Has the BRICS Moment Passed?

In August 2023, the BRICS cooperation platform announced the admission of six new members—Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—in a move widely interpreted as a direct challenge to the G7 and the liberal international order. By 2025, with Indonesia's accession, the bloc had grown to ten nations representing over half the world's population and approximately 44% of global GDP. Yet this expansion, rather than signaling the emergence of a coherent counter-hegemonic bloc, has exposed the profound structural contradictions that have long plagued the grouping. Seventeen years after its inaugural summit, BRICS remains an organization of considerable symbolic weight but limited operational capacity—a forum for rhetorical solidarity rather than a disciplined alternative to Western-led institutions.

The question of whether BRICS has "largely failed" to become a coherent alternative bloc demands analytical precision. If "alternative bloc" signifies a unified economic-security system capable of credibly replacing the US/West-led order, the verdict of failure is inescapable. However, if the standard is a growing multipolar platform offering parallel financing and diplomatic coordination, BRICS has achieved modest but meaningful success. This essay argues that the claim of failure is mostly fair, but it requires careful qualification: BRICS has partially challenged Western influence by creating institutional footholds and diplomatic space for Global South aspirations, yet it remains fundamentally constrained by internal disunity, institutional mimicry, and the enduring structural power of the very system it purports to challenge. The group's trajectory reveals less a coherent alternative project than a series of ad hoc adaptations to a shifting global order—adaptations that often reinforce rather than transform existing hierarchies.

The Architecture of Incoherence: Why BRICS Is Not a True Bloc

Geopolitical Fragmentation and Strategic Divergence

The most fundamental obstacle to BRICS' emergence as a cohesive counter-bloc lies in the irreconcilable strategic interests of its members. The grouping combines post-imperial powers (Russia and China) with post-colonial democracies (Brazil, India, and South Africa), creating what one analyst terms "a heterogeneity that makes unified action costly and complicated." This diversity, often celebrated as the bloc's strength, functions in practice as a primary weakness, preventing the establishment of a unified political or economic stance.

The India-China rivalry exemplifies this fragmentation. Despite both being founding members, their relationship is defined by deep-seated security tensions, including the 2020 Galwan Valley clashes. India's participation in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) with the United States, Japan, and Australia—explicitly designed to counter Chinese influence—underscores the impossibility of BRICS functioning as a unified geopolitical actor. As one analysis notes, "India's security concerns regarding China outweigh its issues with US hegemony." This is not a minor divergence but a fundamental incompatibility: for India, the primary strategic challenge is not Western dominance but Chinese expansionism.

The 2024 expansion has intensified these fractures. The inclusion of Iran alongside Saudi Arabia and the UAE—states with diametrically opposed regional alignments and security partnerships—has transformed BRICS into what one observer calls an "interest-based and flexible cooperation model rather than a classical alliance structure." The Middle East crisis of 2026 served as a "stress test" exposing these divisions: when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and targeted Indian oil tankers, India delivered a formal protest note to Tehran, revealing the underlying geopolitical dissonance among BRICS members. During a BRICS consultative meeting in April 2026, the group was unable to issue a joint statement on the Iran crisis—a telling indication of its paralysis on matters of strategic substance.

Russia's geopolitical trajectory further complicates the picture. After its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia sought to cast BRICS as a geopolitical counterweight to the West, while India and China preferred focusing on geo-economic coordination. This tension has only deepened following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and subsequent exclusion from SWIFT. While some BRICS members have deepened economic ties with Russia, others—particularly India and Brazil—have maintained cautious distance, unwilling to be drawn into an anti-Western confrontation that serves primarily Russian interests. The group's 2022 Foreign Ministers' Joint Statement on Ukraine could only "recall national positions" rather than adopt a unified line, exposing the rhetorical solidarity as a mask for very real fractures.

The Limits of Institutional Reach

If geopolitical divergence represents the first-order problem, institutional inadequacy constitutes the second. The New Development Bank (NDB) and Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) were presented as breakthroughs in financial multipolarity—institutions that would provide Global South nations with alternatives to Western-dominated finance. Yet in practice, their reach remains modest and their operational logic surprisingly conventional.

The NDB has approved approximately $33 billion in projects since its 2015 launch, a figure dwarfed by the World Bank's $260 billion asset base and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank's $58.8 billion in lending. The CRA, despite being declared "fully operational," has never been accessed by any member country. As one analysis puts it, "BRICS always succeeds in creating calls for new institutions but struggles when it comes to actualizing them into a coherent alternative system to the West." The gap between aspirational rhetoric and operational reality is stark.

More fundamentally, the NDB reproduces rather than transforms the institutional logic of the Bretton Woods system—a phenomenon one scholar terms "replicative institutionalism." Rather than embodying genuine alternatives, BRICS-led institutions "mirror the very frameworks they aim to challenge," reinforcing existing hierarchies through institutional mimicry and adherence to prevailing orthodoxies. The NDB's focus on large infrastructure projects follows the World Bank-IMF model, with "centralized and top-down planning at the cost of decentralized and community-led solutions to local problems." Even its lending patterns replicate established patterns: China ($8.1 billion) and India ($7.5 billion) are the largest borrowers, with 35% of funds going to transport infrastructure.

