Introduction
Twenty years after its founding summit in 2006, the BRICS is in a decisive and sensitive stage of evolution. After admitting five new members, the organisation is now more diverse and geographically spread out, and it reflects even more clearly the ideals of multipolarity and multiculturalism enshrined in its charter. However, its growing economic and diplomatic ambitions have attracted the hostility of the United States and the suspicion of Western powers, as they pose challenges to the supremacy of the ‘Atlantic’ alliance and its strategic partners. The question is about the durable, tangible benefits that BRICS brings to its members, regardless of the rhetoric, and whether those common gains and interests can keep BRICS together despite their often different political and economic national priorities and needs.
The growth of the BRICS bears witnesses to its success and promise, but it inevitably increases the organisation’s complexity. India’s chairship in 2026 provides an opportunity for a realistic assessment of what this grouping has achieved so far and what it is poised to accomplish in the months and years ahead. Apart from the sheer strategic weight of a partnership that brings together the largest, most populous, militarily potent and economically dynamic nations on earth outside the United States, the achievements of the BRICS must be evaluated objectively now that its members are coming under increasing pressure to break ranks or at least renounce their more critical and significant initiatives, which are considered inimical to American dominance.
In this article, we will briefly consider, first, the current global political and economic situation, and second, the BRICS options and potential, as well as its limitations in bringing about positive change in line with its initial objectives.
The World System Today
The decline of the hegemon of the global order set up in the aftermath of the Second World War is acknowledged even in the United States, where Donald Trump won the Presidency by calling on his countrymen (using Reagan’s earlier appeal) to ‘Make America Great Again’ and deploring the generally decaying state of US society, industry and infrastructure. This condition affects the US Dollar, the pillar of American dominance, which is fast losing buying power and credibility, as out-of-control printing of the fiat currency to service the astronomical debt belies the enormously inflated paper value of stock market valuations and securities.
The quote is from a paper by Palestinian scientist and author Mazem Qumsiyeh, whose academic career unfolded partly in the USA:
The US dollar is weakening not just because of markets, but because of persistent inflation, foreign selling of Treasuries, exploding public debt, declining trust in long-term US fiscal discipline, and gradual global diversification away from dollar dependence (especially by large economies like China, Japan, and Brazil). This has geopolitical effects including 1)decline in ability of the US […] to subjugate other countries via economic sanctions and financial blackmail (that is why there is more risk of US military actions), 2) growing of USD alternatives including self-reliance, trade in local currencies, barter-like arrangements, use of alternative currencies (yuan, rupees, Euros, bitcoins), and increased gold holdings and settlement (that is why gold and silver are rising in price) […] These trends will only accelerate now that the US administration is accelerating instability locally and globally – basically on its way to become a failed state. A large part of this is directly due to policies pursued to please the Zionist lobby (e.g. the wars waged on behalf of Israel cost some $8 trillion of the $38 trillion national debt)…(keep your eye on US movements towards WWIII and BRICS countries’ response).[1]
A corollary of the hegemon’s decline is the erosion of the efficacy and credibility of many institutions built under its watch, beginning with the United Nations, which was designed mainly to benefit the victors of World War II and has been unable to reform itself to reflect the changing global balance of power and wealth. The Bretton Woods Institutions and all UN institutions are consequently affected by the systemic crisis as the USA withdraws from or reduces its participation in these international bodies, which are no longer useful tools for power projection, and seeks refuge not in isolationism but in transactional, opportunistic bilateralism.
In parallel with the US strategic shift, the G-7 Group, NATO, the European Union, the G-20, and many other mainly ‘Western’ groups, such as the Davos Economic Forum, are under increasing strain, in turmoil, or even breaking up. Trump’s haphazard attempt to set up a ‘Board of Peace’ as a one-billion-admission-fee club (by invitation), with a nebulous agenda, under his personal leadership, offers a poor alternative to pre-existing global structures. Indeed, in recent years, the conditionalities imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both under the effective control of the USA, have led many countries to turn towards new institutions set up outside the mainly Western, G-7 orbit.
