Explained: Why you can’t put BRICS in the anti-West box

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in New Delhi, Friday. (ANI)

As it presides over the BRICS summit in Delhi Saturday, India’s challenge is two-fold: to convey the forum’s shared objective of democratizing the international system and to dispel the widespread impression that it seeks to overthrow the US-led order.

The forum’s champions and detractors alike view it through an anti-Western lens. Its supporters celebrate BRICS as a vehicle for resisting Western dominance; its critics warn that it is becoming a counter-bloc led by China and Russia. Both readings are simplistic. The BRICS members differ over whether their national aim is accommodation with the West, autonomy from it, parity within it, or direct confrontation.

Within BRICS, India and Brazil share a strong instinct against turning the grouping into an anti-West alliance. India and Brazil do not want to undermine an international system in which they seek a larger role, more trade, access to technology and investment, and greater diplomatic standing.

The political orientation of BRICS towards the West is best understood as a spectrum of approaches. Iran is closest to an anti-Western pole, its state ideology and recent history making resistance to US power central to foreign policy. At the other end are countries with deep economic, security and institutional ties with the West, even while pursuing greater autonomy.

Russia and China lie between these extremes: both are in strategic competition with the West, but neither can be understood apart from its desire for status, influence and a seat at the Western high table.

Brazil offers the clearest challenge to the easy opposition between “the West” and “the Global South”. Brazil is Latin America’s largest power and a strong advocate for reforming global institutions.

Yet Brazil is also, in broad historical and political terms, a part of the West. Its geography, language, religion, legal tradition, political institutions and elite reference points are rooted in the Iberian and Euro-Atlantic worlds. It is a constitutional democracy whose diplomatic tradition privileges international law and multilateralism. Brazil is not seeking to overthrow the West from outside. It is a Western power dissatisfied with how authority is distributed within the order it inhabits.

Story continues below this ad

That layered identity explains the balance in Brazilian diplomacy. Brasília rejects automatic alignment with Washington; nor is it comfortable with systematic anti-Western mobilisation. Far from Eurasia, Brazil has no direct conflict with Russia or China. Unlike Delhi, Brasilia is not emotionally invested in Moscow. Nor does Brazil share India’s security challenges with China. Beijing, indeed, is a leading economic partner of Brazil.

Brazil’s engagement with the great powers is based on national interest rather than ideology. Brazil’s position on BRICS payments illustrates this. It supports cheaper and faster bilateral settlement mechanisms, including trade in national currencies where useful. But it has rejected the notion that BRICS must promote de-dollarisation or develop a common currency to displace the dollar. A shared currency would require political trust, economic convergence and institutional integration that BRICS lacks.

India arrives at a similar destination from a different starting point. External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar has consistently underlined India’s non-Western identity. India is a post-colonial state and a developing country. While India shares political values with the West, it does not want to become a geopolitical appendage to the US and Europe.

But being non-Western is not synonymous with anti-Western. India’s partnerships with the US, Europe, Japan and Australia have deepened across trade, technology, defence, and diaspora. Delhi’s participation in the Quad sits alongside membership of BRICS. For India, BRICS is useful precisely because of its diversity. But it ceases to serve Indian interests if it becomes a China-led alliance against the West. Delhi also knows that Moscow and Beijing, despite their confrontations with Washington, remain interested in negotiating a new balance with it.

Story continues below this ad

Russia’s contradiction with the West is now deep and structural, shaped by the Ukraine war, NATO’s role in European security, and sanctions. Yet Moscow is also eager for Western recognition as a great power and a say in managing European and global security.

China challenges American primacy in Asia, reduces exposure to Western technology restrictions and presents BRICS as part of a more representative order. But its rise was inseparable from access to Western markets, capital and technology. Beijing has strong economic interdependence with the US; it’s not seeking an exit from the US-led world; it wants to be America’s co-equal in shaping it.

The newer members further weaken the anti-Western image of BRICS. Egypt remains tied to Washington on security; the UAE has extensive commercial and strategic links with the US and Europe; and Indonesia’s “free and active” diplomacy is designed to retain manoeuvring room among major powers. They seek autonomy, closer ties with China and a stronger voice for the Global South voice, but not membership in a unified anti-Western camp.

Iran is the nearest exception. Resistance to the US and Israel is central to the Islamic Republic’s political identity. For Tehran, BRICS offers legitimacy and a means to counter American effort to isolate it. But Iran’s domestic debate continues to pit advocates of resistance against those favouring diplomacy and reconciliation with the US.

Story continues below this ad

Delhi’s political burden at the BRICS summit this weekend is to ensure that the forum does not conflate autonomy from America with antagonism towards it. India needs to strengthen the perception of BRICS as a forum seeking international reform rather than a rupture with the West.

(C. Raja Mohan is a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express)