BRICS to BRATS? Why the Global South Is Cracking Under Its Own Weight

Once upon a time, BRICS was the bold promise of a new economic order — a band of emerging powers poised to rewrite the rules of global trade, finance, and diplomacy. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa were meant to be the future. Today, it feels more like a WhatsApp group with patchy WiFi, no admin, and seven people sending voice notes in six languages.

The expanded version — call it BRINCSASE (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Argentina [?], Saudi Arabia, Egypt) — looks impressive on paper. But as an actual alliance? It’s geopolitically incoherent, economically asymmetric, and ideologically all over the map. You could be forgiven for wondering whether this is a coalition of the willing — or just a group of states trying to sit at a different lunch table from the West.

Alphabet Soup Diplomacy

BRICS began in 2001 as a Goldman Sachs acronym: a bet that these economies would dominate global growth by 2050. By 2009, the BRIC countries were meeting as a bloc, and South Africa joined in 2010 — a strategic expansion, if not an economic one.

But since then, things have gotten crowded. The 2023 Johannesburg summit announced new additions — Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Argentina (which has since politely declined). What was once an exclusive club of economic rising stars has turned into a geopolitical buffet, where you can grab a seat so long as you’re not part of the G7 — or NATO.

As one South African diplomat quipped off the record, “We’re not sure if we’re building a movement or hosting a masquerade ball.”

No Ideology, No Compass

The original BRICS members already made uneasy bedfellows. Now, with Saudi Arabia and Iran in the mix, the contradictions are too large to ignore. China and India have had armed clashes in recent years. Russia is sanctioned into economic semi-isolation. Iran and Saudi Arabia only recently resumed diplomatic relations after decades of cold (and hot) war. Brazil oscillates between globalist and nationalist postures depending on who’s in power. Ethiopia is still recovering from civil war. South Africa talks a big game diplomatically but punches well below its weight economically.

What do these countries really have in common?

• They are not Western.
  
• They are not particularly aligned on climate, trade, tech, or human rights.
  
• And they are not going to follow any one leader’s vision for the future.
  

In other words, this isn’t the Non-Aligned Movement 2.0. It’s more like the Non-Committal Club.

The BRICS Bank: Big Talk, Small Change

The New Development Bank (NDB), launched in 2015 with promises of being an alternative to the IMF and World Bank, remains a glorified talk shop. Its lending capacity is modest, with just over $30 to $40 billion disbursed since inception — far less than the multilateral lenders it hopes to supplant. Western sanctions on Russia have constrained operations. India and China are too busy pursuing bilateral or regional strategies. And the bank’s own leadership — most recently helmed by Dilma Rousseff — seems more ceremonial than strategic.

In 2023, NDB loans to South Africa totalled just $2.5 billion — a fraction of what that country needs to fix its collapsing power grid. Compare that to the IMF’s post-COVID emergency lending, or the sheer scale of Belt and Road Initiative loans from Beijing, and the NDB feels more like a side hustle than a serious institution.

Meanwhile, the grand project of de-dollarization is still stuck in committee. For all the speeches about creating an alternative global reserve currency, BRICS economies still overwhelmingly trade in US dollars. Russia and China have pushed for more yuan settlement, but India’s central bank would sooner adopt Bitcoin than tie itself to Beijing’s monetary orbit.

Global South as Brand, Not Bloc

The term “Global South” has been dusted off and put to work in recent years as an umbrella term for the non-Western world. BRICS has tried to ride this rhetorical wave, casting itself as the voice of the voiceless. But the branding exercise doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

India champions sovereignty and non-alignment, while China has no qualms about building spheres of influence. Brazil wants green finance. Russia wants sanctions relief. Iran wants legitimacy. Ethiopia just wants peace. There is no shared platform — just a shared sense of grievance.

This makes joint declarations long, vague, and spectacularly unenforceable. Read the BRICS 2023 summit communiqué and try not to fall asleep before paragraph 19.

Civil society? Nowhere to be seen. Unlike Western-led forums that at least nod to inclusivity, BRICS is content to operate behind closed doors, with journalists gently ushered out and public scrutiny kept at arm’s length.

Climate Contradictions

Then there’s the climate farce. BRICS countries routinely call for climate justice, decrying Western “green imperialism.” Yet among the bloc’s new and old members, there are few who can claim environmental credibility. China and India are among the world’s biggest coal consumers. Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran still treat oil like liquid nationalism. Even Brazil’s rainforest diplomacy swings wildly depending on who’s in office.

“BRICS calls for climate justice, but it’s hard to take that seriously when half the bloc’s members are pumping oil like there’s no tomorrow — and the other half are burning coal like it’s still 1957.”

India’s Strategic Hedging

Perhaps the most revealing member is India — at once the bloc’s democratic darling and its most unpredictable player. It’s in BRICS, but also in the Quad with the US, Japan, and Australia. It trades with Russia while buying weapons from the West. It talks multipolarity at BRICS summits and signs free-trade pacts elsewhere.

“India treats BRICS the same way it treats China at the border: smile in public, hedge in private, and quietly build alliances elsewhere.”

This makes BRICS not a bloc — but a performance, with each country reading from its own script.

Why This Matters

You might ask: so what? So what if BRICS is messy, and the Global South doesn’t speak with one voice? The answer is that in a world where multilateralism is in crisis — from the WTO to the UN Security Council — these blocs matter. Or rather, they matter if they work.

If BRICS is supposed to challenge the global status quo, then it must offer more than alternative rhetoric. It must offer credible financial instruments, dispute-resolution frameworks, trade deals, or even a coordinated digital currency. Instead, we get photo-ops, and the occasional speech about multipolarity, delivered by diplomats whose own countries are navigating bipolar dependencies.

And in the end, even countries in freefall aren’t convinced. Argentina, mid-economic implosion, still walked away from its BRICS invitation. When you’re printing money by the hour and still say “no thanks,” that’s telling.

The Closing Punch

BRICS was born out of economic optimism and geopolitical ambition. But instead of becoming the architect of a new system, it has become the furniture in an old one — occasionally rearranged, rarely functional, and frequently dusty.

As of 2025, it’s less BRICS and more BRATS: Belligerent, Reactive, Asymmetrical, Theatrical, and Stalled.