{"id":223923,"date":"2026-09-12T13:33:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/brics-summit-is-the-bloc-truly-challenging-a-western-dominated-world-al-jazeera\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T13:33:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T13:33:28","slug":"brics-summit-is-the-bloc-truly-challenging-a-western-dominated-world-al-jazeera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/brics-summit-is-the-bloc-truly-challenging-a-western-dominated-world-al-jazeera\/","title":{"rendered":"BRICS summit: Is the bloc truly challenging a Western-dominated world? – Al Jazeera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some experts say BRICS need not replace the West to succeed \u2013 only make Western dominance harder to exercise.<\/em>
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A BRICS member has been under attack for months \u2013 and has subsequently wielded attacks of its own against fellow members.
This coming weekend, those countries will all be in the same room, making a third attempt to find consensus on a war that has dominated global attention \u2013 and battered economies \u2013 this year.
India hosts the BRICS Leaders\u2019 Summit from Saturday, seeking to raise the bloc\u2019s profile even as the United States-led war on Iran exposes divisions among its members<\/a>, with Tehran and Abu Dhabi on opposing sides. Russian President Vladimir Putin landed in New Delhi on Friday morning.
The September 12-13 summit in New Delhi comes more than six months \u200cafter the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran<\/a>, which has been a BRICS member since 2024. The United Arab Emirates also joined that year.
The grouping of emerging countries \u2013 Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and in more recent years Iran, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia \u2013 was created to challenge the Western-led order.
Yet as the alliance nears its 20-year anniversary, analysts say that while BRICS has helped make the world more multipolar, it has struggled to build a coherent alternative to the West.
The bloc has created a platform outside Western-led institutions, giving Global South countries greater bargaining power and economic alternatives. But the dollar remains dominant, and divisions limit collective action on foreign policy and security, say analysts.
However, some experts argue that the success of BRICS should not be measured by whether it can pose an alternative to West-led institutions, but by whether it makes Western dominance harder to exercise.
\u201cWe tend to undermine any BRICS-led initiative as it is not the revolution we have expected,\u201d said Brazilian researchers Octavio Oliveira and Enzo Godinho at the BRICS Studies Group at the University of Sao Paulo, in an emailed statement to Al Jazeera.
\u201cYes, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

While BRICS was built to challenge the US-led Western order \u2013 it was never meant to replace it, the analysts said.
The bloc emerged after the 2008 financial collapse and the failures of the World Trade Organization\u2019s (WTO) Doha Round \u2013 trade negotiations that aimed to reform the international trading system in favour of Global South countries.
\u201cCountries that were spearheaded to become the next \u2018developed\u2019 nations understood that their voice would be best heard if they organised themselves as a group,\u201d said Oliveira and Godinho.
BRICS emerged from these countries\u2019 efforts to pursue a common development agenda outside traditional international organisations and the United Nations \u2013 and, in that sense, its very origins challenged the Western-led order, the Brazilian scholars said.
Emerging powers wanted greater influence over institutions they felt were dominated by the West. And that\u2019s a major priority still uniting the group today, says Sean Burges, an associate professor of international studies at Canada\u2019s Carleton University.
\u201cThe two priorities uniting the BRICS countries are largely a desire to make lots of money through international trade and to see an end to the preachiness of the \u2018West\u2019 about where they are failing in terms of rights and democracy,\u201d Burges told Al Jazeera.
The analysts agreed that reform and greater autonomy have been far greater concerns for the BRICS bloc rather than overthrowing the unravelling liberal international order.
\u201cWhy would the BRICS want to take on the global governance responsibilities of the G7 members?\u201d asked Burges.
BRICS has offered its member countries alternative pathways for channelling trade and investment that serve the interests of the member countries \u2013 largely national development and poverty alleviation, he explained.
\u201cChinese concentration on development assistance without conditionality and Brazilian discussions of direct central bank currency swaps are two of the most obvious examples,\u201d said Burges.
This has resulted in a surge of economic exchange not only within the BRICS, but within the Global South in general, he added.
Meanwhile, pressures on rights and democracy are disappearing as aid conditions \u2013 evidence of how institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are already changing \u2013 Burges argued.
Concurrently, the very idea of the so-called West has changed dramatically since the early 2000s, when BRICS was conceived and formalised, operating in an entirely different global environment, points out Guy Burton, a geopolitical and policy analyst.
The notion of the West is \u201cbreaking down now, with the transatlantic relationship between the US and Europe fracturing \u2013 so it\u2019s unclear what BRICS would even be challenging, or whom, America or Europe,\u201d Burton told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

