By CLAUDIO KATZ*

The expansion of the BRICS reveals its strength and its weakness: it attracts countries tired of Western domination, but dilutes cohesion amid divergent interests. While China and Russia push for de-dollarization, Brazil and India insist on “not antagonizing anyone.” The challenge in Rio is to prove that the bloc is more than a sum of contradictions. 

The next BRICS summit, in Rio de Janeiro, will take place in a critical scenario. The bloc will incorporate new members and discuss economic responses to Donald Trump's tariff aggression. But the war in Ukraine, the genocide in Palestine and the bombing of Iran will also be on the agenda. The BRICS are the focus of major epochal changes and their assessment allows us to understand the current period.

Origins, frustration and consolidation

It is common to recall that, twenty years ago, a financial market operator from Goldman Sachs introduced the name BRICS to portray a conglomerate of countries with great opportunities for financial investment. This anecdote bears little resemblance to the real emergence of the bloc, which was born with the coalition formed in 2003 by India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) to resist the WTO's demand for payment of medicinal patents. This opposition gave rise to the subsequent quintet.

The initial convergence was very limited due to the close relationship between the local ruling classes and transnational corporations. This articulation marked the beginning of the 21st century in the context of neoliberal euphoria, veneration of the First World and contempt for regional blocs.

The 2008 financial crisis buried this idyll, but it did not eliminate the expectation of globalization. This hope was renewed by the governments of the capitalist epicenter (G7), which expanded their membership to include new members (G20) to ensure the rescue of the collapsing banking system. The so-called emerging countries joined, expecting a return for this help. They hoped to achieve effective primacy of the G20 over the G7, to obtain seats on the UN Security Council and to increase their influence in the IMF (García, 2025).

The first frustration came with the pandemic and the blatant selfishness of the West, which protected the patents of its pharmaceutical companies, vetoing the conversion of vaccines against Covid into a universal good.

Later disillusionments were more explicit. The G20 was shaped by the G7 agenda, the UN Security Council remained unchanged, and both the IMF and the WTO maintained their previous tone. The dominant powers refused to share control of these bodies, and this refusal triggered the effective emergence of the BRICS as a separate bloc with its own projects (Prashad, 2023).

The first summit in Yekaterinburg (2009) inaugurated a sequence of annual meetings with numerous initiatives. The accession of South Africa (2010) was the starting point for this intense program, which replaced the strategy of reforming existing international organizations with the creation of its own institutions (Delcourt, 2024).

This change has consolidated the profile of the BRICS and altered the meaning of the association. It has diluted the previous priority of negotiating a new status at the UN, WTO, IMF or G7, and has strengthened the formation of parallel and potentially competing bodies to these institutions.

It is important to record this change to see how far the current BRICS are from their previous embryos. The crisis and decline of neoliberal globalization have led its members to conceive a project far removed from what they had initially imagined.

This shift from amalgamation to conflict with the West is now converging with the definitive rupture of globalization. The erosion of free trade and the expansion of protectionism have led the BRICS to form their own trade association. They are articulating each step of their agenda in response to the aggressive policy of the United States.

Sanctions and multipolarity

The event that probably defined the current BRICS brand was the financial sanctions imposed on Russia by Western banks after its invasion of Ukraine. This retaliation broke with all previous norms (Ding Yifan, 2024). Washington’s seizure of an adversary’s assets hit the Moscow state and Russian millionaires hard, losing control of $300 billion.

This confiscation was even carried out by Switzerland, a country that, due to its long history of neutrality, was considered by large itinerant capital as a safe haven for its investments. Most Russian goods were traded through this country and 30% of large properties abroad with this origin were located there (Gao Bai, 2024).

With this seizure, the United States sounded the alarm for many countries, companies and millionaires who, for the first time, realized the vulnerability of their fortunes to Washington's discretion. Everyone noticed the insecurity of their assets in the face of any tension with the leading power. The global guardian of capitalism demonstrated how quickly it can destroy property rights and trust in banks when faced with an enemy.

The confiscation of Russian assets particularly alarmed BRICS managers who, observing the magnitude of these reprisals, confirmed the need to forge organizations protected from US retaliation (Nogueira 2024).

The confiscation was a self-inflicted blow to the West’s credibility, which accelerated the transformation of the BRICS into a project divorced from Washington’s dictates. The aim of transforming Russia into an international pariah led to the opposite process of boosting the bloc, in partnership with Moscow. The quintet, conceived to compete for better trade and financial conditions with the West, became the opposite project of increasing autonomy in relation to the Triad (United States, Europe and Japan).

