On January 7, Indonesia officially became a full member of BRICS. With the addition of the world’s fourth most populous and eighth largest economy by purchasing power, the bloc now hosts around half of the world’s population and accounts for a larger share of economic output than the G7. , which is expected to grow further. With the group’s membership doubling in the past two years and more countries applying to join, including Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand, BRICS is fast becoming the world’s hottest multilateral ticket. It’s surfacing.
Western officials and commentators have long dismissed the group as an ineffective hodgepodge. Joseph Nye’s 2013 column headline quipped, “BRICS without mortars.” It is true that, unlike the G7, the members of this bloc are fickle and no common political system or geopolitical interests unite them. But something beyond the interests of economic cooperation is motivating countries in the Global South to join BRICS. It is a shared desire to form an international order that is less dominated by the United States and its allies.
The appeal of that vision and the popularity of the BRICS alarms Western capitals, prompting the administrators of the existing international order to do more to reform the system in order to give the emerging Global South countries a greater role. It should be. Otherwise, the United States and its allies will continue to lose ground against Russia, China, and other authoritarian states that are reshaping and, in some cases, reshaping global governance according to their own interests. It will be.
