Diplomatic cheerleaders love a good headcount. When South African High Commissioner to India Anil Sooklal steps up to microphones to hail the swelling ranks of BRICS—now bloated to eleven permanent members and ten official partners—the establishment media nods along in hypnotic synchronization. The lazy consensus is intoxicating: more flags on the summit table automatically equals a heavier thumb on the global scales, a direct counterweight to Western hegemony, and an unstoppable march toward a multipolar financial utopia.
It is a comforting fairy tale for bureaucratic circuit boards. It is also fundamentally detached from geopolitical reality.
Strip away the gala dinners at Bharat Mandapam and the grandiose declarations about the Global South, and what remains is not a cohesive anti-imperialist vanguard. What remains is a loose, hyper-fragmented collection of anxious nation-states whose bilateral animosities dwarf their shared grievances.
The Anatomy of an Unworkable Marriage
Let us stop pretending that adding disparate economies creates immediate strength. True structural power requires ideological alignment, deep economic integration, and a unified security framework. BRICS possesses none of these.
Imagine a scenario where a corporate board consists of fierce commercial rivals who are actively litigating against each other in district courts, yet are asked to vote unanimously on a hostile takeover of a rival firm. That is the BRICS internal dynamic.
You have New Delhi and Beijing locked in a tense, militarized standoff along the Line of Actual Control. You have Cairo and Addis Ababa quietly hovering near a hydrological flashpoint over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. You have Iran and Saudi Arabia shaking hands under Beijing's gaze while maintaining centuries of theological and regional suspicion.
To call this motley crew a "solidarity" block is a masterclass in diplomatic delusion.
The lazy narrative treats de-dollarization like an imminent weekend project. Commentators point to bilateral trade settled in local currencies or the New Development Bank as fatal blows to the greenback. They ignore the basic arithmetic of global liquidity. Capital does not flow toward currency experiments out of political spite; it flows toward deep, liquid capital markets underpinned by institutional rule of law.
When Beijing imposes severe capital controls and restricts its own currency's full convertibility, or when member states hoard gold because they trust neither the US Federal Reserve nor each other's central banks, the grand de-dollarization dream hits a brick wall of self-preservation. You cannot substitute a global reserve currency with a committee of competing mercantilists.
Why Scale Breeds Paralysis
Expansion does not amplify influence; it dilutes it.
In institutional design, there is an inverse relationship between membership size and operational velocity. When BRICS was a tight quartet, and later a quintet of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, coordination was already sluggish. Now, with twenty-one entities dragging their own regional baggage, domestic crises, and conflicting foreign policies into the tent, the grouping has morphed into a glorified talk shop.
Consider the geopolitical tightrope New Delhi must walk as the 2026 chair. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration is simultaneously deepening defense technology transfers with Washington through initiatives like iCET, buying Russian crude out of economic pragmatism, and sitting across the table from Beijing and Tehran at BRICS summits.
This is not multi-alignment born of supreme strength; it is a defensive hedge. India knows intimately that a bloc dominated economically by a single hyper-industrial manufacturing titan poses just as much of a threat to its domestic industrialization as Western trade dominance ever did. New Delhi’s primary strategic objective inside BRICS is not to build a Sino-centric anti-Western bloc, but to prevent Beijing from hijacking the platform to turn emerging economies into its exclusive client states.
The Global South Deserves Better Than Symbolic Theater
The most persistent falsehood peddled by international envoys is that BRICS speaks for the marginalized masses of the developing world.
Look closer at the roster. Several new additions are oil autocracies or fragile states caught in deep internal debt distress. They are not looking to rewrite the global financial architecture to liberate the proletariat; they are looking for alternative bailout windows that do not demand transparency, human rights reforms, or fiscal discipline.
When international institutions fail to reform, the proper critique should target actual structural failures at the IMF and World Bank—not hand a megaphone to autocratic regimes eager to launder their geopolitical legitimacy under the banner of the Global South.
Real geopolitical leverage is built on domestic productivity, technological sovereignty, and transparent governance. It is not manufactured by issuing communique after communique expressing "deep concern" over global crises while remaining utterly incapable of resolving a single regional conflict among members.
The next time an official stands at a podium to celebrate the sheer volume of nations jumping onto the BRICS bandwagon, do not look at the headcount. Look at the friction. Look at the contradictions.
True power does not need to shout about its unity from a stage. Only a paper tiger has to convince you it's made of iron.
