After BRICS, it’s time to navigate the realities of great power rivalries

Why in the News

China now accounts for roughly three fifths of the combined Gross Domestic Product of the eleven member BRICS grouping, against less than half of the four member BRIC forum’s output when it was formed in 2006. The United States has moved the same way inside the G7, from less than two fifths of that group’s nominal output three decades ago to close to three fifths now. The BRICS summit in New Delhi closed with multipolarity as its stated theme, and the Chinese President travels to Washington next week for a second meeting with the US President this year. The tension is between a declared multipolar order and a measured concentration of economic weight in two states.

What do a G2 and a G3 order describe?

1. G2: It describes a world order managed in effect by the United States and China, on the ground that they are the only two states with the scale to shape economic order, technology standards and supply chains.
2. G3: It describes the same arrangement with Russia admitted as a third manager, on the strength of its military power and its reach across Eurasia rather than its economic size.
3. Neither is an institution: Both are descriptions of where decisions are actually taken. Neither has a charter, a secretariat or a membership list.
4. Agreement is not implied: A G2 does not mean the two agree. It means their disagreements set the terms everyone else operates under.

Why has economic weight concentrated inside BRICS and the G7?

1. Enlargement did not dilute: BRICS grew from four members to eleven, and China’s share of the group’s output rose across the same period rather than falling.
2. Beijing outgrows its own grouping: China continues to gain in economic size and geopolitical influence faster than the forum it sits in.
3. What widened the G7 gap: Japan’s stagnation, Europe’s weaker growth and its demographic pressures, together with American advantages in energy, capital markets and artificial intelligence, account for the shift.
4. Preponderance underwrites alliance behaviour: American willingness to turn harshly on its closest partners rests in part on that expanding economic weight. Eg. Pressure applied to Canada and Britain, and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU).

Why must Washington and Beijing manage the rivalry, and where does Russia fit?

1. Mutual dependence: Each seeks to reduce its vulnerability to the other, and neither can readily escape the other’s market, technology, capital or industrial capacity.
2. No condominium: The disputes over trade, technology and Taiwan are too deep for the two to divide the world between them.
3. Management rather than settlement: The meetings rest on a recognition that the rivalry has to be handled through sustained high level contact.
4. The calendar of contact: A Washington meeting next week is expected to be followed by another on the margins of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Shenzhen, and the United States hosts the annual G20 summit in Miami in December.
5. Russia’s residual weight: Russia is economically diminished and still holds enough military power, geographical reach and diplomatic weight to influence the balance between the two across Eurasia.
6. Moscow’s alignment: Moscow has drawn Beijing closer than ever before, while Washington has made an overture to Russia.
7. What would produce a G3: Progress in the American peace initiative on Ukraine could open a rapprochement with Moscow, a trilateral summit and a Russian presence at the G20. The conflict between Moscow and Europe over Ukraine is what complicates it.

What does the concentration do to the G20?

1. Its distinguishing membership: Unlike the G7 it includes China, Russia, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Unlike BRICS it includes the United States, Europe and Japan.
2. Why that composition mattered: That mix is what made the G20 the one forum plausibly capable of collective action on the global economy.
3. The failure this month: Differences between the United States and China at the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in Washington prevented the forum from issuing a joint statement.
4. The point of objection: China objected to the language on trade surpluses and export led growth.
5. The second way it loses: Bilateral deal making between Washington and Beijing can come at the expense of the other members, so the forum is diminished whether the two disagree or agree.

What does this mean for India’s multipolarity claim?

1. The stated preference: A multipolar order is Delhi’s declared objective, and the Delhi summit was organised around that theme.
2. The measured position: Multipolarity has not arrived, and the distribution of power is arguably moving away from it rather than towards it.
3. What the forums actually do: APEC, BRICS, the EU, the G7 and NATO do not shape world order. They operate within parameters set by great power politics.
4. Where a summit still earns its cost: Collective progress at these annual gatherings is rare, and their value lies in the bilateral meetings held on their margins. Eg. The attempted reset of India China relations by the Indian Prime Minister and the Chinese President at the Delhi summit.
5. The task that follows: Indian foreign policy has to work the rivalry between Washington, Beijing and Moscow as it stands, rather than the order it would prefer.

Challenges to BRICS as a vehicle for multipolarity

1. One member carries most of the group’s weight: A grouping in which a single economy supplies the bulk of the output cannot easily adopt positions that constrain that economy. Eg. The New Development Bank still raises and lends predominantly in United States dollars, which limits how far it reduces members’ dependence on the dollar system.
   The Fix: Cap any single member’s share of the capital of BRICS institutions, so financial weight does not convert directly into agenda control.
2. No mechanism for the members’ own disputes: The grouping holds members with live bilateral disputes and has no standing machinery to address them. Eg. The India China boundary question was taken up on the margins of the Delhi summit rather than by the grouping itself.
   The Fix: Keep the collective agenda to functional cooperation where members already converge, and route bilateral disputes to dedicated bilateral channels.
3. Enlargement thins the common interest: Each addition widens the range of national interests the text must accommodate, which makes the agreed language weaker. Eg. The grouping now holds states closely aligned with Washington on security alongside states in open confrontation with it.
   The Fix: Adopt a concentric design, with a core membership taking binding commitments and partner states joining specific projects.
4. Declarations carry no implementation machinery: The grouping issues an annual declaration and has no permanent secretariat to carry it forward or to report on it. Eg. Its commitment on pathways for plurilateral initiatives at the WTO binds no member to any act.
   The Fix: Create a standing secretariat that publishes, before each summit, what the previous declaration’s commitments actually produced.
5. Payment ambitions outrun financial capacity: Reducing dependence on the dollar requires deep local currency bond markets and open capital accounts, which most members do not have. Eg. Russian exporters accumulated rupee balances they could not readily deploy once bilateral trade was settled in national currencies.
   The Fix: Build settlement capacity around a payment messaging link and local currency clearing for trade pairs that are already close to balanced, rather than around a common currency.

Conclusion

The question is no longer whether the world is multipolar, but whether the forums India invests in can act at all when the two largest economies disagree. On present evidence they cannot, and the decisions that matter are taken in bilateral rooms India does not sit in. That leaves an unresolved gap between the order Delhi argues for and the order it has to operate inside. The thing to watch is whether a trilateral meeting convenes on the margins of the APEC summit, since that format would confirm that the management of world order has moved outside the multilateral bodies.

Back2Basics: G7

1. Nature: It is an informal grouping of advanced economies that coordinates on economic and security policy, with no treaty basis and no permanent secretariat.
2. Membership: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, with the European Union taking part in its meetings.
3. Origin: It began as a finance ministers’ grouping in the 1970s and became an annual leaders’ summit, with the presidency rotating each year.
4. Russia’s place: Russia joined to make it the G8 in 1997 and was suspended in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.

Matching Previous Year Question

““BRICS acts as a powerful counterweight in global governance, actively amplifying the voice and influence of the Global South.” Explain the role of BRICS in projecting itself as an alternative to other groupings.”