Another effect of the gradual collapse of Western US-driven supremacy is the increasingly successful resistance of states that reject it and work to build alternative international regimes, such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, not to mention Afghanistan, which the NATO war machine was unable to subdue in twenty years of nearly constant warfare. The United States is forced to pull back, seek face-saving compromises, or admit defeat abroad, while its internal economic, social, and political stability steadily erodes. Its Western subaltern allies are also facing increasing challenges at home, including mass immigration from non-Western, mainly Muslim regions, shrinking resources, and widening divisions among their citizens.
All these converging trends are steering the international system towards a major socio-economic and financial crash that could trigger a widespread depression, as several leading economists and fund managers are warning with mounting urgency. Whether the crisis will also manifest as a new major war or a series of smaller wars in a chain reaction is a moot point, but dissent, disorder and violence are increasing in many parts of the world. At the same time, several new disruptive technologies are upsetting and transforming economies and ways of life in uneven and unpredictable ways, giving rise to more distrust and anxiety than hope, because while they immensely increase the wealth of a minority, they tend to undermine the professional, social and psychological stability of the less privileged majority.
The BRICS: Alternative or Safety Net?
BRICS is an unusual grouping because it is not justified by geographic, historical, ideological, or ethno-cultural proximity among its members. Its founders also differ markedly in their economic systems, GDPs, and per capita incomes. This disparity has led many to reduce its rationale to a common opposition to American (or Euro-American Atlantic) dominance and its neo-liberal/neoconservative composite agenda. The BRICS countries have nevertheless launched and implemented various cooperative arrangements that have proven mutually beneficial, such as the New Development Bank, popularly known as the BRICS Bank, and a valuable alternative to the Bretton Woods financial institutions.
The BRICS has no agenda to become a military alliance, though military exercises have already been conducted between some of its members, such as the joint Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and South African naval training operation (with Egypt, Ethiopia, and Brazil sending observers) off the South African coast in January 2026, and the Zapad 2025 drills, which involved the armed forces of various BRICS and SCO member states. However, BRICS was officially not involved in those exercises because defence is not part of its charter, though there is a provision for collaboration against terrorism.
In this regard, the US attack on Venezuela on 3 January 2026 and the abduction of the country’s President Maduro and his wife should prompt BRICS members to share information and discuss possible measures to prevent similar illegal assaults on other countries, given that Iran is already a target of special or ‘black’ operations by American and Israeli clandestine units, special forces and regular troops. In the wake of Trump’s declared hostility to BRICS member-nations, which may translate into covert or kinetic actions against some of them, there is good reason to consider preventive cooperation, beginning with the exchange of relevant intelligence.
For instance, the current US administration’s declared opposition to the return of the Chagos archipelago by Britain to Mauritius (that Trump has threatened to prevent) may lead Washington DC to bolster its military presence in the Indian Ocean and, perhaps in this connection, the Pentagon is looking to set up a military facility on an island off the coast of Bangladesh, which has implications for India’s security just as the growing or expected American military presence in the Caribbean, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and other parts of Latin America can be a matter of concern for Brazil, also a target of US anti-BRICS policies. Trump’s claim that the US Government possesses secret weapons of enormous power that no one can effectively neutralise or resist may be another of his unsubstantiated boasts, yet the lethal raid on Venezuela that enabled special forces operatives to capture and abduct the Presidential couple may have utilised some of those special techniques and that in itself represents a grave threat to other nations.
Geostrategic consultations are a useful component of the BRICS dialogue architecture, but they are limited in scope by persisting misgivings and disagreements among some members (e.g. between India and China, Egypt and Ethiopia, China and Indonesia, and the UAE and Iran). More critical and decisive are their investment and trade-related interactions and projects, including currency and financial flows, intended to free intra-bloc business from the oversight and control of major Western banks and clearing vehicles, particularly American ones, which are used as tools and increasingly as weapons for US intelligence-gathering and monitoring of the global marketplace, as a substitute for the erstwhile industrial and technological near-monopoly of the G-7 countries.
