Oliver Stuenkel and Alexander Gabuev
This year, the BRICS—a ten-country group whose first five members were Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has gained a renewed sense of purpose thanks to one catalyst: the United States. With U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the bloc looks, more than ever, like a necessary hedge against an increasingly erratic and fragmented global order. Many of Trump’s actions—including his chaotic tariff crusade against friends and foes, strikes on Iran and legally dubious military actions in Latin America, and withdrawal from the UN-supported Paris agreement on climate change—have sparked condemnation from the BRICS. Trump’s policies have put in stark relief BRICS’ raisons d’être: to help its members adapt to and build a less Western-centric world, gain greater leverage in their dealings with Washington, and find alternatives to Western-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
But despite their shared interests, BRICS as a grouping is not ready to seize the moment. Its members—which now include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia, and the United Arab Emirates—are too divided to turn the group into a real challenge to Washington. They vary significantly in their degree of antagonism toward the United States, and each wishes to maintain strategic autonomy. As a result, the bloc will struggle to mount joint action. To unite and marshal their collective strength, the BRICS would have to turn into something akin to the G-7—a U.S.-led group of economically advanced countries that, in the interest of promoting their common purpose and values, willingly sacrifice a significant degree of strategic autonomy. But the BRICS countries, whose bond is based mainly on a collective rejection of U.S. hegemonic power, won’t find the cohesion that could make the bloc an effective geopolitical force.
POWER IN NUMBERS