The BRICS and the Escalation of War
By Jorge Branco*
The BRICS countries are at the center of the geopolitical equations of global conflicts. Russia's wars against Ukraine, Israel's colonialist escalation against Palestine and, subsequently, Israel's war against Iran, as well as Trump's tariff measures have impacted international relations. This BRICS Summit meeting, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro on July 6 and 7, 2025, under the presidency of Brazil, will be more than heated.
The previous meeting, in 2024 in Kazan, was marked by the tension suffered by Russia due to the countries of the European Union, NATO and the United States acting strongly to isolate it, commercially and politically. The response of the joint leadership between Russia and China was immediate, with the formal entry into BRICS of other states, such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia and Iran, in addition to the acceptance of a large and relevant number of countries as partners of the bloc.
This was a very bold move on the international stage, including within the original BRICS bloc. Despite the more conservative positions of Brazil, South Africa and India regarding expansion, the political fact was consummated. A year later, the bloc will arrive at the 2025 Rio de Janeiro Summit with the expansion of its members consolidated and irreversible.
With the advance of reactionary governments ahead of Western countries, especially the United States, the issue of multilateralism takes on new meaning. Obviously, the debate surrounding the crisis of multilateralism and the space for countries in the Global South is not exclusively related to the clash between reactionary and progressive ideas, since there are also reactionary governments in the Global South and within the BRICS bloc itself. But the idea of building a system and governance pacts that guarantee the interests of non-NATO countries involves increasing the economic and political weight of alternative poles to the United States and the European Union. BRICS, with its expansion and the presence of two belligerent countries against NATO allies, Russia and Iran, plays a decisive role due to its characteristic of opposing the Global North.
The great challenge of this BRICS Summit is to adopt a revisionist position regarding the world order. To this end, it will be important to take an assertive position regarding the import tariff war imposed by the Trump administration. Also, however difficult the diplomatic engineering may be, the BRICS Summit may produce a call for a ceasefire and the establishment of negotiations in the ongoing wars, contributing to global disapproval of Israel's colonial invasion of Palestinian lands, as the South African government's initiative has already signaled.
The idea of a new multipolarity where the Global South has a voice involves an explicit challenge to the current system of global governance where a single nuclear power is capable of determining global relations, and where there is no questioning of its colonialist and warmongering order. Issues such as combating poverty, environmental balance, freedom of immigration, fundamental rights, gender equality and ethnic respect will not arise exclusively from discussions within the BRICS, however, affirmative action that questions the current system of governance is a plausible expectation for a discussion of states that are on the periphery of NATO, despite their economic and military power.
This BRICS meeting is decisive in signaling that there is an alternative geopolitical agglutination pole to the United States/NATO bloc and that the issue of multipolarity can preside over the agenda of international relations as a way of obstructing the growth of belligerence, neocolonialism and the increase in poverty.
*Jorge Branco is a sociologist, PhD in Political Science, researcher on the extreme right and advisor to the Instituto Novos Paradigmas.
