The BRICS Paradox: How Can Rival Powers Navigate Economic Cooperation Amid Strategic Competition to Reset the Global Order?

08/01/2025
By Robbin Laird

BRICS currently consists of eleven countries: its five original members, Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa, and six new members admitted in 2024-25: Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The organization has also created a new “partner country” category, with Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, and Uzbekistan as the first countries to get this designation.

What makes BRICS extraordinary is not just its size with its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP)³ but the sheer diversity of its membership.

The group consists of three democracies, Brazil, India, South Africa, and two clearly major authoritarian regimes with clear global dominance agendas , Russia, China.

This political diversity creates an immediate tension: how can countries with fundamentally different governance systems and conflicting strategic interests work together effectively?

Despite their differences, BRICS members share several commonalities in policy orientation:

  • Frustration with Western-Dominated Institutions: All members seek more influence in global governance structures designed after World War II when many had less power.
  • Economic Sovereignty: There’s a shared desire to reduce dependence on Western financial systems, particularly the U.S. dollar and SWIFT payment network. During last BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, member nations discussed boosting non-dollar transactions and strengthening local currencies.
  • Developing World Identity: Most members position themselves as representatives of developing nations, advocating for policies that benefit emerging economies rather than established Western powers. And frankly, the Chinese claim to be a developing nation is more than questionable for it is a means for China to be the fox in the chicken BRICs house.
  • Multipolar World Vision: They prefer a world order where power is distributed among multiple centers rather than dominated by the Western powers, though they don’t always agree on what that should look like. Or put another way they seek an alternative to the “rules based order” in favor of one which does what exactly?

The most striking paradox within BRICS is the participation of India and China. For these are two nuclear-armed neighbors engaged in what amounts to strategic competition with serious military dimensions. Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand fighting with clubs and staves in the Galwan Valley in Ladakh in 2020, marking the first deadly clashes in nearly 60 years.

The scope of their tensions is vast:

  • They share a disputed 2,100-mile border with ongoing military standoffs.
  • India views China’s Belt and Road Initiative as strategic encirclement.
  • China’s support for Pakistan directly conflicts with India’s security interests.
  • More than 50,000 troops remain deployed on either side of the LAC in the Western sector.

Yet both countries continue to engage actively in BRICS. China’s importance to India is evident in the fact that two-way trade expanded despite tense relations. For example, bilateral trade rose from $71.66 billion in 2015 to $118.4 billion in the 2023-24 period, making China India’s largest trading partner surpassing even the United States.

India’s participation in BRICS while simultaneously deepening ties with the United States through the Quad represents part of their quest for strategic autonomy. India’s position is shaped by a strategic culture that rejects binary alignments. While deeply engaged in the Quad and committed to Indo-Pacific stability, India does not seek to be tethered to bloc politics.

This approach serves multiple purposes:

  • Preventing Chinese Dominance: India has tried to resist China’s efforts to turn the BRICS group into a support organization for China’s geopolitical agenda, such as promoting Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, its Global Development Initiative, and explicit anti-US rhetoric.
  • Economic Opportunities: India sees BRICS and its expansion as a multipolar base to expand its economic outreach in the Middle East and beyond.
  • Strategic Flexibility: India’s participation in non-Western groupings such as the BRICS and the SCO compensates for its growing presence in the Western-dominated QUAD and G-7.

But what if China and Russia are spearheading a global order which simply does not tolerate such strategic ambiguity?

If the attack on the rules based order is really a global effort to shift the world increasingly away from Western democratic norms, what then do the democratic powers do to defend their interests?

Operate in an organization like BRICS and hope that the Chinese and Russians play by new equitable rules which the Brazil’s of the world are creating?

Or let me put this more bluntly?

Why would China fear a raw material provider to itself to be able to create a global order which did not support Chinese interests?

It is obvious that there are clear limitations to what BRICS can achieve given its internal contradictions:

  • No Deep Integration: BRICS cannot develop into anything resembling a genuine alliance when major members are preparing for potential conflict with each other.
  • Modest Achievements: Most BRICS accomplishments remain focused on lowest-common-denominator issues like development banking rather than transformative change.
  • Ongoing Tensions: Despite signs of cautious improvement, India-China relations remain deeply strained by border tensions and mutual distrust.
  • External Pressure: President Donald Trump announced a sweeping additional 10 percent tariff on any nation aligning with what he termed “anti-American policies of BRICS.”

BRICS represents neither a challenge to the Western-led order nor a solution to developing world grievances. Instead, it demonstrates that in an increasingly multipolar world, pragmatic cooperation between strategic competitors is both possible and necessary. The political diversity limits the group uniting on an anti-western stance.

The organization’s future will likely depend on its ability to deliver concrete economic benefits while avoiding the geopolitical tensions that could tear it apart. For democratic members like India and Brazil, the challenge is extracting these benefits while maintaining their democratic values and Western relationships which is a balance that becomes harder as global tensions intensify.

The featured image was generated by an AI program of the original five BRIC members.

I am publishing a book with Kenneth Maxwell entitled, The Australian, Brazilian and Chinese Dynamic: An Inquiry into the Evolving Global Order.