The BRICS are adapting to the new scenario of multipolarity, reinforced by the 2008 financial crisis. This context of greater dispersion of power is a fact recorded by many analysts (Bello, 2025), who highlight the weakening of US omnipresence in the face of the proliferation of competitors in different areas of the planet (Tooze, 2025).

This heterogeneous framework followed the failed unipolar attempt to build a “new American century” after the collapse of the USSR. No one yet knows to what extent the BRICS will contribute to stabilizing or undermining the new scenario (Savin, 2024).

Significant attraction

The accession of new members to BRICS confirms the consolidation of the bloc. The expansion was proposed at the Johannesburg meeting (2023) and considers the immediate inclusion of four countries (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates), after Argentina's rejection and Saudi Arabia's uncertainty. The five founding members maintain a status privileged in relation to newcomers, but the recent BRICS+ is beginning to emerge and could add a surprising number of partners.

The membership requests include extensive lists. Between 19 and 25 countries have submitted membership requests and another 40 have expressed, in more informal terms, their desire to join the group (López Blanch, 2023). In any case, BRICS has already doubled and is expected to triple its number of members. This attraction confirms that the bloc expresses not only the specific interests of the initial quintet, but also the underlying dynamics of an epochal change.

The creation of international organizations in competition with the IMF and the WTO is viewed favorably by a large number of states, in addition to the founders of the BRICS. This reformulation occurs in a very critical context for the United Nations, which is facing a paralysis of its effective functioning. Some analysts have already compared this damage with the deterioration that led to the dissolution of the predecessor of this institution (League of Nations) (De Sousa, 2024).

The expansion of the BRICS has been driven by the Russian-Chinese leadership and the support of the Indian-Brazilian-South African trio. The invitation to new partners has followed the pattern of economic attractions that China has developed with great success in the last decade. They offer huge business opportunities and markets, without the demands of subordination that characterize any connection with the United States. The newcomers or those aspiring to join the BRICS seek to alleviate this subservience.

China's goals

China has extended this strategy to its four partners, asserting its overwhelming productive dominance. Its economy is five times larger than that of India and eight, nine and forty-three times larger than those of Russia, Brazil and South Africa. With several members of the conglomerate, the Asian giant maintains relations similar to the classic center-periphery pattern (export of manufactured goods and acquisition of raw materials).

China leads the main BRICS initiatives, is the headquarters of their economic organizations and conceives this nucleus as part of its vast network of international alliances (Katz, 2023: 83).

Beijing accepted Washington’s globalizing challenge at the end of the last century and ended up benefiting from it (Bello; Guttal, 2025). When it reached internal productive maturity, it rejected demands for greater openness of its economy, blocked financialization and accentuated state regulation (Roberts, 2024).

Its encouragement of the BRICS is part of this strategy and is directly linked to the implementation of the Silk Road. Five of the six countries invited to join this association are geographically located in key locations on the international itinerary promoted by Beijing. BRICS+ is the basis of the bridges with the Middle East and Africa that are of great interest to the Asian giant. Egypt and Ethiopia were selected for their location, following the pattern that previously led to the addition of South Africa (Tolcachier, 2023).

China has also prioritized energy supply and the consequent transformation of the BRICS into a leading player in the oil world. The invitation to Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia clearly pursues this objective. If the group manages to bring together these three members, it will control 41% of proven crude oil reserves, 53,1% of its natural gas equivalent and 40,4% of coal deposits (Amesty, 2024).

The dispute over Saudi Arabia’s membership is so intense due to its oil prominence. China has sought to seduce the Wahhabi monarchy with monumental offers of investment in the Silk Road. Riyadh has responded with favorable gestures, to combine these proposals with its economic diversification program (“Vision 2030”). But Washington is determined to prevent this convergence, using its entire arsenal of pressure to maintain Saudi Arabia’s blind loyalty to North America.

Most virulently, the US is seeking to obstruct China’s growing ties with Iran. The “12-Day War” that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched against Tehran was aimed at fraying that relationship.

Beijing has built a railway linking the two countries that bypasses Pentagon-controlled sea routes. The rail corridor replaces shipping across the Red Sea, which has become too expensive and dangerous due to increasing militarization. Iran already supplies 15 percent of China's oil imports, and the new rail route cuts shipping times from 45 days to 14 days.

The US-Israeli bombing was a war message against the BRICS. It aimed to obstruct Iran's new presence in this bloc and undermine its strategic role as an energy supplier to China (Pont, 2025).

Russia's purposes

Russia also supports the creation of an energy market under the aegis of the BRICS. It is a major player in this area and the creation of an axis with Riyadh and Tehran would give Moscow the necessary solvency to reach agreements on prices and rates of crude oil extraction.

