India’s BRICS Dilemma: Multi-Alignment Without a Clear Global South Vision. Part 1

As India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, its policy of multi-alignment is under crucial scrutiny: whether New Delhi can achieve a balance between strategic autonomy and a real commitment to the Global South, or whether BRICS is simply another instrument of transactional, multi-alignment diplomacy?

The main political issue is this: what would India like BRICS to develop into?

New Delhi has become skilled at maintaining a balance among its various alliances; it is a member of BRICS alongside China, Russia, and Iran; takes part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and is a strategic partner of the United States, Japan, and Australia via the Quad, an alliance designed to contain China. Although it depends on Russia for energy, India is strengthening its defence and technological ties with the West. This strategy is generally known as “strategic autonomy,” but strategic autonomy by itself does not amount to a full geopolitical project.

The danger is to pursue multi-alignment as an end in itself while failing to recognize the great-power politics unfolding around India, and at the end being overtaken by new geopolitical realities.

India and the BRICS: Does it pursue strategic autonomy or strategic ambiguity?

India’s standing within BRICS is fundamentally different from that of China or Russia.

Beijing regards BRICS as one of the means that the international system can reduce its dependence on Western financial and political structures, while Moscow has an even more pressing interest in establishing mechanisms to reduce its vulnerability to Western sanctions and the dollar-based financial system. Iran is in the same line too.

In New Delhi, a more cautious approach is taken.

At the New Delhi summit, India is advocating for cross-border digital payments and for the possible interoperability of........

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