BRICS in Delhi, America at Ground Zero — A Summit in the Shadow of 9/11 and Trump

By P. SESH KUMAR

BRICS is unlikely to replace the United States or emerge as a coherent geopolitical alliance. Its real value for India lies in creating additional economic and diplomatic choices in an increasingly uncertain world.

New Delhi, September 11, 2026 — There is something almost cinematic about the split screen of 11 September 2026.

In New Delhi, Vladimir Putin is meeting Narendra Modi. Xi Jinping is arriving. Iran, Brazil, South Africa, the Gulf states and the other members of an enlarged BRICS are converging on the Indian capital. The formal 18th BRICS Leaders’ Summit begins on 12 September under India’s chairmanship, carrying the suitably optimistic theme, “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” India is trying to present BRICS not as an anti-Western barricade but as a larger voice for a world that no longer wishes to be governed indefinitely by institutions designed in another age.

Thousands of kilometres away, America is looking backwards.

At Ground Zero, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, bells are tolling and names are being read. This is not merely another September 11. It is the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and changed American foreign policy, security doctrine and politics for a generation. President Donald Trump is marking the anniversary at the Pentagon. CNN has cleared large amounts of its schedule for special programming and live coverage beginning early on September 11.

So one television screen shows America remembering the moment when it discovered its vulnerability at the height of its post-Cold-War power. Another shows a collection of countries meeting in Delhi because, a quarter-century later, many of them believe that power has become more dispersed.

That juxtaposition is more revealing than any summit communiqué.

But it would be a mistake to leap from that symbolism to the conclusion that BRICS has arrived as the successor to the American-led order. It has not.

And it would be equally mistaken to dismiss BRICS as colourful summitry, motorcades, family photographs, embroidered jackets and declarations drafted so carefully that nobody can disagree with them.

BRICS is neither the new world government nor an empty photo opportunity. It is something more modest–and potentially more consequential: a bargaining coalition of countries that believe they deserve greater room at the global table.

The enlarged BRICS now has eleven members. Our government figures put their combined share at roughly half the world’s population, about 40 per cent of global GDP and more than a quarter of global trade. Those numbers are impressive enough to guarantee that the grouping cannot simply be laughed away.

But population is not power, GDP is not political cohesion, and sharing dissatisfaction with the existing international order is not the same thing as agreeing on what should replace it.

That is BRICS’ central contradiction.

China wants greater global influence and a reduced capacity for Washington to weaponise finance and sanctions. Russia has even stronger reasons to weaken Western financial leverage. Iran has its own confrontation with Washington. India, however, does not want to exchange an American-dominated international order for a Chinese-dominated BRICS order. Brazil and South Africa have their own traditions of strategic autonomy. The UAE and Saudi Arabia remain deeply connected to Western capital, technology and security structures. India itself simultaneously belongs to BRICS and the Quad and maintains consequential relationships with Washington, Moscow, Europe, Japan and the Gulf.

That is not an alliance. It is geopolitical multi-account banking.

The differences have become sharper as BRICS has expanded. The current summit comes amid wars in Ukraine and West Asia, U.S.-China rivalry and acute strains involving Iran. Reuters and AP both describe these contradictions as a central test for the Delhi meeting.

And that is precisely why expectations from Delhi should be realistic.

BRICS is unlikely to produce a common currency capable of dethroning the dollar. India itself has carefully distanced its current payments initiative from the grandiose language of replacing the dollar. What New Delhi is pushing instead is much more practical: linking payment systems and, eventually, central-bank digital currencies so that cross-border transactions among BRICS economies become faster and cheaper. Even that seemingly technical proposal faces formidable problems arising from currency imbalances, regulatory differences, geopolitical disputes and India’s own caution about excessive financial integration with China.

That is exactly where BRICS should concentrate.

Forget the theatrical question, “Will BRICS kill the dollar?” It will not, certainly not in any foreseeable future.

Ask instead whether an Indian exporter can receive payment from Brazil more cheaply; whether infrastructure can be financed without every transaction being routed through Western financial plumbing; whether central banks can settle a greater proportion of trade in national currencies; whether emerging economies can secure greater voting power at the IMF and World Bank; and whether development finance can be provided without turning every loan into a geopolitical loyalty test.

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Those are achievable objectives.