This institutional reproduction is not accidental but structural. The NDB's governance structures, operational procedures, and policy frameworks have been shaped by the same professional norms and technocratic expertise that dominate Western institutions. As the concept of "replicative institutionalism" suggests, "legitimacy in global governance requires not just representational diversity but also ideological and structural divergence from existing models"—a condition the BFA has not met. The result is "legitimacy without autonomy and representation without rupture."

Rhetorical Excess and Operational Deficit

The gap between BRICS' rhetoric and its operational capacity is perhaps its most defining feature. Annual summit declarations—the 2025 Rio Declaration stretched to 47 pages—repeat familiar refrains about multipolarity, South-South solidarity, and reform of the international order. These demands echo similar calls in the 2013 Durban Declaration, the 2016 Goa Declaration, and the 2023 Johannesburg-II Declaration, suggesting a pattern of "non-action" rather than institutional progress. The persistence of language about IMF quota reform year after year—without substantive change—highlights the organization's symbolic rather than transformational character.

This rhetorical inflation serves multiple functions. For Russia and China, BRICS provides a platform to project themselves as "standard-bearers of a multipolar world led by the Global South" while avoiding deeper political commitments that might constrain their national agendas. The vague language of "community of shared future" allows Beijing to signal opposition to Western hegemony without articulating a clear alternative vision. For other members, BRICS offers diplomatic space to amplify their voices without requiring fundamental strategic realignment.

Yet this rhetorical strategy carries costs. As the bloc expands, the risk of "agenda inflation" grows, with the 2025 Rio Declaration introducing new initiatives on climate finance, AI governance, and public health without clear mechanisms for implementation. As one analysis warns, "without more tangible achievement, BRICS will remain a forum of declarations rather than a platform of results." The credibility of the enterprise depends on delivery, and by this measure, BRICS consistently falls short.

The Partial Counterweight: Where BRICS Has Made Real Moves

Diplomatic Platform and South-South Coordination

Despite these profound limitations, dismissing BRICS entirely would be analytically lazy. The grouping has established itself as a significant diplomatic platform, enabling coordination among Global South nations on issues of shared concern. This function, while modest compared to the transformative ambitions of some proponents, has real value in a fragmented international order.

BRICS provides a venue for emerging powers to articulate shared grievances and coordinate positions on multilateral reform. The persistent calls for IMF and World Bank restructuring, while not yet realized, reflect a collective voice that did not exist before the grouping's formation. The bloc's ability to amplify the concerns of the Global South—particularly on climate justice, development financing, and institutional representation—has created what one analyst terms "a growing multipolar platform with some alternative financing and diplomacy."

The 2025 Rio Summit, despite its limitations, demonstrated this function. Brazil used the platform to advance its COP30 priorities, while India pushed for climate justice and Global South development agendas. The bloc's emphasis on technology transfer and affordable climate financing "resonates with developing nations" in ways that Western-dominated institutions often fail to match. Even the act of summitry itself—the symbolic gathering of major non-Western powers—carries geopolitical significance in an era of perceived Western retreat.

The NDB as a Modest Alternative Pathway

The New Development Bank, for all its limitations, does offer a genuine—if incremental—alternative to traditional development finance. Its governance structure, with equal voting rights among founding members regardless of economic size, represents a departure from the weighted voting systems of Bretton Woods institutions. This "fairer representation" has symbolic and practical significance, even if it has not translated into systemic transformation.

The NDB's emphasis on local currency lending represents another meaningful innovation. Following the 2022 Western sanctions on Russia, the bank announced its intention to conduct 30% of lending in local currencies like the rupee, real, yuan, and rand. This reduces foreign exchange risk and enhances financial autonomy for borrowing countries, addressing a long-standing grievance about dollar dependence. As one analysis notes, this "push to lend in local currencies" is "one of the NDB's most radical departures" from established practice.

The bank's expansion beyond the original BRICS members—to include Egypt, Bangladesh, UAE, and Uruguay—suggests growing utility for a broader range of Global South nations. Its project approvals, while modest in scale, have addressed genuine infrastructure and renewable energy needs that might otherwise have gone unfunded. The NDB's "streamlined disbursal" and "non-interventionist policies" offer developing countries an alternative to the conditionality regimes of Western institutions.

Soft Balancing and Issue-Specific Coordination

Beyond institutional finance, BRICS has demonstrated capacity for what scholars term "soft balancing"—coordinated actions that raise costs, delay implementation, and narrow the scope of Western policies without directly confronting the existing order. The Iran sanctions case illustrates this dynamic: BRICS members employed "economic strengthening and connectivity," "financial empowerment," and "institutional positioning and entangling diplomacy" to reduce the effectiveness of US and UN sanctions.

