Why Brics will not become the new fulcrum of world politics

ONE question that 2025 may begin to answer is whether the Brics (the alliance among founding countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is becoming the new centre of power in world politics.

Now that the group has added new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) and come to represent 45 per cent of the world population, some believe that it is consolidating the (misleadingly named) “Global South” and posing a serious challenge to American and Western power. But I remain sceptical of such claims.

When Jim O’Neill (then the chief economist at Goldman Sachs) coined the “Bric” acronym in 2001, his aim was simply to identify the four emerging economies that were most likely to dominate global economic growth by 2050. But the label soon acquired a political valence.