Indeed, BRICS has already created something tangible. The New Development Bank is not imaginary institutional architecture. By June 30, 2026, it had approved 141 projects worth about USD 44 billion, with around USD 25 billion disbursed, financing transport, water, clean energy, housing and other infrastructure. That hardly displaces the World Bank, but neither can it reasonably be called meaningless summitry.

The present Delhi discussions are similarly moving towards the unglamorous plumbing of cooperation: easier cross-border payments, reform of international financial institutions, resilient supply chains, technology and startup cooperation. BRICS finance ministers and central-bank governors have already called for more representative governance of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank and for practical work on faster and cheaper payment links.

That may sound less exciting than announcing the end of the dollar. It is also far more useful.

And then there is Donald Trump.

Trump has inadvertently supplied BRICS with one of its strongest arguments.

In 2025 he publicly threatened an additional 10 per cent tariff on countries aligning themselves with what he called BRICS’ “anti-American policies.” He had earlier threatened far more punitive tariffs if BRICS countries supported a currency intended to replace the dollar.

The irony is difficult to miss. The more Washington threatens countries for exploring alternatives to excessive dependence on Washington, the more attractive the exploration becomes.

That does not mean BRICS members want to divorce America.

India certainly does not. Nor do Brazil, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. The United States remains too important as a market, technological centre, source of investment, financial hub and security partner. Even China remains deeply intertwined with the American and Western economic system.

The real reaction to the Trump era is therefore not necessarily “anti-Americanism.” It is insurance.

Governments are asking themselves a simple question: if tariffs, sanctions, export controls, payment restrictions or access to the American market can suddenly become instruments of presidential bargaining, how much redundancy should we build into our economic relationships?

BRICS provides one place to buy that insurance.

This is also why expecting the Delhi summit to issue some ringing declaration of defiance against Washington would misunderstand India’s interests. New Delhi’s optimum BRICS is neither anti-American nor Chinese-led. It is a forum strong enough to enlarge India’s choices but not so ideological that it narrows them.

India’s challenge as chair is therefore unusually delicate: make BRICS useful without making it a bloc.

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That means resisting both temptations–the Russian-Chinese temptation to turn it into an explicitly anti-Western platform and the opposite temptation to reduce it to an annual festival of diplomatic adjectives.

The test of Delhi should consequently not be the length of the leaders’ declaration (assuming there will be consensus for one) or the grandeur of the group photograph. It should be whether, twelve months from now, trade settlements are easier, the New Development Bank is lending more effectively, development finance has expanded, supply chains have become more resilient, and the Global South has acquired measurable additional influence in institutions where its economic weight remains inadequately reflected.

If none of that happens, critics will be justified in calling BRICS a travelling diplomatic circus.

If some of it happens, BRICS will have achieved something far more durable than the dramatic but improbable construction of an anti-American alliance.

And that returns us to the extraordinary picture of this September 11.

America is remembering the morning, twenty-five years ago, when the Twin Towers fell and the world’s sole superpower entered a new age of war, security and intervention. Delhi, almost unnoticed on some American television screens, is preparing for a gathering of countries that together embody another change that has taken place during those same twenty-five years: the world has become harder for any single power to organise on its own.

CNN’s concentration on 9/11 is understandable. For Americans this anniversary is history, grief and national memory rolled into one. Nor is BRICS being universally ignored by Western media–Reuters, AP and the Financial Times are reporting it extensively.

But the contrast remains fascinating.

While America remembers the event that defined its extraordinary power and vulnerability at the beginning of this century, leaders assembling in Delhi are debating how the rest of this century’s power should be distributed.

BRICS will not replace the United States.

It may not even become a coherent geopolitical bloc.

But that is the wrong benchmark.

Its significance lies in something quieter: countries that once had little choice but to operate inside systems designed elsewhere are now trying to construct additional choices of their own.

The pomp is certainly there.

The uncertainty is enormous.

Trump makes that uncertainty larger.

But beneath the flags, speeches and summit photographs there is a serious historical question being asked in Delhi:

Can a multipolar world build functioning institutions of its own–or will BRICS remain a very large collection of countries united principally by the desire not to be told what to do?

The answer will not emerge from this weekend’s communiqué.

It will emerge from what BRICS actually builds after everybody has gone home.

The central proposition is “BRICS is not an alternative government of the world; it is an insurance policy against excessive dependence on any one power.” That, in my view, captures both its genuine importance and the danger of exaggerating what the Delhi summit can achieve.

(This is an opinion piece. Views are author’s own.)

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