Russia has also sought to integrate Argentina into the BRICS in order to coordinate global food market management. It seeks to associate other grain exporters to create a pool of agri-food products, in comparison with the Chicago market (Pont, 2024).

The expansion of BRICS has another, more immediate objective for Russia. It attempts to forge a defensive chain against sanctions from the United States and Europe, bypassing the torments with new partners (Patnaik, 2023).

China and India have acted as Moscow's main rescuers in countering the penalties. In particular, they have bought up the fuel that Russia has stopped exporting to Germany.

But this counterbalance does not resolve the severe blow to the country's commercial and financial system caused by its exclusion from the SWIFT system. This system operates as a global network of 11.000 financial institutions in 200 countries. The disconnection from this mechanism – which Iran has already suffered – requires the improvisation of very provisional and expensive forms of connection.

To counter this adversity, Moscow insists on creating an alternative instrument to SWIFT and believes that the expansion of BRICS will facilitate this initiative (Tyson, 2024). The participants of the Kazan summit (2024) envisioned several devices for this eventual structure (BRICS Bridge, BRICS Clear). They also considered the creation of an insurance company to support the solvency of this payments network.

Although Russia has a less externally articulated economy than its partners, its supply chain has been severely affected by Euro-American sanctions. The expansion of the BRICS facilitates the substitution of suppliers, customers and markets, which Moscow began at the beginning of the war in Ukraine. This substitution has allowed it to sustain GDP growth in the context of the war and, with its new partners, it hopes to counter Western pressure (Sakwa, 2021).

Neodevelopmentalist resurgence

India, Brazil and South Africa form a smaller trio compared to the two giants that lead the BRICS. They aspire to intervene in the partnership as leaders and spokespeople for three regions of the planet. They defend positions of less tension with the West, distance themselves from Russia's geopolitical tension with the United States and distance themselves from the Sino-American economic battle.

The three countries follow a dual strategy of strengthening ties with the two leaders of the group and preserving ties with the great powers of the West. India participates in a military alliance with the United States in Asia, South Africa is very sensitive to pressure from the Yankee embassy and Brazil never breaks the status quo with Washington.

To maintain their influence in BRICS, the trio asserted their preferential position as founders before the arrival of new members. The newcomers participate as partners in BRICS+, without having the powers that the original quintet retains in decision-making and distribution of positions. Brazil and India fought to limit the incorporation of members who could overshadow their leading role (Stuenkel, 2024).

In this sense, Lula is preparing to assume the annual rotating leadership of the group at the next meeting in Rio de Janeiro. From this position, he will set the agenda, aiming for greater balance with the West in relation to what was achieved by Putin at the previous event in Kazan.

On the one hand, Lula participated in the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazism in Moscow, sharing the denunciations against the current far right. But, on the other hand, the Brazilian leader called for non-confrontation with Donald Trump, building bridges in Moscow's tense relationship with Washington.

Itamaraty's diplomacy favors this profile for the next event, in line with Lula's speeches, which emphasize more conciliatory international positions (El País, 2025). Its main message is “to favor the interests of all, without being against anyone” (The Globe.

Obviously, this equidistance is a fiction, which illustrates Brazil's interest in keeping bridges open with powers hostile to the BRICS. This same attitude was adopted by the South African government when it acted as a guest at the Johannesburg summit (2023). This search for a middle ground is more visible in the case of India, which has not forgotten its past military conflicts with China and its ambivalent relationship with Russia.

But the trio's impact is not limited to the leading role of these countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. It also illustrates the growing importance of nations in the middle of the world economy. This position is shared by some of the group's recent members (Egypt, Iran), by other candidates for accession (Indonesia) and by some actors flirting with the bloc (Turkey).

In all these cases, there is a neo-developmentalist intention to promote zonal growth poles, with industrial policies of greater regulatory intervention by the State (Optenhogel, 2024). This shift towards Keynesian strategies was anticipated in Southeast Asia by Malaysia and South Korea, and is the current trend in the BRICS. It is a profile that explains the attraction aroused by this association among countries that are resuming industrialism.

It is important to record this change in order to conceptualize the presence of a scenario that is very different from the years of neoliberal euphoria and the zenith of globalization. This context has undergone mutations and the repetition of old diagnoses makes it difficult to understand the current significance of the BRICS.

*Claudio Katz is professor of economics at Universidad Buenos Aires. Author, among other books, of Neoliberalism, neodevelopmentalism, socialism (popular expression) [https://amzn.to/3E1QoOD].

Translation: Fernando Lima das Neves.

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