While BRICS\u2019s economic weight is enormous \u2013 its ability to wield it collectively is not, the analysts agreed.
The bloc accounts for nearly half the world\u2019s population, 40 percent of global output in purchasing power terms, 44 percent of oil production, and about a quarter of world trade, points out Imran Khalid, a geostrategic analyst and senior fellow at Foreign Policy in Focus.
The 11-member grouping is growing at about 3.7 percent this year compared with 1 percent for the G7, according to IMF figures, he added.
Still, its \u201cleverage is weaker than the [BRICS group] size suggests,\u201d Khalid told Al Jazeera.
\u201cThe New Development Bank (NDB) had approved about $39bn in total by the end of 2024, which is a few months of World Bank commitments, and it still raises most of its money in dollars,\u201d he said, referring to the global financial institution created by the bloc.
Brazilian scholars Oliveira and Godinho also said the NDB has introduced no significant innovations to challenge the West, with many of its features mirroring those of existing multilateral development banks.
And its contribution to global GDP still lags behind the G7, with China and India primarily driving the group\u2019s economic expansion, said Oliveira and Godinho.
Perhaps the most significant limitation on BRICS\u2019s ability to challenge Western economic power is its continued structural reliance on the US dollar, the analysts agreed.
\u201cDespite 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\u2019s continued status as the world\u2019s primary reserve currency and creating a structural dependency that limits the bloc\u2019s policy independence,\u201d said the Brazilian academics.
While China has pushed use of the renminbi and Saudi Arabia has floated trade in other currencies, the dollar faces no serious challenge \u2013 and it is unlikely to for the next decade, said Burton.
\u201cThe bloc as a whole is not moving off the dollar; individual members are reducing their own exposure, one relationship at a time,\u201d said Khalid.
\u201cThat is slower, and it is also harder to reverse.\u201d
Still, say Oliveira and Godinho, the BRICS group\u2019s economic achievements should not be disregarded.
\u201c[The NDB] is the first financial institution without Western countries, even though it still operates within the [liberal international order],\u201d they said.
The bloc\u2019s expansion in 2024, meanwhile, has enhanced its collective leverage, with the addition of major oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates strengthening its influence in global energy markets, said Oliveira and Godinho.
Chinese investment in other BRICS countries, including through its Belt and Road Initiative, and other bilateral flows are also \u201coffering concrete alternatives for financing and development for emerging economies, operating outside the traditional framework of Bretton Woods institutions [World Bank and IMF],\u201d they added.<\/p>\n

The BRICS\u2019s biggest strength \u2013 its ability to represent a large section of the global populace \u2013 may also be its biggest weakness: divisions persist among member states.
At a meeting of the grouping\u2019s foreign ministers in May \u2014 also in India \u2014 the BRICS failed to form a consensus on the US-Israel war on Iran.
\u201cMay\u2019s foreign ministers\u2019 meeting ended without a statement because Iran wanted American and Israeli actions named and the UAE would not agree to it,\u201d said Khalid.
Still, it is the Global South that has pushed all truce measures during the current war, he pointed out.
\u201cNone came out of Washington.\u201d
Burton, however, said the bloc\u2019s expansion has made BRICS\u2019s internal divisions more confusing, not less.
\u201cIt widens Global South representation but dilutes whatever coherent positioning the group had,\u201d he argued.
On Iran, he added, BRICS membership gave Tehran a platform, but that doesn\u2019t mean the bloc\u2019s members are aligning themselves with the country.
\u201cThere\u2019s no \u2018one for all, all for one\u2019 logic in BRICS \u2013 members deliberately preserve their freedom to act independently, which is the opposite of a coordinated bloc,\u201d said Burton.
Burges agreed, saying that even while the grouping has had a shared ambition to have a larger voice in international affairs, dissent still exists there.
\u201cAll of the members want a greater say, but they absolutely do not agree on the message.\u201d
Oliveira and Godinho pointed out that while initially, the limited number of members was an issue considering the diversity of the Global South, now its expansion risks undermining the collective achievements of the group.
Still, they see the bloc\u2019s new members and a growing queue of countries seeking to be part of BRICS as a positive indicator of the grouping\u2019s future: \u201cThe fact that countries with such divergent interests can sit together is itself evidence of a changing multipolar system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, the BRICs bloc is a platform for autonomy rather than a challenger to the Western-led order, says Khalid.
With no common currency, no common tariff and no defence commitment, he said, it\u2019s hardly a conventional geopolitical bloc.
But it has created alternative development financing and facilitated trade outside Western institutions, he said. And it has given Global South countries more room to manoeuvre between Washington and Beijing.
Most significantly, said Khalid, BRICS has perhaps emerged as \u201ca challenger to how cheaply the West can apply pressure to individual countries\u201d.<\/p>\n

Follow Al Jazeera English:<\/p>\n

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