It’s India’s turn at the helm of BRICS this year and its position in the bloc — once seen as a counterweight to Western-dominated alliances and a US-led international order — couldn’t be more incongruous. As New Delhi prepares to host the 18th BRICS summit in September this year, India finds itself presiding over a divided grouping while becoming increasingly isolated within it.

The BRICS grouping was already beset with contradictions but the ongoing Iran war seems to have split it wide open. Once projected as a platform for coordinated political assertion, for its commitment to multipolarity, it now appears incapable of even issuing a joint statement on a major geopolitical crisis involving one of its own members.

The BRICS MENA meeting, of deputy foreign ministers and special envoys of West Asia and North Africa, in New Delhi on 23–24 April, ended without consensus, forcing New Delhi to fall back on issuing a ‘chair’s summary’ rather than a collective declaration. That distinction is not procedural; it’s political — you get a chair’s summary when you lack consensus.

The divisions in the group are structural. Iran, now a BRICS member, expected solidarity from the bloc in the face of military confrontation. Yet other members, particularly the UAE, which has since withdrawn from OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), resisted the use of strong language against the US and Israel. China and Russia leant towards Tehran. India equivocated with vague expressions of concern.

This paralysis has left BRICS unable to take a stand even when a member state has been attacked,........

© National Herald