How BRICS is filling the void

In New Delhi, at the BRICS summit, there was something different about the way the leaders discussed many of our current issues, including the war against Iran. They condemned the attacks, called for restraint, and spoke about sovereignty, international law and the need for diplomacy. And they did not all sound the same. In a different world, all this was expected from the United Nations. That is probably the most simple way to understand what BRICS is today.

The group has grown considerably since it began as BRIC—an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China, before South Africa joined and the S was added. It now brings together countries with very different political systems, economic interests and relationships with the US. Some are close to Washington, others are under collective Western sanctions. India and China can oppose each other but they still sit around the same BRICS table.

Experts believe that these nations are not bonding on common ideology so much as a shared dissatisfaction with the way global power is organised and the way global governance is so heavily influenced by the West. That dissatisfaction was not only seen but also felt, both in the summit’s language on Iran and in its discussion of trade, tariffs, currencies and the chaos created by Washington’s policies toward the international financial system.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was among the more straightforward speakers. During his speech, he argued that the world could not claim to support international law while applying its principles selectively. The South African leader was referring to what he called the “illegal war against Iran” and cautioned that the credibility of the international system was being damaged by the selective application of its own rules.

That said, the language in the final declaration was more careful and that is hardly surprising. A document negotiated by 11 full member countries was never going to sound like the speech of one leader. The declaration, as expected, expressed concern over the conflict, called for maximum restraint and reaffirmed the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also pushed diplomacy as the way out of the crisis. India, the host, for obvious reasons, had good reason to keep the language measured. New Delhi has spent decades cultivating relationships on several sides of the geopolitical divide. It buys Russian oil and maintains a strategic relationship with Moscow, and it would like to maintain its partnership with Washington. Iran, meanwhile, is an old partner and an important part of India’s connectivity plans.

According to observers, the summit was never going to produce the kind of blunt, unified condemnation that might come from a much smaller group of countries. Still, something important happened and the argument over Iran did not just end at Iran. For countries such as Russia and Iran, the question of who gets to enforce international rules is inseparable from the question of who controls the levers through which those rules are enforced. After all, sanctions do not stop at government offices, they for every layer of the system, disrupt payments and investment, and make it harder for countries to access foreign currencies. A government or its leader can condemn sanctions in a speech, but the real consequences are felt by companies trying to move money or cargo across borders. In many ways, this explains why the economic discussion at the BRICS summit was almost as interesting as the political one.

There has been plenty of talk over the years about BRICS replacing the dollar. That makes for an easy headline, but it is not quite what is happening or what these countries want collectively. At the moment, there is no BRICS currency waiting to replace the dollar. There is no new financial system that has suddenly made the SWIFT banking system irrelevant or easy to bypass. What these countries appear to be doing is trying to make it easier to trade with one another without having to pass through the same financial channels every time channels that can be influenced by the US. And the New Delhi Declaration backed greater use of national currencies and work on cross-border payment systems, including efforts to make it easier for banks in different countries to connect and move money between them.

That may sound ambitious, but it is not, and to a great extent it has been happening for some time. If Brazil can trade more easily with India in their own currencies, if South African businesses can settle transactions without routing everything through dollars, or if Russian companies have more ways of moving money internationally, then the leverage attached to the existing financial system is reduced significantly, if not made to disappear completely. All that said, the dollar remains deeply embedded in global trade and finance, and replacing that infrastructure is enormously difficult. In fact, the dollar’s share of allocated global reserves rose to about 57.1% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 56.4% in late 2025. For now, the BRICS countries have not solved those problems, but they do appear to be trying to create more choices. This is also why protectionism features so prominently, though cautiously, in the summit’s language.

The New Delhi Declaration criticised unilateral tariffs and other trade restrictions, arguing that they distort trade and weaken the multilateral trading system. It backed support for the World Trade Organization and warned against the use of unilateral economic measures. It did not name the United States directly. The criticism, experts say, comes at an awkward time for the global economy. Tariffs have once again become a central instrument of US economic policy, turning access to the world’s largest consumer market into a bargaining tool that has been used by President Donald Trump. Countries that spent decades building export industries now have to deal with the possibility that a tariff can change the economics of a product almost overnight. At BRICS the answer was not to abandon global trade, it was the opposite. The body’s members want more of it, but they want more room to decide the terms on which they participate. And that is what makes Ramaphosa’s speech particularly important.

For South Africa, the argument is not primarily about replacing the dollar with their local currency or building an anti-American trading bloc. It is about a common problem in the developing world: countries export raw materials and import finished goods, while much of the wealth generated along the way is captured somewhere else. Ramaphosa, at the BRICS summit, also argued for a more inclusive global economy and greater financial cooperation, including stronger use of local currencies and cross-border payment systems. That is not the same argument coming from Russia. For Moscow, alternative payment systems have an immediate strategic value because Western sanctions have made access to conventional financial channels much more difficult. Russia has every reason to want a world in which its ability to trade is less dependent on institutions it does not control. For South Africa, the attraction is more developmental. For India, it is mostly about strategic autonomy. For China, it fits into a much longer effort to increase the international use of its currency and build financial infrastructure that is less dependent on Western institutions. And last but not least, for Iran, the attraction is very obvious under current circumstances. According to experts, these interests overlap, but at the moment, they do not amount to a single BRICS strategy. And this is the part of the BRICS story that often gets lost in the language about a “multipolar world”.

Perhaps that is precisely why the financial agenda is more significant than some of the summit’s political rhetoric. At this point, a common currency would require an extraordinary degree of political and economic integration. BRICS is nowhere close to that. However, countries can cooperate on payments without agreeing on foreign policy; they can settle more trade in local currencies without abandoning the dollar. And according to most independent experts, that is a much more realistic aim for now.

A new currency would send shockwaves, but a payment arrangement between banks in two countries would barely make the news. But if enough of those arrangements develop over time, they can change the way trade is conducted. This is why Russia’s position at the summit is also worth paying attention to. For years, Putin has been among the most vocal advocates of reducing dependence on Western financial infrastructure, but even Russia’s rhetoric needs to be read carefully. The Kremlin has said it is not seeking outright “de-dollarisation” and remains open to different payment methods. The same logic runs through the BRICS discussion on sanctions. The members do not all agree on sanctions, and they certainly do not all agree on the countries that should be sanctioned. But many of them object to a system in which one group of countries can impose financial restrictions with consequences far beyond its own borders.

For many countries in the Global South, there is another concern. Their trade, access to finance and even access to technology can be affected by decisions made in Washington, Brussels or other powerful capitals. That can be uncomfortable even when they have good relations with the West. The push for alternatives, then, is not necessarily about turning away from the West. It is about having more room to make their own choices without needing permission. And that, experts say, may be the most consequential idea to come out of the New Delhi summit.

That said, let’s not over value what is emerging just right now. The dollar still calls the shots in global finance, SWIFT still holds the strings to the world’s banking system, and western financial markets are still vital for companies and governments everywhere. Even the BRICS countries themselves keep using those systems heavily. And then there is no shortage of contradictions inside the bloc.

But perhaps a new international order, if one is emerging, will not arrive with a single announcement at a summit in one of these capitals. It may come through a series of smaller changes such as a payment system here, a local-currency trade agreement there, a new development bank, a supply chain redirected, a country finding another source of financing or another market for its exports. That is a slower process, and in many ways, it is also much harder to reverse. So, in New Delhi, the summit did not produce a new world order, but it did produce something more modest, a group of nations trying to make the existing one less restrictive and perhaps even challenge the way it operates. Whether they can do that together in the long run is another question.