BRICS

• 1. Introduction

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  BRICS began as a line in a Goldman Sachs research paper, and became one of the most debated geopolitical groupings of the 21st century. In 2001, British economist Jim O'Neill coined the term BRIC to designate a cluster of emerging markets he believed would reshape the global economy. Two decades later, the grouping he named would comprise ten countries, collectively accounting for more than a quarter of global economic output and nearly half the world's population.

  O'Neill himself grew disillusioned. In a 2021 article for Project Syndicate, he wrote that the BRICS countries had "so far proven incapable of uniting as a meaningful global force." By 2024, he felt that "each year also brings further confirmation that the grouping serves no real purpose beyond generating symbolic gestures and lofty rhetoric."

  And yet the summits keep coming. Leaders of the world's largest emerging economies gather annually, sign declarations, and negotiate new financial institutions that directly challenge the western-dominated order. Whether BRICS is a genuine alternative or an elaborate diplomatic fiction is the question this documentary sets out to answer.

• 2. A Diplomat's Vision

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  Yevgeny Primakov, Russia's foreign minister, articulated the idea of a multipolar grouping in 1998, when he reiterated it during a visit to New Delhi. His vision predated O'Neill's economic framing by three years, and it was explicitly political: a counterweight to western dominance in the post-Cold War world.

  The early forums that gave BRICS its scaffolding were RIC, a dialogue between Russia, India, and China, and IBSA, linking India, Brazil, and South Africa. These informal groups showed that large non-western countries could coordinate before any formal organization existed.

  When the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China met in New York City in September 2006, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, they were building on Primakov's decade-old idea. Their first formal summit followed in Yekaterinburg on the 16th of June 2009, chaired by Dmitry Medvedev and attended by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao. The summit's central concern was the Great Recession, and the leaders called for a new global reserve currency that would be, in their words, "diverse, stable and predictable."

• 3. Building the Architecture

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  At the fifth BRICS summit in Durban in March 2013, the member countries agreed to create a multilateral bank to cooperate with the western-dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank. That institution, the New Development Bank, was signed into existence at the sixth summit in Fortaleza in July 2014, alongside a Contingent Reserve Arrangement worth over US$100 billion.

  The funding split at the Saint Petersburg leaders' meeting in September 2013 revealed who held the real weight. China committed $41 billion to the currency pool; Brazil, India, and Russia each contributed $18 billion; South Africa put in $5 billion. China, which held the world's largest foreign exchange reserves, also wanted a greater managing role and wanted to host the reserve.

  By 2024, the New Development Bank had approved more than $32 billion for 96 projects, with authorized annual lending of up to $34 billion. The bank's starting capital was $50 billion, with each of the five original members contributing $10 billion. South Africa hosts the bank's African headquarters. In 2021, Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Uruguay joined the institution, extending its reach beyond the founding members.

  The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement entered into force upon ratification by all member states, announced at the seventh summit in Ufa in July 2015. Its inaugural governing council meeting was held on the 4th of September 2015 in Ankara, Turkey.

• 4. Expansion and Its Complications

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  South Africa officially became a BRICS member on the 24th of December 2010, after being formally invited by China. The group then held its third summit in Sanya, China, in April 2011, where South African president Jacob Zuma attended as a full member for the first time.

  The larger expansion came at the 15th summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that six countries, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, had been invited to join. Full membership was set to begin on the 1st of January 2024.

  Argentina's invitation collapsed within months. The Argentine general election in November 2023 brought Javier Milei to power, and he had committed to withdrawing the application. On the 30th of November 2023, incoming Foreign Minister Diana Mondino confirmed the decision. On the 29th of December 2023, Argentina sent a formal letter to all BRICS leaders, officially declining.

  Saudi Arabia's position proved equally uncertain. It did not join at the start of 2024 as planned, and in mid-January it announced it was still considering the matter. Unnamed sources continued to suggest it had not decided whether to join, even as the official BRICS website listed it as a member from January 2025.

  Indonesia joined officially on the 6th of January 2025, becoming the first Southeast Asian state to enter the bloc and its tenth member. Jakarta's bid had received approval in 2023, but Indonesia delayed entry until after its 2024 presidential election. Some observers had as far back as 2009 theorized a grouping they called "BRIIC" or "BRICI," anticipating Indonesia's eventual inclusion.

• 5. The Dollar Question

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  De-dollarization has been one of BRICS's most discussed and most contested goals. At the 14th summit in Beijing in June 2022, held via videoconference, members discussed creating a basket-type reserve currency backed by precious metals. At the 16th summit in Kazan in October 2024, a symbolic banknote for a potential BRICS currency was unveiled. One proposed name for the currency is "R5," drawn from the five original member currencies: the renminbi, ruble, rupee, real, and rand.

