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Welcome to The Geopolity’s What We’re Watching (3W), our daily look at the interconnected worlds of Geopolitics, Economics and Energy. Curated from the world’s leading sources of information, our analysis and commentary is designed to help you make sense of the events driving the major developments in the world.
Today, at 3W our intention is step away from analyzing the day-to-day events of importance to geopolitics, the things that usually capture the headlines; and instead look at the slower moving developments that tend to be much less covered in western media, but will in time be much more influential.
We are of course talking about BRICS.
BRICS originally comprised Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. In 2024 it expanded by including Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, after which in 2025 Indonesia formally joined, writes The Times of India. Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam became BRICS partner countries in 2025.
The BRICS countries gathered in India over the past few days for their annual Summit. The list of attendees, discussed by Al Jazeera, makes quite clear the event is a big deal. The original BRICS countries were mostly represented by their top leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the host, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. Only Brazil did not send its leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva because he is tied up with local elections, and instead sent its Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira. Other notable attendees were Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Le Minh Hung, and Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The Arabian Gulf was represented by Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud; the UAE’s crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan; and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani.
In the West, BRICS is often presented as an effort to “undermine the current global world order”, in effect creating a “breakaway bloc” through which stability in international relations would be undermined. 3W notes that the speeches during the Summit as well as the unanimously agreed joint declaration give a different impression.
Indian prime minister Modi insisted that the bloc should not be interpreted simply as an anti-Western project, writes Al Jazeera. Instead, BRICS is about creating a world order that is not dominating by a single entity, a hegemon, which uses its power solely for its own interests. In its joint declaration BRICS reiterated its “commitment to strengthening multilateralism and multipolarity”, noting that a multipolar world can expand opportunities for Emerging Markets and Developing Countries (EMDCs) to develop “constructive potential and enjoy universally beneficial, inclusive, sustainable and equitable economic globalisation and cooperation”. The joint declaration therefore pushes back quite explicitly against the habitual use of force – both military and economic – by the US and its allies in order to preserve their hegemony. “From Gaza, to the broader crisis in the Middle East, to Ukraine, Sudan and beyond, our world needs peace”, the joint declaration says, writes The south China Morning Post. The BRICS joint declaration therefore calls for international disputes to be resolved through “dialogue, consultation, and diplomacy”, and specifically regarding sanctions says, “We call for the elimination of such unlawful measures, which undermine international law and the principles and purposes of the UN Charter”.
To prove that from the Chinese perspective BRICS is not a vehicle to replace US hegemony with Chinese hegemony, China’s president Xi in his address at the Summit offered to help countries develop open-source AI and smart manufacturing, writes The South China Morning Post. 3W notes this is quite clearly a carefully chose policy position it is directly contradicts the US policy position when it comes to AI. The US is using its dominance in high tech to force countries into a US dominated information technology ecosystem. For example, the EU – US “Turnberry” trade deal is, according to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen designed to “help the US to maintain their technological edge”, writes Politico. Opposite to this, China proposes open-source AI and offers to train engineers from other countries in these technologies to enable them to develop independently. Bloomberg also notes that China is looking to build an open-source AI ecosystem, while American developers including OpenAI and Anthropic prefer closed models.
3W notes this is quite clearly a carefully chose policy position it is directly contradicts the US policy position when it comes to AI
The BRICS conversation on how to respond to US sanctions further proved the group is not trying to “defeat” the US, but instead limit the US ability to use economic force in order to get what it wants. The BRICS countries agreed not to pursue a “BRICS currency” in order to “depose” the dollar, but instead agreed to establishment mechanism that enable international trade using a wide variety of currencies, writes The South China Morning Post. In other words, BRICS is trying to give countries options and limit the ability of any single country to “bully” others.
India as the Summit host also pushed for, and achieved, a meeting between Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. “What India has done is keep the difficult conversations going, by showing that countries of the region can sit at the same table, engage diplomatically, and build on where their interests converge,” Sunjay Sudhir, a former Indian ambassador to the UAE, told Reuters. Chinese president Xi also urged all other countries in BRICS to be peacemakers, Reuters also writes. Specifically the war in the Middle East “does not serve the common interests of the international community”, Xi said.
Considering the above, in the 3W view most western media outlets fundamentally misunderstand (or purposely misrepresents) the current state of BRICS. For example, The New York Times speaks of “the BRICS group’s unwieldy internal divisions” that “that raises questions about the loose bloc’s ability to solve geopolitical crises like the war in the Middle East.” In our 3W view, it is exactly the opposite. The US, because of its hegemonic mindset, is pushing for international alignment based on “ideology”. Countries that agree with the US can join this select club, and together the club members then confront those countries that do not want to join. What BRICS is saying, however, is that countries do not need to be ideologically aligned in order to collaborate in areas of mutual interest, such as trade and technology development. In fact, one could argue that BRICS is saying that by pushing “ideological alignment” as a requirement for collaboration, the US is effectively causing unrest and instability around the world, as it forces countries to submit to the ideology being pushed by the US. Because media such as NYT do not properly understand BRICS (or refuse to properly inform their readers) they also misunderstand communications by BRICS. NYT notes that the joint declaration, while mentioning the conflicts around the world, failed to mention the countries behind these conflicts. “The wording in the lengthy joint statement about the war in the Middle East … apportioned no blame”, NYT says, as if this is something bad. In fact, it is the opposite, we at 3W would argue. Apportioning blame makes the diplomacy that s needed to resolve conflicts infinitely harder. Any wise person who wishes to end the human suffering that results from such conflicts therefore focuses on finding compromise solutions that resolve (in part) the concerns of the parties in the conflict, not on who is to blame for the conflict.
What all this means, in our 3W view, is that BRICS is pushing a fundamentally different vision for international collaboration.
What all this means, in our 3W view, is that BRICS is pushing a fundamentally different vision for international collaboration
BRICS is not trying to create a “new but similar” world order. The US has been pushing for international collaboration based on “shared values”. This vision creates opposing blocs, where one group unites to oppose those with other values, under slogans such as “democracies against autocracies”. The current world shows what this can easily lead to: economic and military warfare. This US promoted vision for international relations is not the solution for international conflict, therefore, it is often the root cause for it.
BRICS is not trying to develop a different set of shared values in order to create a bloc that is powerful enough, in a military and economic sense, to effectively stand up to the US. And thereby effectively create a new hegemon, operating in the same way as the US, creating the same problems.
Instead, BRICS is promoting a vision for international relations based on shared interests, not values. And on the basis of this vision it is proposing establishment of rules, institutions and tools that enable collaboration based on shared interests, and that cannot be abused by aspirant hegemons.
The failure of western media to recognize this is either due to incompetence, or due to a recognition that the BRICS vision is in fact appealing, and as such a threat for the US and its vision for the global order – for which reason it is to be suppressed, or misrepresented, to prevent it from affecting the thinking of people and countries.
In our 3W view, all this is what is going on. To us as independent strategic thinkers, any country should aspire to achieving its national interests, and for this should work to maximize its autonomy, to limit as much as possible the ability of others to coerce it. And we add that any country which recognizes these “hard truths” of international relations, should aspire to BRICS membership, in some form or another.