In this context, BRICS functions as a network of secondary trade-finance channels and institutional venues that sustain countries targeted by Western sanctions. China and Russia deepen energy-finance ties; India calibrates rupee-denominated payments through Chabahar and the International North-South Transport Corridor; Brazil experiments with mediation initiatives. The result is "not a unified counter-hegemonic bloc" but "a differentiated repertoire that raises costs, delays implementation, and narrows the scope of sanctions."

This soft balancing capacity, while limited, has real effects. It complicates Western efforts to isolate Russia or pressure Iran, creating space for evasion and resistance. The 2022 Russian sanctions demonstrated the limits of financial weaponization when target countries have alternative partners and payment channels. Even the threat of dollar alternatives—the recurrent discussions of a common BRICS currency—has generated Western anxiety and defensive responses, as evidenced by President Trump's threatened tariffs on BRICS members.

Framing the Evaluation: What Standard for "Alternative"?

The question of whether BRICS has "failed" depends fundamentally on the evaluative standard applied. If the metric is the transformation of the international system—the replacement of Western-dominated institutions with a coherent alternative order—then BRICS has clearly fallen short. It lacks the institutional capacity, internal cohesion, and normative vision to mount "a full counter-hegemonic project." Its financial mechanisms reproduce rather than transform existing hierarchies; its diplomatic coordination remains fractured by divergent strategic interests; its rhetorical aspirations far exceed its operational reach.

However, if the standard is more modest—the creation of parallel options, the amplification of Global South voices, the incremental erosion of Western monopoly—then BRICS has achieved meaningful, if limited, success. It has provided diplomatic space for emerging powers to coordinate positions; established alternative financing mechanisms, however imperfect; and created soft balancing capacity that complicates Western dominance. As one analyst puts it, "BRICS has established itself as a symbol of South-South solidarity and multipolarity" even as it struggles "to deliver real results consistently."

The distinction between these standards is not merely semantic. Those who expected BRICS to "replace" Western institutions were always engaged in wishful thinking, underestimating the depth of integration that ties emerging economies to the existing order. Countries like India and Brazil, while seeking greater autonomy, remain deeply connected to Western financial systems, security arrangements, and economic networks. Their participation in BRICS does not signal a desire for rupture but for adjustment—a more favorable position within a system they do not fundamentally wish to overthrow.

What BRICS represents, in this interpretation, is not an alternative bloc but a symptom of a broader transition—a "growing multipolar platform" that reflects the redistribution of power in the international system without fully constituting a new order. Its members are not united by a shared vision of what should replace the existing system but by a shared sense of grievance about their position within it. This grievance can sustain rhetorical solidarity but cannot generate the disciplined cooperation required for systemic transformation.

Conclusion: The Limits of Multipolar Aspiration

Seventeen years after its founding, BRICS stands as a monument to the gap between multipolar aspiration and institutional reality. Its expansion from five to ten members has amplified its symbolic weight but also deepened its internal contradictions. Its financial mechanisms have created parallel options but remain dwarfed by the institutions they purport to challenge. Its diplomatic platform provides a space for Global South coordination, but its members pursue divergent—often conflicting—strategic interests.

The claim that BRICS has "largely failed" to become a coherent alternative bloc is mostly fair, but it demands qualification. The failure is not one of ambition or rhetoric—the group has articulated a vision of a more inclusive international order that resonates across the Global South—but of execution and coherence. Internal divisions, institutional mimicry, and the enduring structural power of the Western-led system have prevented the translation of aspiration into transformation. As one scholar notes, "BRICS' real credibility depends on the depth of its delivery and not solely on the strength of its rhetoric." By this measure, the group remains more promise than fulfillment.

Yet this judgment should not be mistaken for dismissal. The very fact that BRICS has generated such sustained attention—that it has become a reference point for debates about the future of global governance—attests to its significance. The grouping has created space for alternative financing, amplified calls for institutional reform, and provided a diplomatic platform for emerging powers. Its symbolism matters, even when its operational capacity falls short of its rhetoric.

The future of BRICS will depend on whether its members can bridge the gap between solidarity and action. Without more tangible achievements in finance, health, and development cooperation, the bloc risks becoming "simply symbolic and not system-changing at all." With greater institutional depth, it might play a constructive role in shaping a more inclusive international order—one that accommodates the legitimate aspirations of the Global South without necessarily displacing the institutions of the West.

What is clear is that BRICS is neither the transformative alternative its advocates hoped for nor the impotent forum its critics dismiss. It is, rather, a barometer of a world in transition—a world where the unipolar moment has passed, where emerging powers demand voice and recognition, but where the institutional architecture of the old order persists. In this liminal space, BRICS navigates between aspiration and reality, symbolizing the possibility of change while manifesting the constraints that prevent it. Its partial challenge to Western influence is not failure in any simple sense, but it is also not the alternative its champions have proclaimed. The BRICS conundrum reflects the broader paradox of our times: the desire for a new order and the persistence of the old, caught in an uneasy coexistence that defines the contemporary international system.