Why BRICS does not need a leader

BRICS members differ sharply in power, politics and interests. Their ability to manage those divisions may be the secret of the group’s global influence When the BRIC group, as it was known then, first emerged, it was greeted with amusement as another exotic variety of alphabet soup in the age of globalization. As it became a more permanent fixture, it was regarded as a poor man’s version of a global club, like a humble answer to the G7.More recently, it has come to be feared, not least by US President Donald Trump, as a potential threat to the dominance of the American dollar. In the run-up to the 2026 BRICS summit in New Delhi, the Western media shifted its focus to the divergences within the group, essentially portraying it as something less than the sum of its parts.However, all these interpretations miss the actual significance of BRICS, which is its role as an early model of the emerging multipolar order.Over the past five centuries or so, roughly the period of Western global hegemony, the world order has invariably been based on the dominance of a single power, whether Spain, France, Britain or America, or a combination of powers, such as the Concert of Europe or the US-Sovi...