New Trade and Reserve Currency Initiatives
Following the already mentioned ‘BRICS Bank’ and the BRICS Contingency Reserve Arrangement, which are regularly and successfully used to provide loans in currencies other than the US Dollar and to stabilise the economies of member countries in the turmoil-prone and uncertain international financial environment, the BRICS countries have jointly explored potential alternatives to the current post-Bretton Woods global regime. The first step is to link the members’ respective CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) to facilitate transactions between states, businesses, and individuals in real time, using a process similar to those used domestically at the national scale, such as the RUPAY/UPI/PTM in India. India has launched an initiative in this regard as part of this year’s official agenda, and it hopes to launch a working system, the BRICSPAY[2], under its presidency after announcing this proposal shortly before succeeding Brazil in the chair of the grouping. It is estimated that transactions carried out through this channel would be instantaneous and cost 50 to 60% less than the present inter-bank payment system, which uses the US Dollar as the intermediary payment instrument.
A more ambitious, longer-term project has been experimentally tested by the Reserve & Investment Asset System (RIAS). It is the BRICS Unit, which, unlike cryptocurrencies, is backed by tangible assets, primarily gold, and is a ‘hybrid combination of gold and major BRICS currencies’[3], with 40% in the former and 60% in the latter. The gold reserves are held in the vaults of member governments, and the Shanghai-based Gold Exchange allows them to be stored wherever the owners choose.
Each of the five BRICS-founding members accounts for 12% of the total currency backing for the Unit. The Unit’s value fluctuates daily based on real-time exchange rates on foreign exchange markets. It is digitally created on a blockchain-based platform. In commercial transactions, the units paid to the seller can be held as they are and used for other transactions, or converted into the national currency at will. Financial and business operations are conducted through Smart Contracts, and real-time settlements eliminate banking intermediaries.
An important feature of the instrument is that gold is valued by weight, not by its current rate in dollars, so it is largely immune to manipulation and speculation. Consequently, ‘the Unit spreads exchange trade risk across multiple economic cycles’[4], and its multi-currency component provides greater stability by smoothing rate fluctuations. The Unit is currently experimental, serving as a pilot, and may not be fully operationalised on a large scale before 2030, given the technical adjustments and optimisation needed, and in view of opposition from the United States and the Euro-emitting European Union to the rise of this new potential rival.
India, for one, is somewhat cautious about introducing this new currency, given concerns about expected hostile reactions from Washington and London. The government prefers to focus on expanding the use of national currencies in business. There is also concern about China’s overwhelming economic preponderance, whose CIPS system[5] and M-Bridge[6] are increasingly challenging the Euro-American SWIFT system, and whose Yuan is increasingly used for international payments. For that reason, care was taken within BRICS to ensure equal participation and power for BRICS members in the composition and management of the Unit, despite the economic disparity between them.
It must be understood that the current Dollar-anchored system, by its very nature, is unfair and skewed to benefit the United States, to the detriment of all other countries, especially the (formerly?) colonised states of the Global South. The vagaries of the American economy and politics, often swayed by domestic and foreign trends and problems, the individual whims of politicians, and the priorities of Big Business expose weaker nations, comprising the majority of mankind, to a range of negative effects. Self-serving decisions and measures taken by the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve may harm the rest of the world, and at times are specifically intended to hobble and restrict states and economies regarded as potential challengers, or simply not aligned with American interests and strategic objectives.
In an age of declining Western supremacy, high technology, industry, investments, trade, and the currency itself are increasingly wielded as weapons to attack other states, despite all the public talk about mutual benefits and concern for democracy, freedom, and human rights. Threats of financial and military punishment, sanctions, and embargoes are implemented with increasing frequency, and their issuers no longer even pretend to be motivated by moral reasons. They make it clear that they want to force weaker governments to bend to their will and are quite ready to make innocent civilian populations suffer in the expectation that the resulting civil unrest and chaos will topple recalcitrant dispensations. Through the Interim economic agreement reached between the USA and India on 6th February 2026, Trump claims to have made New Delhi undertake to purchase USD five hundred billion worth of US goods in five years, even though such an obligation would create a 200 billion US$ deficit for India, given its current volume of exports (pre-18% tariffs), according to geopolitical observer Brahma Chellaney[7].
