BRICS Summit in India Navigates Global Crises Amid Internal Divisions

New Delhi has dressed itself for ceremony. Streets around the hotels where world leaders are staying have been sealed off. Thirty thousand additional security personnel have been deployed across the Indian capital. The buildings are lit with BRICS-themed illuminations, the roundabouts marked with the bloc's symbols. On September 12 and 13, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is hosting the 18th annual summit of an alliance that has grown from five founding members into a bloc of eleven nations representing roughly half the world's population and forty percent of its gross domestic product.

The timing could hardly be more fraught. The United States and Israel are at war with Iran. Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine. Global energy markets are in chaos. Yet the BRICS members arriving in New Delhi—Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Xi Jinping (visiting India for the first time in seven years), Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian, South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa, and leaders from eight other member states, plus representatives from a dozen observer nations—carry with them not unity but a collection of competing interests that will test the bloc's ability to function at all.

BRICS was formed in 2006 as an informal trading alliance. Brazil, Russia, India, and China held their first summit in 2009. South Africa joined the following year. The original purpose was straightforward: to challenge the economic and political dominance of Western institutions. In 2023, the bloc expanded dramatically, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to join. Indonesia followed in 2025. Argentina was invited but declined after President Javier Milei, elected on a platform of strengthening ties with the West, took office. This year's summit carries the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation, and Sustainability," but the substance beneath that banner is far more complicated.

The agenda centers on practical matters: strengthening member economies through trade and energy cooperation, sharing knowledge about artificial intelligence, and developing alternative systems for cross-border payments. Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at the French financial services group Natixis, told Al Jazeera that leaders will discuss payment mechanisms that bypass Western sanctions targeting Russia and Iran. "But they will not try to substitute the dollar," she said. Russia has indicated it will propose conducting trade settlements in digital currencies. The underlying logic is clear—BRICS members want to reduce their vulnerability to sanctions and supply-chain disruption imposed by any single major power, particularly the United States.

Yet the bloc's internal fractures are deepening. Iran and the United Arab Emirates, both BRICS members, are at odds over the war in the Middle East. Since the US and Israel began their campaign against Iran in May, Tehran has retaliated by targeting American military assets and civilian infrastructure across the Gulf, including in the UAE. Those strikes have killed fifteen people in the UAE, including two military personnel and twelve civilians. The UAE announced an indefinite trade embargo against Iran in August. Meanwhile, Iran and Saudi Arabia—another BRICS member—are locked in proxy conflict through Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi forces have just seized control of the strategically critical Bab al-Mandeb strait. India, hosting the summit, finds itself in an impossible position: it maintains cordial relations with both Iran and Israel while trying not to upset Washington.

India and China, the two largest Asian powers in the bloc, carry their own unresolved tensions. A deadly military border clash in the Himalayas in 2020 left deep mistrust. Relations have warmed recently, but strategic rivalry and a widening trade deficit complicate the relationship. Xi Jinping's visit to India after seven years is significant precisely because the relationship has been, as analysts describe it, frosty. Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo of the People's Liberation Army told Al Jazeera that this summit offers a chance for Xi and Modi to resolve differences, though the underlying question of what BRICS actually is remains contested. China views it as its premier institution to mobilize the Global South. India sees it as a vehicle for strategic autonomy—non-Western but not anti-Western. Russia and China are comfortable presenting BRICS as a counterweight to American power. India and several other members resist that framing.

The question of how BRICS will address the war in Ukraine illustrates the bind. At a foreign ministers' meeting in May, the bloc failed to jointly condemn the war on Iran. In July 2025, at the previous summit in Rio de Janeiro, BRICS leaders avoided criticizing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and instead condemned Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory. Analysts expect similar diplomatic choreography this year—statements framed around sovereignty and territorial integrity, carefully worded to avoid naming the United States or Israel, constructed to allow each member to claim vindication without forcing any to break ranks. Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Geostrategy Programme at Bengaluru's Takshashila Institution, said he would be surprised if the bloc named specific countries in any statement about the wars. "They will likely find a state of compromise," he said.

What matters about this summit, according to analysts, is not whether BRICS achieves the kind of unified voice that NATO or the European Union demands. It is whether the bloc can manage disagreement while still pursuing practical cooperation. Alejandro Reyes, adjunct professor at the University of Hong Kong, put it plainly: "The real question is not whether the BRICS can achieve unity, which gets asked every time it meets. The better question is whether it can manage disagreement while still pursuing practical cooperation." The bloc brings together countries that disagree profoundly but share an interest in having greater room to maneuver internationally. That shared interest—in multipolarity, in alternatives to Western-dominated institutions, in insulation from sanctions and coercion—may be enough to hold the alliance together, even as its members wage wars against each other's allies and compete for influence within the Global South.