BRICS and Architecture of World Losing Its Centre

The most interesting thing about the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi may not be what the leaders say inside the conference hall. It may be what their presence, their absences and their disagreements collectively reveal about a world that is gradually losing its centre. BRICS is no longer simply an economic grouping of emerging economies. It is becoming a laboratory for an alternative international order, one that does not necessarily seek to destroy the existing Western-led system but increasingly wants to make itself less dependent on it. That distinction matters. 
The popular description of BRICS as an anti-Western alliance is convenient but inadequate. China does not need to declare war on the dollar to reduce its exposure to it. Russia does not need to abandon the global financial system to create mechanisms that make sanctions less effective. India does not need to choose between Washington and Moscow to strengthen its strategic autonomy. The logic of BRICS is therefore subtler. Its members are trying to construct options. In international politics, having an alternative can sometimes be more powerful than openly rejecting the existing one.
For decades, the dominance of the US dollar has provided enormous advantages to the United States while giving much of the world an efficient and trusted medium for international trade and finance. But the same system has also become a geopolitical instrument. Financial sanctions, restrictions on access to payment systems and the freezing of sovereign assets have demonstrated that the global financial architecture is not politically neutral.
The freezing of Russian assets after the invasion of Ukraine has therefore had consequences far beyond Russia. It has encouraged other governments to ask an uncomfortable question: if geopolitical relations deteriorate, how secure are their own reserves and transactions within a system largely designed and governed by institutions in which Western powers possess disproportionate influence? The answer does not have to be a dramatic abandonment of the dollar. It can simply be diversification.
That is why the growing use of national currencies and the discussion around digital payments are more significant than the recurring headlines about a mythical BRICS common currency. A common currency would require an extraordinary degree of political and economic integration that the group is nowhere near achieving. Its members do not even share a common political vision. China and India compete for influence in the Global South. Iran and Saudi Arabia have only recently begun moving away from open hostility. Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed profound differences in how member states view security and sovereignty.
A common currency, under these circumstances, would be less a financial innovation than a political revolution. BRICS does not appear ready for such a revolution. What it is attempting instead is much more practical: creating enough alternative channels that dependence on any single currency, payment mechanism or financial centre becomes less necessary.
This is where the New Development Bank could become more consequential than the political theatre of the summit itself. Financing projects in local currencies may appear modest compared with the scale of global dollar transactions, but institutions are rarely transformed overnight. A parallel financial system grows through habits, infrastructure and confidence. Every transaction conducted outside the dominant system, every loan denominated in a member’s currency and every digital payment mechanism developed collectively adds another brick to that architecture.
Yet BRICS has a serious problem. It wants to build a more representative world order while bringing together countries whose own visions of that order are fundamentally different. Its geographical diversity and strategic contradictions are equally impressive. China is an economic superpower and a competitor to India. Russia is a major energy and military power under extensive Western sanctions. Saudi Arabia and Iran represent competing regional interests despite their recent diplomatic rapprochement. India maintains close relations with the United States while retaining longstanding strategic ties with Russia. The UAE wants global economic connectivity while navigating an increasingly fragmented Middle East.
This is not a weakness that can be wished away. It is the central paradox of BRICS. The organisation’s greatest strength is the diversity of its members, because that variety gives it considerable weight across regions, resources, markets and strategic waterways. The same diversity, however, makes collective decision-making extraordinarily difficult. BRICS may be more effective if it concentrates on areas where interests overlap: trade facilitation, development finance, energy, food security, technology, artificial intelligence, supply chains and payment systems. Its future may therefore depend less on becoming a unified political bloc and more on becoming an effective network of partially overlapping interests.
The credibility of BRICS will ultimately depend on whether smaller and middle powers believe they have meaningful agency within it. This is particularly relevant for countries such as Bangladesh. Dhaka’s decision not to participate in the New Delhi summit should not be interpreted through the narrow lens of bilateral Bangladesh-India relations. Bangladesh has an interest in every emerging financial, trade and geopolitical arrangement that could affect its development, energy security, export markets and strategic autonomy.
The future international order will probably not be divided neatly into Western and BRICS blocs. It will be populated by countries that switch between platforms based on their interests. A country may cooperate with the United States on technology, China on infrastructure, Russia on energy, India on connectivity and regional neighbours on trade. The age of permanent geopolitical camps may gradually give way to an age of flexible alignment.
The real test for BRICS, therefore, is not whether it can defeat the dollar, replace the IMF or produce a common currency. Those are dramatic questions, but they may not be the most important ones. The deeper question is whether it can make the international system more plural without making it more fragmented.
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The writer is an academic, 
journalist, and political analyst. 
He can be reached at 
[email protected]