True to form, Trump is behaving like an extortionist posing as a champion of fair trade, and other ‘friendly’ countries such as Canada, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Malaysia are being similarly pressured to import arbitrary amounts of American products, regardless of their cost and quality, as tribute to the nearly bankrupt imperial overlord.
This situation will only change durably if and when the targets of those repressive measures, along with other vulnerable countries, take effective steps to insulate and protect themselves from hegemonic bullying and persecution, which frequently leads to the destruction of an entire nation. Therefore, a multi-lateral, multi-polar vehicle like BRICS could be beneficial to all its members and even to the world at large, which is why so many countries are waiting in the wings to join. This realisation explains why India is no longer a fence-sitter on the issue of non-Dollar trade and is working to cooperatively build a suitable alternative to the Greenback’s hegemony.
Strategic Cooperation for Free Multipolar Access to Space and the Global Commons
BRICS also has the potential to facilitate collaboration in high- and appropriate-technology R&D between its members, some of which are leaders in frontier areas such as hypersonic propulsion, laser applications, robotics, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotech, pharmacology (Russia’s new cancer vaccine), advanced surgery, alternative medicine, organic agriculture, and agroforestry.
China, Russia, and India have considerable scientific and technological expertise across multiple domains and vast pools of specialised talent. Their collaboration can be mutually beneficial and help other, less advanced BRICS nations move up the global scientific research hierarchy. They have also established institutions to share and disseminate their knowledge and best practices with other countries in the Global South. These include the Indian RIS, the Brazilian ABC, and the Russian Federation’s Rossotrudnichestvo. China deploys the CIDCA and is launching various pioneering AI tools (Deepseek, Moonshot AI (Kimi), Tong AGI Series) that are equal to or superior to their American rivals and are available as open-source systems, which US private behemoths, funded by high-interest loans and investors focused on short-term profits, may not easily compete with.
Multipolarity in science and technology is at least as important as its economic and military counterparts. A promising example of intra-BRICS cooperation is Russia’s Zorky (Zorkyi 2M) low-orbit communication network project, which, when deployed using some 300 12U nanosatellites providing high-resolution multispectral Earth imagery (with Automatic Identification System (AIS)), is expected to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink. Although ‘formally’ private, Starlink is bound to abide by US government directives and is de facto a tool of the Pentagon’s and Space Force’s power. Russia has proposed making Zorky available to other BRICS nations, and although conditions would apply to any defence-related utilisation, the system could render a very important service to countries that cannot develop similar capabilities. It could limit the endless multiplication and duplication of such LEO networks in the already saturated terrestrial atmosphere.
The rampant militarisation of the United States, in the service of its stated intent to increase its preponderance over the global commons, including nearby space and the oceans, and to defeat any other power if it chooses to, poses a potential threat to many states, especially to those that have joined BRICS, which the Trump Administration has vowed to stamp out in one way or another. While stopping short of building a defensive military alliance, it would seem logical and even necessary for the Group to develop and diversify internal collaboration aimed at strengthening the autonomy and cooperative resilience of its members, given that they are all more or less vulnerable to sanctions and other forms of US ‘compellence’ and threats. It is not for nothing that, for its chairship, India has adopted five goals embedded in the BRICS anagram: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability.
The five primary reforms New Delhi is undertaking, apart from expanding the digital public architecture in the Global South, include reforming global governance at the United Nations and in other international bodies, now being systematically undermined and discredited by the current American administration, and developing supply chains and economic resilience, another domain in which the US seeks to retain or gain final decision-making power.