  At the 2015 BRICS summit in Russia, ministers began consultations for a payment alternative to the SWIFT system, with an initial aim of settling trade in national currencies. China had already launched its own Cross-Border Interbank Payment System; India has the Structured Financial Messaging System; Russia operates SPFS; Brazil has Pix. BRICS Bridge, a proposed successor to an earlier mechanism called MBridge, would allow central banks to support cross-border transactions using their own central bank digital currencies.

  The Chinese renminbi accounts for about 47% of intra-BRICS trade transactions. China itself accounts for roughly 52% of the group's GDP measured at purchasing power parity, and roughly 70% of the organization's total GDP.

  The reaction from Washington ranged from dismissal to alarm. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen largely dismissed BRICS dedollarization efforts. In November 2024, then-president-elect Donald Trump threatened a 100% tariff on countries that pursued a BRICS currency or moved away from the dollar. On his first day in office during his second term, he repeated the threat. In February 2025, he said flatly that "BRICS is dead."

  President Putin, speaking at the Kazan summit, clarified his own position: Russia was not attempting to reject the dollar, but was preparing alternatives to what he called a "weaponized" dollar.

• 6. Who BRICS Actually Is

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  A Gallup International poll conducted between October and December 2023 found that almost a third of people around the world had never heard of BRICS. Even in Russia, a poll following the Kazan summit found that 39% of 1,500 respondents had never heard of the grouping. In Brazil, a 2019 survey of 1,849 respondents found only 3% knew what the acronym stood for.

  The members are not ideologically uniform. Canada's BRICS Research Group at the University of Toronto noted in 2023 that the bloc includes three democracies, Brazil, India, and South Africa, alongside two non-democratic regimes, Russia and China. This political diversity, the analysis argued, limits the group's ability to unite on an explicitly anti-western position.

  India's approach has been a study in strategic ambiguity. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar stated in 2024 that India participates in BRICS in part because it has not been admitted to the G7. Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das said in December 2024 that dedollarization for India was about "derisking" trade and reducing dependence on any single currency, not ideological alignment. Former diplomat D. Bala Venkatesh Varma argued that India's stance is "pro-India" and that describing BRICS as dominated by China is "an exaggeration."

  The Sino-Indian border dispute has surfaced inside the organization. During the 2017 Doklam standoff, India threatened to pull out of the Xiamen summit, and China withdrew its troops. China subsequently released a disputed map following the 2023 BRICS summit, complicating the diplomatic mood. A Tufts University multi-year study published in July 2023 found that the portrayal of BRICS as a "China-dominated group primarily pursuing anti-U.S. agendas" was misplaced, concluding that members connect around shared development interests and a quest for a multipolar world order.

• 7. Internal Fractures

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  The expanded BRICS bloc has struggled to maintain cohesion on the conflicts that matter most to its members. Internal divisions became visible when the organization failed to issue a joint statement on the 2026 Iran war, with Iran and the United Arab Emirates, both full members, on opposing sides of the conflict.

  At the 16th summit in Kazan in October 2024, the Kazan Declaration called for adherence to the UN Charter and diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine conflict. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the summit, a decision Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly criticized, calling the Kazan meeting a "total failure." The UN secretary general's office cited BRICS's role in "boosting global co-operation" as justification for his attendance.

  At the 17th summit in Rio de Janeiro in July 2025, BRICS nations condemned the 2025 Pahalgam attack in terms the Indian Express described as widely interpreted as aimed at Pakistan, even though Pakistan was not directly named. The leaders called for zero tolerance of terrorism and for the "expeditious finalization and adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism in the UN framework."

  In January 2026, the joint military exercise Will For Peace 2026 brought together navies from China, Iran, Russia, and South Africa, with Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia participating as observers. A month later, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled that BRICS would not rush further expansion, noting that the group needed to streamline its work following recent enlargement. He added that BRICS continued to attract international interest as "a model of the future multipolar world order."

• 8. What Remains

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  In its first 15 years, BRICS produced hundreds of decisions and established nearly 60 intra-group institutions, including think tanks, business forums, a women's business alliance, and an academic forum. Its agenda covers more than 30 subjects. At the Kazan summit, two additions were announced: a BRICS Deep-Sea Resources International Research Center and a BRICS Digital Ecosystem Cooperation Network.

  Collectively, BRICS+ accounts for 46% of the world's population and 25% of the world's landmass. The group's GDP at purchasing power parity represents 35.6% of the global total as of 2022, and its total GDP measured at purchasing power parity reached $51.6 trillion, exceeding both the G7 at $48 trillion and the European Union. BRICS+ countries produce 42% of the world's wheat, 52% of its rice, and 46% of its soybeans.

  The Economist Intelligence Unit projected that the collective economies of BRICS+ will overtake the G7 after 2045.

  At the Rio de Janeiro summit in July 2025, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed redefining the BRICS acronym as "Building Resilience and Innovation for Cooperation and Sustainability," and announced that India would give the grouping a "new form" during its 2026 presidency. India holds the current Pro Tempore Presidency, with the 18th summit scheduled for September 2026 under Narendra Modi's chairmanship.