BRICS in New Delhi proves Washington is its own worst enemy
By Josie Calloway · Reporting from Pittsburgh ·
Thirty thousand security personnel are currently swarming New Delhi, creating a fortress for the 18th annual BRICS Summit.
# The New Delhi Triage: BRICS and the End of the Dollar's Monopoly
A small army of 30,000 guards swarms New Delhi, turning the city into a fortress for the 18th annual BRICS Summit. It looks like a standard display of strength: Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosting a gallery of strongmen and strategists, including Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. The data reveals a global triage, sorting the world's powers into survivors and casualties.
Washington frames this bloc as a group of strongmen plotting a coup against the dollar. This is an oversimplification. When I worked in the ER, the most dangerous mistake a charge nurse could make was treating a patient’s symptoms instead of the policy failure that put them in the bed. The "symptom" is that BRICS expands to 11 members. The "policy failure" is a Washington that treats any attempt to trade independently as an act of war.
| Bloc | Members | Global Population | Global Wealth (GDP) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | BRICS (Current) | 11 | ~49% | ~40% | | Bandung (1955) | 29 | ~54% | N/A |
Risk Management Over Ideology
The agenda in New Delhi does not stem from a love for communism or a shared utopia; it is about risk management. Al Jazeera reported that the bloc is swapping oil for local currency and building payment apps that bypass New York banks to avoid sanctions on Russia and Iran. President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran said that using national currencies for trade is the most important step the members can take.
This is a hedge. When the U.S. uses the dollar as a weapon, it warns every other nation that their savings and supply chains are only safe if they agree with the current administration in D.C. Russia and China exploit this fear, inviting other nations to insulate themselves from the whims of Washington. This coordination began at the first BRIC summit in 2009. Now, the scale has shifted.
Washington is reacting. NPR reported that envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner recently met Putin in Moscow to propose an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, and Xi Jinping will meet Donald Trump on September 24. The U.S. is realizing it cannot sanction the entire world into submission without creating a vacuum for others to fill.
Can a Fractured Bloc Actually Function?
Critics who see the bloc as a fragile front point to the border fights and trade bans. They note that India and China have remained cold since their 2020 military clash in the Galwan Valley, or that the UAE slapped an indefinite trade embargo on Iran after Iranian strikes left 15 dead in the UAE. These critics argue that a group that could not agree on a joint statement about the Iran war during a May 2026 meeting of foreign ministers cannot act as a global counterweight.
This argument suggests that internal friction is fatal. But it misses how these countries operate. Alejandro Reyes said that the real question is not whether they can achieve unity, but whether they can manage disagreement while pursuing practical cooperation.
In the ER, you do not need a patient to be perfectly healthy to stabilize them; you just need to stop the bleeding. SABC News said the bloc agreed on a joint declaration condemning wars started without UN approval, even if they avoided naming names. This is the power to trade without a U.S. visa that India chases—a way to be non-Western without being anti-Western. They are building a system where they do not have to choose between two superpowers. They attempted this same balance during the 2015 BRICS summit, trying to weld shared loans and trade deals to a fractured geopolitical landscape.
The Bandung Legacy
This is a recurring historical pattern. The New Delhi summit is the spiritual successor to the Bandung Conference of 1955. Back then, 29 newly independent Asian and African states gathered in Indonesia to declare they would no longer be pawns in the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviets.
The mechanism remains the same: developing nations organizing a shared voting bloc at the UN to leverage against dominant powers. The Bandung Conference did not end the Cold War, but it gave the Global South a way to say "no" to the superpowers. BRICS is doing the same for the 21st century. Whether it is the 2023 expansion that brought in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, or the 2025 summit in Rio where the bloc avoided criticizing Russia, the trajectory is clear. They are building a world where the U.S. is just another player, not the referee.
The U.S. can treat this as a threat to be crushed, or it can realize that wanting more choices is a rational response to the risk of a sudden change in U.S. policy. If Washington treats the desire for independence as hostility, it will not stop the expansion of BRICS—it will only accelerate it.
The numbers show the verdict: when half the world decides that the current system is a liability, the system is the problem, not the people trying to survive it. Washington is treating the world like a patient that needs to be controlled, rather than a partner that needs to be heard. In doing so, it is writing its own exit notice.