BRICS summit: Is the bloc truly challenging a Western-dominated world? - aljazeera.com
The 2024 BRICS summit in New Delhi highlighted India’s push for local‑currency trade and unified payment systems as a way to reduce reliance on Western financial infrastructure. While the bloc’s economic weight is growing, internal disagreements and limited progress on a common reserve currency temper expectations of a swift challenge to the existing Western‑dominated order.
AI Objective Summary
The 2024 BRICS summit in New Delhi highlighted India’s push for local‑currency trade and unified payment systems as a way to reduce reliance on Western financial infrastructure. While the bloc’s economic weight is growing, internal disagreements and limited progress on a common reserve currency temper expectations of a swift challenge to the existing Western‑dominated order.
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**BRICS summit: Is the bloc truly challenging a Western‑dominated world?**
New Delhi hosted the 2024 BRICS summit this week, drawing leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa for a three‑day series of bilateral talks, high‑level panels and a business forum. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping used the occasion to tout a “new paradigm of multilateralism” that, they argued, would counterbalance the “unipolar” influence of the United States and Europe. India, presiding over the summit for the first time, pushed a broader agenda that blended geopolitical ambition with concrete economic proposals, emphasizing the need for resilient supply chains, greater South‑South trade, and an expanded role for emerging markets in global governance.
India’s trade minister Piyush Goyal, speaking at the BRICS Business Forum, urged the bloc to link payment systems and settle transactions in local currencies, citing the inefficiencies of reliance on the U.S. dollar and the SWIFT network. “A unified payment architecture would lower transaction costs and protect our economies from external shocks,” he said, proposing a joint BRICS digital settlement platform. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar echoed this sentiment, urging member states to deepen trade ties and develop alternative financing mechanisms that could withstand sanctions or other Western economic pressures.
Analysts, however, remain divided on whether BRICS can truly reshape the global order. While the bloc’s combined GDP now exceeds $30 trillion and its member states collectively control a significant share of natural resources, internal divergences—particularly between Russia’s war‑tainted economy and China’s strategic interests—pose challenges to cohesive action. Critics point to the limited progress on a common reserve currency and the absence of a unified stance on issues such as climate policy and digital governance. Nonetheless, the summit’s focus on practical cooperation, from logistics corridors to fintech integration, suggests that BRICS is seeking to build incremental leverage rather than an immediate overhaul of the Western‑centric system.
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