BRICS Rising: Reimagining Global Geopolitics and the Emerging Multipolar World Order
By Dr. Mukesh Sahay
From an Investment Acronym to a Geopolitical Institution
The story of BRICS began not in a foreign ministry but in the world of international finance. In 2001, Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term “BRIC” to describe Brazil, Russia, India and China as large emerging economies whose collective economic importance was expected to increase dramatically in the twenty-first century. At the time, BRIC was essentially an analytical category rather than a political organization. Yet the four countries gradually recognized that their rising economic weight could provide the foundation for diplomatic coordination. The first formal BRIC foreign ministers’ meeting took place in 2006, while the first leaders’ summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009. South Africa subsequently joined, transforming BRIC into BRICS and giving the grouping a distinctly transcontinental character connecting Latin America, Eurasia, South Asia and Africa. The transformation was important because the organization began to move beyond the narrow logic of economic growth. BRICS increasingly became a forum for discussing international financial governance, development, trade, security, climate change and reform of institutions such as the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The grouping’s evolution demonstrated an important historical phenomenon: rising economic power eventually generates demands for political representation.
The global financial crisis of 2008–09 accelerated this evolution. The crisis severely damaged confidence in the assumption that Western financial institutions were inherently superior custodians of global economic stability. Emerging economies, which had accumulated substantial foreign-exchange reserves and increasingly accounted for a large share of global economic growth, began questioning why decision-making power in the IMF, World Bank and other institutions remained disproportionately concentrated in the hands of advanced Western economies. BRICS thus emerged from a structural contradiction at the heart of globalization: economic power was becoming geographically dispersed while institutional power remained comparatively concentrated. Its demand was not initially for the destruction of the existing international system but for its democratization. This distinction remains essential even today. BRICS has consistently described its objective in terms of reforming multilateral institutions rather than abolishing multilateralism. The New Delhi Declaration once again emphasized sovereign equality, inclusiveness, consensus and the construction of a more representative international order (Government of India, 2026).
From Five to Eleven: The Expansion of BRICS
The most dramatic transformation of BRICS has been its geographical and political expansion. The admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates in 2024, followed by Indonesia in 2025, transformed what was once a five-country emerging-economy forum into a much broader coalition. The current BRICS configuration includes major energy producers, manufacturing powers, populous developing states, financial centres and strategically important countries spanning Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. Official BRICS material now identifies eleven members, while the grouping has also developed a separate partner-country category. The expansion matters because it gives BRICS a substantially wider geographical legitimacy. It is no longer possible to describe BRICS merely as an association of four large emerging economies plus South Africa. It increasingly resembles a platform for the political articulation of the Global South.
But expansion is simultaneously BRICS’s greatest strength and one of its greatest weaknesses. The larger the grouping becomes, the greater its economic and diplomatic reach; yet the greater its diversity, the harder consensus becomes. China and India have competing strategic ambitions; Saudi Arabia and Iran have historically been regional rivals; India and the United States have deepened their strategic partnership while Russia remains under intense Western sanctions; the UAE maintains extensive Western economic relations while participating in BRICS; Brazil often seeks strategic autonomy without embracing a rigid anti-Western posture; and South Africa approaches the organization from the perspective of African representation and development diplomacy. The 2026 summit therefore illustrated an important truth: BRICS unity is not based on ideological uniformity. It is based on overlapping interests in sovereignty, development, strategic autonomy and institutional reform.
This makes BRICS different from NATO, the European Union or even the G7. It has no common military command, no supranational bureaucracy comparable to the European Commission, no binding ideological doctrine and no single geopolitical centre. Its power comes from coordination rather than command. Its diversity is therefore both its vulnerability and its democratic potential. BRICS is increasingly a coalition of different political systems and development models that share the conviction that global governance should not be monopolized by a small group of established powers.
The New Delhi Summit and the Politics of a Fragmenting World
The 18th Summit took place against an unusually turbulent geopolitical background. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, disruptions to energy and shipping routes, intensifying tariff disputes, sanctions, technological competition, supply-chain vulnerabilities, climate stress and the weaponization of economic interdependence have created a world in which globalization is no longer synonymous with seamless integration. Instead, states are increasingly pursuing resilience, diversification and strategic autonomy. BRICS has become a natural forum for these concerns because many of its members are simultaneously affected by the instability of the existing international system.
The New Delhi Declaration reflected this environment. It called for dialogue and diplomacy in international disputes, expressed concern about geopolitical tensions, protectionist measures and unilateral economic coercion, and emphasized the importance of maintaining global trade, supply chains and energy flows. The declaration also reaffirmed the importance of reforming international governance institutions and strengthening the role of developing countries. The significance of this language is not that BRICS has suddenly acquired the capacity to solve global conflicts. Rather, it shows that BRICS is attempting to create a diplomatic vocabulary different from the traditional Western framing of international crises.
