The author treats the New Delhi BRICS summit as proof of a crisis in the Western-led order, not of a ready replacement: eleven members share vulnerability to sanctions, the dollar, and unequal IMF/World Bank power—“strategic insurance,” not an anti-imperialist alliance. India is the exhibit: Quad plus Israel plus Russia plus China-in-BRICS; a Palestine line in the declaration sits beside a defence tie with Israel.

De-dollarisation talk outruns institutions: local-currency trade and payments, not a common currency. The New Development Bank funds infrastructure and some local-currency loans but cannot replace the IMF on debt. Gains are real and incremental—not a rupture.

Consensus required silence on Ukraine and papered over India–China rivalry and Middle East splits. The Global South is not one bloc. Test for the Left: whether BRICS changes the political economy of dependence for societies, not just governments. New Delhi kept the coalition together; that is not yet a new system.

BRICS expansion reflects the crisis of the Western-led order, but the New Delhi summit exposed the limits of its political coherence. The grouping creates bargaining space for the Global South without yet creating an alternative to the system it seeks to challenge.

BRICS is often presented either as the embryo of a multipolar world or as an unwieldy diplomatic club. Both readings miss its central contradiction. Its expansion reflects a genuine crisis of the existing international order, but enlargement has not produced corresponding political coherence. BRICS can bring rivals into the same room; it has yet to make them act together.

The original BRIC grouping of Brazil, Russia, India and China began largely as an economic category. South Africa’s admission transformed it into a political forum, while the subsequent admission of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the UAE and Indonesia dramatically expanded its reach. But every new member also brings its own alliances, class interests, security priorities and economic dependencies. The New Delhi summit demonstrated that BRICS can contain these contradictions, but not necessarily overcome them.

The Crisis Behind the Expansion

BRICS has not expanded because its members suddenly became anti-imperialist. India, the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia maintain substantial relationships with the United States and Europe; China remains deeply integrated into global capitalism; Russia confronts Western sanctions; and Brazil continues to pursue strategic autonomy within a global economy dominated by Western markets.

What increasingly connects these countries is vulnerability: exposure to sanctions, dollar dependence, unequal access to international finance, trade asymmetries and an international system in which economic weight has not translated into proportional political power. For sanctioned states, BRICS offers possible alternatives; for energy exporters, diversification; and for developing economies, greater scope for local-currency trade and South-South finance.

BRICS is therefore better understood as........

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