Is BRICS Strong Enough to Counter Western Influence?

Bangla Press Desk:   After the US and Israel attacked BRICS member country Iran, it retaliated with attacks on another member of the alliance, the United Arab Emirates.

Now leaders from both countries are set to meet on Saturday.

This is the third time the bloc - originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa - will try to reach a consensus on a war that has sent international politics and the global economy into turmoil this year.

Al Jazeera's analysis says the ongoing war between the US and Iran has exposed divisions among BRICS nations. But India, the hosts of the conference, are attempting to bring the alliance to a new level.

Meanwhile, Tehran and Abu Dhabi find themselves on opposite sides of a war that has escalated in the past week.

The conference in New Delhi is to be held more than six months after the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran.

Iran and the UAE became members of the BRICS in 2024. The other members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

This alliance of emerging countries was formed primarily to challenge the Western-led global order.

However, analysts say the alliance, which formed 20 years ago,, it is still struggling to set up a strong alternative to the Western powers.

BRICS has created a platform outside the Western-led institutions, which has given the countries of the Global South greater power and economic bargaining options.

Still, experts point to the monopoly of the dollar remaining in place and the difficulties posed by the differing stances of its members, which restrict its capacity on foreign policy and security.

But others say BRICS’s success should not be measured by whether it can stand as an alternative to the West, but whether it can make Western dominance more difficult.

“We tend to undermine any BRICS-led initiative as it is not the revolution we have expected,” Brazilian researchers Octavio Oliveira and Enzo Godinho at the University of Sao Paulo told Al Jazeera.

“Yes, it does not have the institutionality or the capacity of the UN to tackle specific geopolitical issues, but its mere existence is a much more important platform for Global South countries to express their voices and bypass the West in cooperation.”

Some analysts argue BRICS was not born to replace the Western world order, but to challenge the US-led power structure.

The emergence of BRICS was largely due to the 2008 financial crisis and the failure of the Doha round of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.

The Doha Round was a trade negotiation aimed at reforming the international trading system in the interests of the South.

Countries that were looked to become the next “developed countries” understood they would get a stronger voice if they could come together under a platform,” Oliveira and Godinho said.

These emerging powers wanted to exert more influence in Western institutions.

As such, unity among the bloc’s members is the most important thing, Sean Burgess, an associate professor of international relations at Carleton University in Canada, told Al Jazeera.

He says two things encourage BRICS nations to stay united – money through international trade and the ability to stop listening to “Western narratives” on their failures on rights and democracy.

Overthrowing the liberal world order is less important to BRICS nations than reforms and greater autonomy, analysts say.

“Why would the BRICS want to take on the global governance responsibilities of the G7 members?” Burgess asks.

The academic says that BRICS has provided its member countries with alternative trade and investment channels that serve their interests, particularly on national development and poverty alleviation.

“Chinese concentration on development assistance without conditionality and Brazilian discussions of direct central bank currency swaps are two of the most obvious examples.”

This has led to economic transactions increasing not only among BRICS members but also among countries in the Global South as a whole.

Guy Burton, a geopolitical and policy analyst says the concepts of BRICS and the West have changed dramatically since the group first formed. The bloc is now operating in a new global paradigm.

The idea of Westen unity “breaking down now, with the transatlantic relationship between the US and Europe fracturing – so it’s unclear what BRICS would even be challenging, or whom, America or Europe,” he told Al Jazeera.

Economic Strength, Collective Action Vulnerability

Analysts told Al Jazeera that while the bloc had great economic power, it had limited ability to use it collectively.

Strategist Imran Khalid, an analyst and senior fellow at Foreign Policy in Focus, said that BRICS countries account for about half of the world's population, 40 percent of global output in purchasing power parity terms, 44 percent of global oil production, and about a quarter of world trade.

Citing IMF data, he said that the economy of the 11-member alliance is growing at about 3.7 percent this year, compared to 1 percent for the G-7.

Despite the size of BRICS, the bloc’s influence is weak, he adds.

Analysts believe that the biggest limitation to the its ability to challenge Western economic powers is perhaps their structural dependence on the US dollar.

Oliveira and Godinho said, “Despite extensive rhetoric about de-dollarisation initiatives, the vast majority of BRICS trade is still denominated in US dollars, while most BRICS nations maintain significant dollar reserves, reflecting the dollar’s continued status as the world’s primary reserve currency and creating a structural dependency that limits the bloc’s policy independence.”

“The bloc as a whole is not moving off the dollar; individual members are reducing their own exposure, one relationship at a time,” said Khalid.

“That is slower, and it is also harder to reverse.”

Interests Divided

The ability to represent a large portion of the world is the greatest strength of BRICS. But this can also be the greatest weakness of the alliance as there are many differences of interest among the member states.

In May, the BRICS foreign ministers met in India. There, too, the alliance members could not reach any consensus on the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Khalid said, ““May’s foreign ministers’ meeting ended without a statement because Iran wanted American and Israeli actions named and the UAE would not agree to it.”

And yet, all the ceasefire initiatives in the conflict have come from the Global South instead of Washington, he noted.

Burton noted Iran’s uncomfortable position in the bloc, stating that while it had membership, the other members did not align itself with the country.

“There’s no ‘one for all, all for one’ logic in BRICS – members deliberately preserve their freedom to act independently, which is the opposite of a coordinated bloc.”

Burgess agrees, saying: “All of the members want a greater say, but they absolutely do not agree on the message.”

Can BRICS Challenge the Order?

Khalid told Al Jazeera that BRICS was more a platform for autonomy rather than a rival to the Western order.

Without a common currency, tariffs, or defence commitments, the bloc is not a strong geopolitical alliance in the conventional sense.

But it has set up an alternative to Western institutional funding and trade.

He says the alliance has also created an opportunity for the countries of the South to take a position according to their own interests in relation to Washington and Beijing.

The most important thing was the bloc could challenge “how cheaply the West can apply pressure to individual countries”, he said.