Likewise, in the area of emerging technologies, India’s proposed agenda is to facilitate global collaboration to avoid ‘elite dominance’, which also runs counter to the longstanding American resolve to control advanced research and critical technologies through the IPRs of its government institutions and giant corporations, colloquially known as the GAFAM (Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Microsoft), to which should be added Nvidia, Palantir, SpaceX, and a steady stream of newcomers.
Conclusion
Retaining sufficient coordination within its growing membership is the greatest challenge BRICS faces, particularly since the partner-governments face strong Western pressure to conclude deals on a bilateral, national basis, ignoring the interests and sensitivities of the other members. One strength of the BRICS is precisely the great leeway it leaves for States to conclude economic and even defence agreements at their discretion, as it often satisfies often divergent nationalistic concerns, contrary to the European Union, whose Commission takes decisions on behalf of all its members, generally with the two Big Ones (Germany and France), and increasingly bypasses the formal requirement of unanimity by sanctioning dissenting governments.
The Indo-US Bilateral Trade Agreement, now in the making, is viewed in the USA as an instrument to tie India to US economic and industrial decisions, through mechanisms such as TRUST (Transforming the Relationship Utilising Strategic Technology), which would surely maintain America’s ownership rights over those technologies and their applications. In the same vein, the expected chapter on supply chain cooperation is expected to nudge India’s trade policies into US-approved channels. A recent demonstration of this modus operandi is Trump’s public assertion that India has agreed, at his prodding, to buy oil from the USA and Venezuela and no more from Russia, just as the EU has had to undertake, under the 2025 trade deal, to purchase vast quantities of American energy to replace the ‘forbidden’ Russian oil and gas.
Options are gradually being reduced for nations that consent to such ‘partnerships’ aimed at creating a string of captive customers bound to trade only in Dollars to acquire the goods and services supplied virtually free of competition by the old but increasingly belligerent hegemon. BRICS members will therefore have to be very wary of US proposals if they wish to retain control over their economic future. For many nations, BRICS may offer a better alternative to the reassertion of American dominance, and agreements between BRICS and the European Union are not out of the question[8], but the active survival and success of the bold and pioneering cooperative experiment that is BRICS depend on the vigilance and lucidity of its largest members.
Author Brief Bio: Mr. Come Carpentier has been, since 2003, the convener of the International Editorial Board of World Affairs – The Journal of International Issues. He has travelled and lectured in more than fifty countries. in universities and institutions of Europe, the Americas and Asia. He has written and co-authored several books and more than 200 articles and essays on subjects related to philosophy of science, geopolitics, international relations and the history of civilisations in more than thirty journals, newspapers and magazines in France, India, Italy, the USA, Russia and Switzerland. He was associated for many years with the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilisations as a member of the founding association and a regular guest and speaker on that platform. He is a member of the Advisory Sub-Committee of the Paris-Berlin-Moscou Committee and an advisor to the International League of Phoenicia, Chananean and Punic Cities (Lebanon). He has been a consultant to various American and European high-tech corporations and was between 1992 and 1999 the Secretary of the Tissot Economic Foundation (Switzerland).
References:
[1] Mazen Qumsiyeh, US dollar/Empire decline and more. OpEdNews. https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=US-dollar-Empire-decline-a-Genocide_Genocide-260203-887.html
[2] Think BRICS. (2025, December 29). BRICS pay is live: a new global financial system begins [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG1rPbg__-0
[3] Team, V. R. (2026, January 13). BRICS Launches Gold-Backed Currency: Understanding “The Unit” and how it works. Ventura. https://www.venturasecurities.com/blog/brics-launches-gold-backed-currency-understanding-the-unit-and-how-it-works/
[4] Ibid
[5] Introduction. (n.d.). https://www.cips.com.cn/en/about_us/about_cips/introduction/index.html
[6] Wikipedia contributors. (2025, October 1). MBridge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBridge
[7] https://x.com/Chellaney/status/202003282982092
[8] RAIMONDI, P. (2017). BRICS And The European Union: A NEEDED ALLIANCE. World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, 21(4), 48–55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48531304
