More BRICS in the wall: bigger bloc or deeper fault lines?

For years, BRICS was easy to dismiss a grandiose exercise in branding: a Goldman Sachs acronym that governments used as a diplomatic talk shop rather than a policy-making institution. It seems that moment has now firmly passed. With its expansion beyond the original five to what is now effectively an 11-member configuration spanning Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and, of course, Asia, BRICS has stopped being a curiosity and started to resemble an alternative center of gravity.

Together, its members represent close to half the world’s population and, in purchasing-power terms, more of the world economy than the G7. The question isn’t whether BRICS is big, for it clearly is; the question, rather, is whether “more BRICS in the wall” means a sturdier new bloc or simply more weight on already visible cracks: strategic rivalry, governance gaps, and a shared sense of grievance, perhaps, but one that still lacks a firmly shared blueprint for action.

From clever acronym to coalition of grievance

The original BRIC label was an investment framework, not a foreign-policy project. In the early 2000s, economists used it to point at Brazil, Russia, India, and China as the fast-growing economies to watch, that would, over time, account for a much larger share of global GDP. These states later decided to move in and inhabit the acronym, meeting first as BRIC in 2009, then adding South Africa in 2010 to avoid the impression of being a purely Asian club, as well as to signal further global reach. From the outset, the group defined itself more by what it rejected than what it would build: namely dollar dominance, Western-designed conditionality, and an anachronistic global governance system that still reflects the world of 1945 rather than the world of 2025 (CFR).

Institutionally, BRICS kept itself deliberately light. There is no treaty mechanism similar to NATO’s Article 5, no supranational legal entity as with the EU, and no common budget. Leaders meet on an annual basis, with ministers and working groups clustering around themes like finance, health, and science. A coordination space, not an alliance in the traditional binding sense, and it’s a looseness that made it easier to then bring states with very different regimes and alignments into the same room. It also meant BRICS could move quickly on symbolism, more slowly on substance. The two most tangible creations to date, namely the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, were built precisely to outline how alternatives to the World Bank and IMF were indeed possible, even if they are still much smaller in scale (NDB; IMF).

BRICS 11: mass and message

What has fundamentally changed in recent years, specifically the last two, is not only how BRICS talks, but who is doing the talking and taking point. The decision to expand membership to include states such as Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and, prospectively, Indonesia and others, turns BRICS from a five-power grouping into something closer to a global umbrella outfit. In aggregate, the expanded group now accounts for roughly 46% of global population and more than 30% of global GDP in nominal terms and, as we noted at the top, it has already overtaken the G7 in share of global output measured at purchasing power parity (IMF; BRICS). Critically, it also stands to rewrite the balance of global resources, concentrating a significant share of key commodities, among these oil and gas in the Gulf and Russia; critical minerals and agriculture in Brazil, South Africa, and Ethiopia; and manufacturing and technology capabilities, comprehensive industrial supply chains, in China and India.

On the messaging side, that demographic and material scale undergirds an increasingly confident narrative, a recognizable voice. BRICS leaders argue that the post-war “rules-based order” is not a neutral architecture that benefits all, but a frozen power dynamic, voting shares, vetoes, and board seats that over-represent the North Atlantic and under-represent the rest (CFR). Whether on issues such as IMF quota reform, UN Security Council expansion, or climate finance, BRICS messaging now reads less like petitions for possible change and more like direct indictments claiming that Western governments are holding on to the reins of power via rights to design that they no longer fully deserve.

In this sense, the group expansion has already done something important for BRICS: it has turned it into a credible voice for the Global South, at least through its messaging. States that feel subordinated by the West, chronically lectured on issues such as debt, human rights, and infrastructure quality, these nations now see in BRICS a forum where such lecturing is absent and the language runs closer to their own tacit concerns: sovereignty, non-interference, and space to develop and grow.

In recent months, BRICS has notably, and visibly stepped up its de-dollarizationarchitecture, not only as a slogan but as a direction of policy intent. In March 2025 the Russian finance ministry confirmed the development of a digital trade-settlement mechanism, one often referred to in media as “BRICS Pay”, which is designed to allow member countries to settle cross-border transactions in mutual national currencies rather than the US dollar (CCN). Further announcements in late 2025 from Brazil reinforced the pledge “to continue reducing dollar dependency” even under retaliatory threats of 100% tariffs from a capricious Washington (Livemint).

The system remains in its early phase, certainly, and the necessary unified messaging and cyber-frameworks to operate it are still under construction (GIS Reports), but the emphasis has shifted from a hazy ambition to a proof-of-concept outline, a step that places BRICS beyond mere bold rhetoric.

Fault lines: rivalry, divergence, and shallow architecture

More members in the club means a greater mass or shared sentiment, maybe, but this is not the same as a formalized coherence. Let’s consider this cartographically: if you lay the BRICS 11 on a table as a security map, the fault lines are obvious: not everyone in the clubhouse is the finest of chums. India and China, for example, are locked in a long-running border dispute and competing industrial strategies, a situation only set to heighten as India in particular chases its opportunities for economic ascendancy. Brazil and South Africa, meanwhile, position themselves as climate-progressive democracies; while Russia and Iran prefer to cast themselves as leaders of a “resistance axis” against U.S. and European pressure. Ethiopia and Egypt have unresolved water and dam disputes. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, that is, if and when Riyadh’s full membership is finalized, are simultaneously partners and rivals in Gulf energy and finance. These are not minor differences to be swept under the carpet; they go to the heart of how each state defines its security and economic trajectory (IISS; SIPRI).

