Western policy analysts are trapped in a cycle of panic about BRICS Plus. They look at the expanded roster—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, plus Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE—and see a monolithic bloc ready to upend the global financial system. The competitor narrative screams that this coalition is poised to lead the Global South into a new era of de-dollarization and alternative governance.
It is a fantasy. If you found value in this article, you might want to check out: this related article.
The premise that BRICS Plus can "lead" anything assumes the group possesses a shared identity, a unified economic architecture, or even a basic level of mutual trust. It does not. I have spent years tracking capital flows and sovereign debt negotiations in emerging markets, and the reality on the ground looks nothing like the breathless press releases coming out of Johannesburg or Kazan.
BRICS Plus is not a rising alternative superpower. It is a dysfunctional marriage of convenience where the partners are actively trying to pick each other’s pockets. For another look on this story, refer to the latest update from The Guardian.
The Myth of a Unified Global South
The most glaring flaw in the current discourse is the assumption that the "Global South" is a coherent political entity waiting for a champion. It is a lazy shorthand used by academics who prefer broad generalizations to messy realities.
What do India and Iran actually have in common regarding global trade? India is deeply integrated into Western tech supply chains and is a member of the Quad, a security alliance designed to check Chinese expansion. Iran is an isolated state looking for an economic lifeline.
To understand why this bloc cannot lead, look at the structural antagonism between its two heaviest hitters: India and China.
They are not partners; they are regional rivals with a history of military skirmishes along the Line of Actual Control. India routinely bans Chinese apps and subjects Chinese electronics firms to intense regulatory scrutiny. New Delhi is not going to cede leadership of its economic orbit to Beijing, nor will it accept a secondary role in a Chinese-dominated sphere.
When you add new members like Egypt and Ethiopia—two nations with severe, unresolved disputes over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Nile water rights—the idea of a unified front dissolves completely.
De-Dollarization is a Technical Failure
The favorite talking point of BRICS enthusiasts is the imminent death of the US dollar. They point to bilateral trade agreements settled in Chinese yuan or Indian rupees as proof of a shifting tide.
This ignores how international finance actually works.
Settling trade in local currencies is easy when trade is balanced. It becomes a nightmare when it is asymmetric. Consider Russia’s recent experience trading with India. Russia sold billions of dollars worth of oil to India and accepted Indian rupees in return. The result? Russia ended up stuck with billions of rupees sitting in Indian banks that it could not spend.
Why? Because Russia does not want to buy Indian goods at that scale, and the rupee is not fully convertible. You cannot easily use rupees to buy German machinery or Brazilian soy. Russia eventually had to demand payment in Chinese yuan or UAE dirhams, merely shifting their dependence from one foreign currency to another.
The New Development Bank (NDB), touted as the BRICS alternative to the World Bank, proves the point. Despite the anti-Western rhetoric, the NDB still relies heavily on dollar-denominated fund-raising. When Russia was hit with Western sanctions, the NDB promptly froze its projects in Russia to protect its own access to international capital markets. Even the BRICS bank cannot escape the gravity of the US dollar ecosystem.
The BRICS Currency is a Math Problem with No Solution
Every few months, a rumor surfaces about a gold-backed or commodity-backed BRICS currency. It sounds revolutionary to people who do not understand monetary economics.
To create a genuine common currency, member states must give up control over their domestic monetary policy. Look at the Eurozone. For the Euro to work, Germany and Greece had to submit to a single central bank.
Imagine asking China’s People’s Bank of China and India’s Reserve Bank of India to pool their reserves and surrender interest rate decisions to a joint committee. China relies on strict capital controls and an undervalued yuan to drive its export machine. India prioritizes domestic inflation control and capital market stabilization.
A shared currency requires a level of political and institutional integration that does not exist within BRICS. Without a fiscal union, a joint central bank, and shared democratic or legal norms, a BRICS currency is dead on arrival. It is a thought experiment used to scare Western central bankers, not a viable financial instrument.
China's Dominance vs. True South-South Cooperation
Let us address the elephant in the room: BRICS Plus is an instrument of Chinese foreign policy masquerading as a democratic coalition of emerging markets.
China’s GDP is larger than the GDPs of all other BRICS Plus members combined. This is not a partnership of equals. It is an asymmetric hub-and-spoke system. When Beijing pushes for expansion, it is not out of altruism for the Global South; it is to create a bigger echo chamber for its geopolitical grievances and to secure raw materials for its industrial base.
The rest of the members are fully aware of this. Brazil and India are highly protective of their domestic manufacturing sectors. They have no interest in opening their floodgates to cheap, subsidized Chinese overcapacity under the guise of "South-South solidarity." Brazil’s agricultural elite wants to sell soy to Beijing, but its industrial sector wants protection from Chinese steel.
This internal tension is why the group’s communiqués are filled with vague, non-binding platitudes about a "multipolar world" but contain almost no concrete policy commitments. They agree on what they dislike—Western hegemony—but they disagree on absolutely everything else.
The Real Winner of This Fragmentation
If BRICS Plus cannot lead, who does?
The answer is no one. The future is not a transition from a unipolar world to a neat, bipolar or multipolar system run by regional blocs. The future is fragmentation.
Nations in the Global South are not looking for a new master in Beijing or a collective committee in Pretoria. They are playing a transactional game. They will use BRICS Plus to signal dissatisfaction to Washington, leverage Chinese infrastructure loans, buy cheap Russian energy, and simultaneously sign security pacts with the United States.
It is transactional minilateralism.
The downside to this contrarian view is that it offers no clean, predictable narrative for investors or policymakers. It means navigating a world of constant hedging, shifting alliances, and regulatory volatility. You cannot just monitor what happens at a single summit; you have to watch the bilateral friction between member states.
Stop looking at BRICS Plus as a cohesive union capable of rewriting the global order. It is a talk shop with a budget, a megaphone for grievances, and a battlefield for regional rivals. The global financial architecture will change, but it will not be torn down by this committee.
