West’s BRICS+ worries underline its own decline

The debate on point, purpose, possibilities, and potency of BRICS+ has missed out on something fundamental: What this grouping’s resilience tells us about West.

Such is the depth of political, social, and economic uncertainty in Europe, and such is the scale of the US’s failure as a global power, that a sense of political scorn and economic superiority has paved the way for strategic suspicion in the West about a group of misfits such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS+). The concern is not about the emergence of a Sino-centric order with BRICS+ as its institutional vehicle. The endurance of Sino-Indian and Iran-Emirati rivalries despite diplomatic dialogue in both dyads, and independent concerns about Chinese behaviour among other member- States in BRICS+, reassures western capitals that this group is not a unified geopolitical bloc. The rather mild 2026 New Delhi Declaration will, unsurprisingly, not raise hackles.

The results of China’s blunting strategy against the US, as the BRICS+ summit in New Delhi showcased, are there for all to see.

The debate on the point, purpose, possibilities, and potency of BRICS+ has missed out on something fundamental: What this grouping’s resilience tells us about the West. Political scorn is a good place to start, for this is what BRICS+ has long evoked in Europe and the US. Unless they share a set of values, ideally of the liberal democratic kind, BRICS+ held no prospect of becoming an alliance. This was the western charge anyway, and it held some merit. But it overlooked the fact that liberalism in Europe was both uneven and accidental. It equally underestimated the centrality of American power and German guilt to keep the embers of liberalism burning. Unsurprisingly, the first shock came when US President Donald Trump threatened to unplug American power from Europe. The second, and more consequential, shock is playing out with the electoral win of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt — the first time a far-Right party has won power in Germany since World War II.

The illusion of trans- Atlantic liberal cohesion nurtured a sense of civilisational, racial, and cultural greatness in America and Europe. It instilled a fatal belief in the “end of history” after the Cold War. The selective application of norms and rules of the erstwhile rules-based international order was a consequence of such pretensions. In contrast, the BRICS+ misfits share the rather thin belief that one value does not fit all, hold their own share and sphere of violent hypocrisy, and, at best, muster homilies about multipolarity. And yet, it is the trans-Atlantic order, with all its attendant values, that has collapsed rather than the 11 countries that met in New Delhi.

The second charge against BRICS+ relates to the question of economic interests, and the conflicts therein. The National Development Bank (NDB), launched in 2014 with $100bn in seed capital helped several African, Latin American, and Asian countries to seek developmental assistance. Despite its aim to offer an alternative to US-led financial institutions, the NDB could never truly match the financial and political might of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Moreover, the American dollar remains the most traded currency in the world. The resulting sense of economic superiority compelled an argument in the West that BRICS+ is not able to align and manage its economic interests.

This argument has come under strain in recent years. First, China’s unprecedented rise as an industrial and technological superpower has dislocated the post-Cold War geoeconomic equilibrium. In Europe, for example, the German economy is under severe stress as its automobile industry faces an existential threat from Chinese automakers. Berlin is hoping that its pivot to defence manufacturing could offer a mid- to long-term economic cushion like the interwar years. But, just like the interwar years, sceptics in France and Poland are starting to question Berlin’s direction even if it is, for now, rearming in good faith. Industrial disruption and rising unemployment will only feed far-Right politics across Europe and its associated risks, not abate it.

Second, BRICS+ does not require a different multilateral institutional framework to challenge western economic hegemony. The US-China trade war, weaponisation of global supply lines, imposition of sanctions, and Trump’s tariffs have pushed many BRICS+ member-States (though not just them) to diversify their international trade networks and supply chains, and develop bilateral trading mechanisms that are liberated from the dollar and western financial infrastructure such as the SWIFT network. These countries are effectively demonstrating that bloc politics is not needed to bypass American and European systems. Bilateral payment mechanisms such as the Special Rupee Vostro Accounts, the Renminbi-Rouble settlement, the Rouble-Rial arrangement, and the Renminbi-Dirham swap among others, offer alternatives that have similar effects on undermining western financial dominance as a multilateral system might have.

The final aspect is of rising strategic suspicion about BRICS+ in western capitals. This is a matter of pure power politics. The fact that China is enabling Russia and Iran to fight against American allies in Europe and West Asia, has successfully deterred Washington DC from escalating its trade war, is a peer-rival to the US in the technological and economic (if not military) domains, and has developed considerable financial (if not political) heft across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are all signs that Beijing is building the sinews of long-term systemic dominance. That India and Brazil will act as balancers against Chinese or Russian attempts to convert this grouping into an anti-western outfit is known. But so deep are trans-Atlantic security anxieties that the US will only increase its effort to sow division among these misfits.

This is why the idea of India acting to limit, or blunt, Chinese power in BRICS+, while exploiting the grouping for its material and status gain, wherever possible, is compelling. After all, China did the same in West-dominated institutions over the last three decades. The results of China’s blunting strategy against the US, as the BRICS+ summit in New Delhi showcased, are there for all to see.

Avinash Paliwal teaches at SOAS University of London and is a Nonresident Scholar in the Carnegie South Asia Program, Washington D.C. The views expressed are personal