And it’s just these divergences that we can see bleeding into the question of group architecture. The NDB has approved tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy projects, yet it remains an order of magnitude smaller than the World Bank, and its lending portfolio, somewhat ironically, is still heavily co-financed with existing Western-dominated institutions rather than having them replaced (NDB; World Bank).

Similarly, the much-discussed flagship de-dollarization agenda is real at the margins, the visible growth in local-currency trade settlement and experimentation with bilateral swaps, but it does not yet add up to a coherent structural alternative to the ubiquity of the entrenched dollar-based system. There is no shared monetary framework, no unified payments rail with sufficient institutional trust, and no agreement on how a “BRICS unit” would be governed, if one emerged at all.

In other words, the bloc has an emergent messaging, a brand voice, if you will, and, critically, a growing convening power, but its operational power is still narrow and patchy. The risk for BRICS is that expansion produces a packed, interesting train, on rails to a specific destination, yet without a driver. More colorful flags on the (longer) summit table, but no corresponding deepening in the actual institutions that would turn a tacit alignment of group preferences into a predictable plan for joint action.

The Western response: denial, discomfort, and coercion

The West’s attitude has generally flipped between an outright dismissal and a tacit, underlying sense of creeping discomfort which, in essence, is acknowledgement. For much of the 2010s, Washington and Brussels publicly downplayed BRICS as a “talk shop”, a novel gabfest undeserving of real scrutiny, even as they privately noted that it could complicate voting dynamics at the UN, G20, and other multilateral venues. That posture, or conceit, is harder to sustain now that BRICS 11 includes major Gulf energy exporters, large African economies, and key Asian middle powers. Yes, what we’re saying here is that if a coalition representing nearly half of humanity repeatedly describes the existing institutions, the historic status quo, as unresponsive, then the legitimacy problem is no longer rhetorical.

Under the current U.S. administration, the response has tilted towards coercion, with explicitly threatened tariffs and other trade measures targeting BRICS members who seek to reduce dollar use in trade, or who pursue technology ties with China and Russia, framing such steps as “anti-American” or simply “unfair” (Atlantic Council). While such language may sound like the toys are being thrown from the pram, the message is clear: experiment with financial or technological alternatives and you may face costs. While this approach may deter some moves at the margin, it also neatly reinforces one of BRICS’ core claims, namely that the dollar, and the wider Western system, in effect, are used as tools of geopolitical leverage to solidify the status quo, rather than as a mutually reinforcing mechanism of economic benefit.

Europe’s stance is somewhat more ambivalent. Parts of the EU foreign policy machinery recognize that engaging BRICS on issues of reform, the IMF quotas, World Bank governance, and climate finance, may actually be more productive than simply pretending the bloc is inconsequential. Other parts of the Union still treat BRICS as peripheral and focus instead on bilateral deals with individual members for trade, energy transition, and technology cooperation (Clingendael). The risk for Europe, therefore, is that it drifts into a position where it finds itself vacillating: both too weak to set the rules and too cautious to join the rewiring.

Bigger bloc or deeper fault lines?

So, to our title: do more BRICS in the wall mean a sturdier bloc or a more visible fracture? Well, the answer depends on what you consider as “success”. If the goal is to build a parallel governance architecture, an alternative to the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and Western-led security arrangements, then BRICS is still in the early conceptual stage. It lacks the legal, financial, and bureaucratic infrastructure for that role, having no formal treaty structure or mechanisms to codify policy. And, in any case, its internal conflicts make high-trust integration unlikely in the short term.

However, if the goal is to build a political counterweight and negotiating institution, then the bloc is, arguably, already effective. Joint statements on Gaza, on sanctions, on the use of unilateral economic measures have all shifted debate in multilateral forums and countered most of the rhetoric from Washington and Brussels, even if they have not changed outcomes.

A more realistic medium-term scenario is that BRICS continues to build momentum and establishes a permanent gravitational field of shared direction, rather than a fully integrated bloc. It will throw up options of interest to countries that feel subordinate to the established conventions, form Global South coalitions to negotiate climate finance, digital rules, and infrastructure standards, and ascertain how much room they feel they have to hedge between Beijing, Washington, Brussels, and others. It may never be coherent enough to write all the new rules, but it can prevent any single center of gravity writing them alone. That, in itself, is a redistribution of power.

For democracies and open economies, the question is not how to “stop” BRICS, but how to respond to what it signals. Either the existing system recognizes and absorbs those signals, then reforms to incorporate more voice and redistribute more control, or new centers of organization will keep emerging, perhaps uneven and messy, to fill the gap. Right now, BRICS 11 is one of those centers. Whether it becomes a load-bearing wall or a line of stress fractures will depend on whether its members can do something harder than criticizing the order they inherited, and instead build one they are collectively willing to live inside.

Read this. Notice that. Do something.

Read this: Council on Foreign Relations – “What Is the BRICS Group and Why Is It Expanding?”

Notice that: IMF – World Economic Outlook data: BRICS’ combined share of global GDP (PPP) overtakes the G7, but financial and monetary governance remains firmly anchored in dollar-centric institutions.

Do something: Clingendael Institute – “BRICS and the Emerging Order of Multipolarity” – useful for mapping how Europe might engage with BRICS as a reform partner rather than just a rival.

Previously on GYST: The cost of living with risk: how climate change is rewriting the price of protection

Next up: Who pays for a hotter planet?