By Ranjan Solomon
“Independence cannot be real if a nation depends upon gifts and loans from outside for its development. South–South cooperation is the only way to break the chains of dependency.”
– Julius Nyerere-
The West has been jolted into a phase of self-assertion, not because it is confident about its own future, but because it senses the ground shifting beneath its feet. The emergence of BRICS as a cohesive economic and political force has triggered deep anxiety in Washington, Brussels, and London. For decades, Western powers took for granted that they alone could define the grammar of world order—through the IMF, World Bank, NATO, the dollar, and the cultural hegemony of liberal capitalism. That grammar is now being rewritten. It is not being erased overnight, but it is losing coherence, and the world is beginning to speak in other tongues.
BRICS is not simply a counterweight to Western dominance. It is, more profoundly, the architecture of a post-Western order. What distinguishes BRICS from the Cold War blocs is that it is not primarily defined by opposition. As one editorial observed, the association of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa is less about confronting the West than it is about insulating themselves from Washington’s gravitational pull, while creating space for their own joint industrial and technological base. ¹ This is not the rhetoric of resentment; it is the quiet, deliberate work of building sovereignty.
The numbers speak with their own eloquence. With the expansion to 11 members, BRICS now encompasses nearly half of the world’s population and more than 40 percent of global GDP. ² That makes it more representative, more demographically diverse, and in many ways more economically dynamic than the G7. The bloc’s aggregate share of global trade and production continues to grow, even as the G7 economies stagnate under the weight of debt, demographic decline, and static industrial bases. Vladimir Putin put it bluntly at the 2024 summit: *“In the foreseeable future, BRICS will generate the main increase in global GDP.” *³ He described this as a pathway not just to growth but to “economic sovereignty,” signalling the long-term strategic vision that underlies the bloc.
Trade flows illustrate this rebalancing. Intra-BRICS trade has expanded by over 30 percent in the past decade, with China–India trade volumes alone crossing $130 billion annually despite their political differences. Russia has redirected much of its energy exports away from Europe and into Asia, with India and China now accounting for the bulk of its oil purchases. Brazil and South Africa have leveraged their commodity wealth to open up new South–South markets, bypassing the old dependency on Europe and the United States. These flows are not merely transactional—they symbolize a quiet realignment in which the Global South learns to feed, fuel, and finance itself with diminishing reliance on the West.
Energy politics, too, is being reshaped. BRICS+ countries now control over 40 percent of global crude exports, a figure that undermines the assumption of Western dominance over energy markets. ⁴ Saudi Arabia’s entry into BRICS has given the bloc a central role in oil pricing, while Russia’s pivot to Asia has accelerated the creation of non-dollar denominated energy contracts. The idea of “petro-dollar hegemony” is under siege, with BRICS experimenting in denominating oil and gas sales in local currencies or through a reserve basket. For countries long squeezed by energy price volatility manipulated through Western markets, this shift represents a profound move toward autonomy.
Beyond hydrocarbons, BRICS is also seizing the green transition. China already leads the world in solar panel and battery production, while India has become the third-largest renewable energy producer. Brazil, under Lula, has committed to making the Amazon a cornerstone of global climate governance, and South Africa has sought to leverage BRICS financing to transition from coal dependency to renewables. These efforts are neither seamless nor uniformly advanced, but they signal that the bloc intends to contest Western claims to moral and technological leadership in the climate arena. Rather than being passive recipients of Western aid and “green finance,” BRICS members are positioning themselves as active shapers of the energy future.
Debt politics is another arena where BRICS has staked its claim. For decades, the IMF and World Bank have imposed austerity in exchange for loans, pushing Global South economies deeper into cycles of dependency. The New Development Bank, though still modest in size, represents a different philosophy—lending for infrastructure and sustainable development without the draconian political conditionalities attached by Washington institutions. ⁵ While critics argue that BRICS financing risks replicating dependency, the symbolism remains potent: for the first time in decades, there exists an institutional alternative. For many indebted African nations, this is a lifeline. For Western creditors, it is a threat.
The backlash from the West has been predictable. The United States and Europe have raised the specter of tariffs, even threatening across-the-board duties on BRICS exports. But the effect has been counterproductive. Instead of intimidating the bloc, it has strengthened its cohesion. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa captured the mood when he declared at the Johannesburg summit: *“BRICS is a powerful force for a fairer, more inclusive and multipolar world order.”*⁶ He insisted that South Africa’s own history of liberation demanded solidarity with the Global South in its struggle for autonomy from economic domination. His words resonate far beyond Pretoria, for they express the moral legitimacy BRICS seeks to claim—that this is not merely an economic compact, but a justice-oriented project to redress centuries of inequity.
Of course, BRICS is no utopia. Its members differ in political systems, regional rivalries, and strategic orientations. India and China remain locked in an uneasy competition, while Brazil tries to balance its southern identity with global ambition. Yet these contradictions have not prevented the bloc from moving forward. On the contrary, its durability comes from its pragmatism. It is not ideology that holds BRICS together, but a shared conviction that the global order must be multipolar, that sovereignty must be protected, and that development must not be hostage to the institutions of empire.
This explains why BRICS continues to expand its thematic scope. The Rio Declaration of 2025 was organized around three pillars—economic and finance, political and security, and cultural and people-to-people exchanges. It also addressed new domains like artificial intelligence, insisting that global governance of AI must be shaped under UN principles rather than dictated by Silicon Valley. ⁷ These positions underline the bloc’s determination to participate in setting rules, rather than merely accepting them.
What we are witnessing is not the collapse of the old order through revolution, but its erosion through irrelevance. The West is struggling to project dominance not because it has suddenly become weak, but because others have grown stronger. Power is never endless, and empires inevitably exhaust themselves. The imperial economies of today, weighed down by inequality and political fatigue, look static compared to the dynamism of the emerging economies. Karma, one might say, has caught up with them.
BRICS is the scaffolding of a new architecture. It is still under construction, uneven, and at times fragile. But its foundation is clear: sovereignty, multipolarity, and solidarity. The old order, built on unipolar domination, is yielding to a more complex, contested, but ultimately more representative world. What lies ahead is not a simple reversal, where the West declines and others replace it, but a transformation in which no single bloc will dominate. This is the deeper meaning of BRICS: the end of singular hegemony, and the emergence of plurality.
The old order is indeed changing—not with the noise of sudden collapse, but with the steady hum of a new world being born.
Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator and rights advocate writing on justice, decolonisation and democracy.
References
1. The Guardian, “The Guardian view on BRICS growing up: a new bloc seeks autonomy and eyes a post-western order,” July 13, 2025.
2. Boston Consulting Group, BRICS Enlargement and the Shifting World Order, 2024.
3. Reuters, “Putin says BRICS will generate most global economic growth,” Oct. 18, 2024.
4. AP News, “BRICS+ now controls 40% of global crude exports,” Aug. 2024.
5. Global Observatory, “BRICS and the West: Don’t Believe the Cold War Hype,” Aug. 2023.
6. Cyril Ramaphosa, BRICS Johannesburg Summit Address, Aug. 2023.
7. 17th BRICS Summit, Rio Declaration, July 2025.
25 September 2025
Source: countercurrents.org