining permission to join the group, Johnson warns. Along with the assumption of criticism of the multilateral system that emerged in Bretton Woods in 1944 that gave rise to the IMF and the World Bank, and their derivatives, the international financial architecture and its model of cross-border payments and, of course, the immense power of the dollar .
In short, the BRICS + have declared war on the Washington consensus, the council of the IMF and the World Bank, the Fed and the American Treasury that has governed the destinies of countries at risk of suspension of payments, granting or rejecting urgent financial aid as a gendarme of multilateralism and lender of last resort. In exchange, of course, for harsh reforms and fiscal adjustments with social bills.
A new multipolar world in an embryonic state
Putin expressed it, in other terms, but with the same underlying script: the future enlargements of the BRICS + reveal that “a new multipolar world is in the making, in opposition to the order dominated by the US and the dollar” and that this challenge responds to an “aspiration of the majority of the international community.” In line with the perception of Alicia García-Herrero, analyst for Asia at Natixis, for whom “the expansion of the BRICS is a clear sign that the global balance of power is changing.”
The Russian leader’s warning was issued openly and immediately after talks with the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Türkiye is the only NATO partner in the BRICS orbit. He is not there, although he is expected. While he wakes up from the decades of ostracism that the EU used to submit his request for membership in a club whose leaders of this century he has clothed with the Christian cross to repel the Ottoman country.
Beijing, Tehran and Ankara make up the geostrategic triangle that Moscow judges essential to survive economically and financially from Western sanctions. China has just surpassed the EU as a whole as the main customer of Siberian oil – and together with India, they absorb 78% of Russian crude oil sales; Iran provides the expertisse to circumvent energy embargoes and use safe channels and seaports and Türkiye is a first-rate commercial transit for the Kremlin.
Although, above all, the four are extremely interested in building a joint and alternative payment system to Swift, which companies and banks use in practically all of their international financial transactions.
The ban on Russia from accessing the Swift architecture and denominating its foreign operations in dollars since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine has received another twist with the veto, which the G-7 has extended, under threat of sanction, to banks of markets that trade with Russia. Most especially, the Chinese and Turks, who have been involved in the first battles against the delays in payments from the Kremlin. At a time when the Russian economy is beginning to show signs of exhaustion after a two-year period in which its military industry, at full capacity, has provided its coffers with sufficient fiscal and monetary resources to sustain the country’s finances.
The current nine BRICS + members have increased their proportion of global GDP by 11 points, to 35.6%, and are close to 40% of the world’s population, compared to 25.8% of the planet’s wealth and 10% of G-7 demographics. At the same time, several of its most distinguished representatives – Brazil, India and South Africa – have taken the reins of the G-20, the authentic international government, between 2023 and 2025. While Luiz Inázio Lula da Silva – absent in Kazan, but with an active telematic role – continues to exercise the group’s voice against the tyranny of the greenback.
The dollar as a Western weapon of mass destruction
The fight against the dollar is the banner that the emerging market club plans to establish if it attacks global monetary strength. Lula He described it perfectly on his first trip to China upon assuming his mandate: “Every night I wonder why all countries have the dollar as their trading base.” He did so before the New Development Bank (NDB) that the old BRICS set up in 2014 to beat the multilateral loans of Bretton Woods.
However, the NDB has not yet gained influence among the Global South from the World Bank, the largest credit injector in the current multilateral framework. The BRICS organization only deployed about 8,000 million dollars in 2023, compared to 73,000 in the sister institution of the IMF. It is a sign that the BRICS rebellion is not a bed of roses that leaves several of Lula’s questions unanswered: “Who decided that the dollar would be the predominant currency after the disappearance of the gold standard?” The Brazilian leader pointed to the Chinese renminbi –alter ego of the yuan in the exchange market – as a reference value for a basket of BRICS currencies or directly to fight against the dollar.
Western sanctions against Russia, Iran and China and threats to Turkey – with ties to Hamas, to the despair of Israel, NATO and the US – do not help to stop the attempt to decoupling that the BRICS + consider carrying out in the monetary order. While India exercises Trojan horse in the eyes of several of its emerging partners to relax tensions with the West. The most populous country in the world and the largest global economy is flirting with the US to join AUKUS, the version of NATO in Asia against Chinese expansionism, and participates in the Indo-Pacific Alliance for trade and investment, sponsored by the Biden Administration.
Robert Green, Asia director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, admits that “BRICS efforts to adopt the renminbi have accelerated.” Washington “should take note of the frustration caused by the dollar and allow an alternative currency, encouraging the participation of guarantee partners, such as India.”
The Global South the wild card up the sleeve of the BRICS
The strong diplomatic ties of the BRICS + with non-aligned countries predisposes them to break with the multilateral rules of the game of the hitherto world order, “monitored by the US,” admits Jim O’Neill, the former chief economist at Goldman Sachs who coined the BRICS term in 2001. O’Neill attributes the origin of this train wreck to the geostrategic pulse between Washington and Beijing since 2016, when Donald Trump entered the White House and Xi Jinping assumed full powers in China.
O’Neill recalls three other tactics of the lobby of the BRICS with the Global South. The more than 100 billion dollars of joint international currency reserves that they put on the table to create the NDB, the involvement of this broad list of nations in the New Silk Road and the Invisible Hand of China in Africa and Latin America to invest in strategic sectors in exchange for credits on account. In this group, India copies the foreign tactics of its regional rival, Brazil remains in its wake, although in the exploration phase, and Russia focuses its diplomatic tentacles on security and defense.
Alexander Gabuev emphasizes Foreign Affairs in which the West “knows that they have put up a fight and that they will have a decisive role in the global order.” Essentially, because the suitors of the Global South do not stop growing – Indonesia, Mexico, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Palestine were other guests to Kazan – China directs its expansionist designs with “great discretion”, India and Brazil act as “effective transmission belts” ” and Russia exhibits its nuclear power whenever it can.
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