This was particularly visible in the summit’s handling of West Asian tensions. The inclusion of Iran alongside Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates created an extraordinarily difficult diplomatic environment. The fact that the expanded group could nevertheless produce a joint declaration calling for restraint, diplomacy and multilateral engagement demonstrated that BRICS can function as a forum even when its members have conflicting interests. The achievement should not be exaggerated, but neither should it be dismissed. In an international system increasingly characterized by polarization, the capacity to keep adversaries inside a common diplomatic framework is itself a form of geopolitical capital.
De-Dollarisation: Revolution or Gradual Diversification?
Perhaps the most controversial dimension of BRICS’s rise is its growing discussion of de-dollarisation. The dollar remains the dominant international reserve currency and the principal currency for global trade, finance, commodity pricing and cross-border transactions. The architecture surrounding the dollar—American financial markets, the SWIFT system, dollar clearing networks and the institutional power of the US financial system—has historically provided Washington with considerable structural influence. The increasing use of financial sanctions against states such as Russia and Iran has intensified debate within BRICS about excessive dependence on Western-controlled financial infrastructure.
Yet the idea that BRICS is about to create a single currency that will replace the dollar is misleading. The direction emerging from New Delhi is considerably more pragmatic. Rather than announcing a common BRICS currency, members have emphasized local-currency trade, cross-border payment interoperability and greater financial diversification. The New Delhi Declaration encouraged expanded local-currency financing and strengthened payment cooperation, while the BRICS Payment Task Force continues work on interoperability among national payment systems.
This distinction is crucial. De-dollarisation does not necessarily mean the “end of the dollar.” It can instead mean the gradual reduction of dollar dependency. If Indian companies can settle more trade in rupees, Chinese firms in yuan, Brazilian firms in reais and other BRICS members in their own currencies, the global financial system becomes more pluralistic. Such a process would take years, perhaps decades, and would require deep currency markets, reliable payment systems, convertibility, financial stability and mutual trust. BRICS therefore faces enormous technical and political obstacles. But the direction of travel is unmistakable: financial multipolarity is becoming an increasingly important component of geopolitical multipolarity.
The question is ultimately not whether BRICS can destroy dollar dominance but whether it can create meaningful alternatives at the margins of the dollar-centred system. Even a partial success would have consequences. A world in which international trade can increasingly be conducted through multiple currencies and payment platforms would reduce the ability of any single state to convert financial centrality into unilateral geopolitical leverage.
The New Development Bank: BRICS’s Most Concrete Institution
If de-dollarisation remains a work in progress, the New Development Bank (NDB) represents a more tangible BRICS achievement. Established by the five original BRICS members through the 2014 Fortaleza arrangements and operationalized in 2015, the NDB was conceived as a development-finance institution capable of mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable-development projects in emerging and developing economies. Its initial authorized capital was set at $100 billion, with subscribed capital of $50 billion among the founding members.
The NDB matters because it addresses one of the central structural problems of the Global South: the persistent infrastructure and development-financing gap. Roads, railways, renewable energy, urban infrastructure, water systems, digital connectivity and climate-resilient development require enormous capital. Traditional development institutions remain indispensable, but BRICS countries increasingly want greater institutional autonomy in determining development priorities. The NDB provides precisely such an instrument.
At the 18th Summit, leaders placed renewed emphasis on the Bank’s role in infrastructure, sustainability, local-currency financing, resource mobilization and development cooperation. They supported expansion of NDB capacity and membership and welcomed the BRICS-NDB Knowledge Portal, designed to consolidate development experiences, policy innovations and lessons from NDB-supported projects. This suggests that the NDB is evolving from simply being another multilateral development bank into a potential institutional pillar of the wider Global South ecosystem.
The challenge, however, is to ensure that the NDB does not become perceived merely as an instrument of Chinese economic influence. Its credibility will depend upon professional governance, transparent lending standards, equitable representation and genuine demand-driven financing. If it can establish itself as a trusted development institution rather than a geopolitical bank, its importance could extend far beyond BRICS itself.
Dr. Mukesh Sahay is a historian, author, educator and researcher specialising in Indian foreign policy, international relations, geopolitics and the emerging multipolar world order. He is currently a faculty member at the Free Coaching and Support for Civil Services (FCSCS), Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna Garhwal University (HNBGU). He holds a Ph.D. in Environmental History from the Central University of Himachal Pradesh.
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