BRICS and the multipolar world: Can rhetoric become reality?

The AnewZ Opinion section provides a platform for independent voices to share expert perspectives on global and regional issues. The views expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the official position of AnewZ

BRICS has the scale to challenge the Western-led order. But it still lacks the political unity and financial machinery needed to turn its multipolar rhetoric into power.

With the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek over, attention is turning to another major gathering of Global South leaders: the BRICS summit in New Delhi on 12-13 September.

The meeting will give China, Russia, India and other BRICS members a fresh opportunity to strengthen ties and promote an alternative to the Western-dominated international order.

For years, China, Russia and India - together home to more than three billion people and accounting for a significant share of the global economy - have supported the emergence of a multipolar world. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that vision at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, where both called for a more balanced and representative international system.

Their language was strikingly similar. Xi described multipolarity as an “irreversible trend” and urged a stronger role for the United Nations. Putin called the formation of a “new, truly just” multipolar order “irreversible” and argued that the UN’s unifying role was becoming more important.

Putin also said new regional structures in Asia, Africa and Latin America were becoming part of this emerging architecture, presenting the SCO as one example.

But can BRICS become another?

The language of multipolarity

The argument is not new. At the BRICS Parliamentary Forum in St Petersburg in July 2024, Putin described BRICS as “one of the key elements of the emerging multipolar world order”. At the BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024, Xi called the group a pillar of multipolarity and more inclusive economic globalisation.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been less forceful than their Chinese and Russian counterparts, but both have called for a more balanced and representative international system. Lula renewed his appeal for multipolarity in 2024, while Modi told the 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro that the world order should be both multipolar and inclusive.

BRICS leaders may agree on the principle. Turning that vision into a functioning system, however, will be much harder. The United States remains the world’s pre-eminent power, even as its relative dominance has narrowed, and it is unlikely to surrender its position voluntarily.

Washington played a central role in building the post-Second World War order. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference established an international economic system centred on the U.S. dollar, which remains the world’s primary reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were based in Washington, while the United Nations established its headquarters in New York.

Challenging a system so deeply embedded in the global economy will take more than declarations.

Economic weight, financial limits

The expanded BRICS accounts for nearly half of the world’s population and around a third of global output. Intra-BRICS merchandise exports have surpassed $1 trillion. Yet economic scale does not automatically translate into financial influence. To narrow that gap, members would need stronger common institutions and deeper cooperation.

Russia has sharply increased its use of national currencies - particularly the yuan, rouble and rupee - in trade with China and India to reduce its exposure to Western financial systems. But the de-dollarisation of the global economy remains distant. Even BRICS-linked institutions acknowledge that the group is not yet building a post-dollar order or replacing the dollar at the centre of the international monetary system.

For now, BRICS is focused on developing the New Development Bank. Since its establishment in 2014, the bank has approved close to $43 billion for around 140 infrastructure and sustainable development projects. By comparison, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank’s main lending arm, can commit a comparable amount in a single financial year.

To become a credible alternative to Western-led financial institutions, the BRICS bank would have to expand its lending capacity, membership and range of services. But that raises a more difficult question: how far can it grow when BRICS members remain divided over the kind of international order they want?

• India, China signal cautious thaw as Doval and Wang meet at BRICS summit
• Iran's Pezeshkian arrives in India for BRICS summit
• U.S.-Iran war exposes BRICS rifts before New Delhi talks

Political unity is the harder test

Egypt remains a major non-NATO ally and strategic partner of the United States, while Iran is at war with Washington. Russia remains locked in confrontation with the West over Ukraine, yet the United Arab Emirates maintains close strategic ties with the U.S. and remains an important American security partner.

Those relationships do not prevent BRICS members from expanding economic and financial cooperation. They do, however, limit the group’s ability to act as a coherent geopolitical bloc. Some members want an explicit counterweight to Western power. Others want greater strategic autonomy without sacrificing their ties to Washington or Europe.

A common payments system could reduce transaction costs and exposure to external pressure. Wider use of national currencies could also expand. A single BRICS currency, however, remains politically and economically remote, not least because members differ sharply over monetary policy, financial regulation and strategic priorities.

If BRICS wants to strengthen multilateralism and help create a multipolar world, its members will first need enough political agreement to build institutions capable of acting. That may prove to be the group’s hardest test.

From declarations to power

The New Delhi summit will give BRICS leaders another chance to deepen bilateral relations at a moment of major geopolitical change. Whether that cooperation can evolve into a coherent challenge to the Western-led order remains an open question.

Ultimately, the test is not whether BRICS can produce another declaration. It is whether its members can agree on tools powerful enough to make those words matter.

Tags

News Politics Opinion BRICS