Through the BRICS mirror: The West in reflection

This isn’t coincidence. It’s narrative dominance at work—a curated rhetorical playbook designed not to inform, but to inoculate. As BRICS (and now BRICS+) matures into a serious platform for South-South cooperation and reformist governance, Western outlets have doubled down on framing that trivialises its substance, pathologises its diversity, and neutralises its appeal.

The “division and dysfunction” refrain was predictably trotted out. Xi Jinping’s absence, his first since taking office in 2012, was swiftly weaponised. The Guardian called BRICS “unbalanced”. CNBC suggested it lacked cohesion. Al Jazeera framed it as “dispersion”.

Yet few noted that Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-in-command, attended in Xi’s place (not a foreign minister, but China’s top economic policymaker). Far from symbolic, this signalled sustained high-level commitment.

Also overlooked: Indonesia joined BRICS as a full member. Not only is it a major Southeast Asian economy, it is also a G20 member. Hardly a lightweight. This not only undercuts the narrative of weakening cohesion but raises uncomfortable questions about the cohesion of the West’s own institutions.

Missing too is the fact that BRICS operates by consensus, not coercion. Its institutional design has deliberately evolved to support rotational, multi-tiered participation—not despite its diversity, but because of it.

Meanwhile, the economic scaremongering felt equally familiar. Donald Trump’s revived tariff threats were deployed to overshadow the BRICS summit and suggest peril for any country engaging seriously with the bloc. “The bloc is provoking the global North,” we are told. Never mind that many BRICS members maintain close ties with the West, and that the group’s own declarations call for reform within global institutions, not withdrawal from them. What this Western rhetoric reveals is not strength, but strategic insecurity. If healthy diversification is punished rather than respected, it is not BRICS but the West that undermines its own relevance.

Coverage also continues to shrink BRICS’ scale rhetorically. Western outlets often downplay the bloc’s expanding footprint by avoiding hard numbers, brushing them aside, or following with dismissive references to “poverty” or “internal differences”.

Nevertheless, the fundamental truth entirely missed is: BRICS economies are productive economies. They manufacture semiconductors, refine oil, export food, and mine rare earths. Their growth is grounded in material reality.

By contrast, much of the West’s economic weight rests on inflated valuations and speculative finance. A tech stock might be worth billions one week and collapse the next. Yet no one eats corporate shares.

As the global economy shifts back toward substance over symbol, BRICS stands on firmer ground.

The same distortive lens is applied to BRICS declarations. Dismissed as vague or aspirational, these statements are rarely read in full. Yet as EMIR Research demonstrated in “Mapping the Rise of BRICS”, the bloc’s governance ecosystem is becoming increasingly sophisticated—complete with technical annexes, institutional roadmaps, and concrete mechanisms for cross-border payments, AI governance, and environmental finance. The 2025 declaration alone proposed the incubation of a Multilateral Guarantees mechanism and advanced work on digital settlement interoperability. These aren’t rhetorical flourishes. They’re structural shifts.

The “BRICS is political” trope also endures, as if the West somehow operates outside the realm of politics. Al Jazeera refers to the bloc as “a political alliance of the developing world”. CNBC implies coordination itself is suspect. Even Brazil’s sustainability initiative was framed as “vague” and dependent on Northern financing. The implication is clear: the Global South cannot innovate without strings and certainly not without permission.

This logic reaches its peak in what we might call the O’Reilly Doctrine. It is a rhetorical sleight of hand that reasserts Western superiority by casting the Global South as perpetually poor, passive, or behind (refer to “Beyond the Hat: What O’Reilly Got Wrong About Malaysia”). The fact that the BRICS summit hosted over ten partner countries, including Malaysia, Nigeria, and Vietnam, each with distinct development strategies and aspirations, is ignored. That these countries are asserting plural models of cooperation, rather than mimicking Western ones, is seen not as maturity, but as risk.

Rather than meet this shift with clarity, Western commentary doubles down on old tropes. But the wiser response is not defensiveness, but precision. Not counter-narrative, but inversion, revealing how the critique collapses under its own contradictions.

Take the claim that BRICS is anti-Western. It simply doesn’t hold. As EMIR has argued repeatedly (Joining BRICS+, Navigating the Storm), the group’s foundational ethos is reformist, not revisionist. It seeks a more equitable order—one where sovereignty is respected, trade is not weaponised, and conditionalities do not dictate policy. It is not a rival bloc, but a parallel platform—complementary to global efforts and anchored in international law. The only prerequisite for participation is abstention from unilateral sanctions. That alone speaks volumes.

This accusation of politicisation is deeply ironic. BRICS is not held together by ideology or enforced alignment. Its members hold different political systems, regional interests, and diplomatic postures—yet choose to cooperate. That is not political bloc behaviour. It is pragmatic pluralism.

Malaysia’s participation in the summit itself offers a striking counterpoint to the Western narrative. Notably, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was the only foreign leader invited to deliver a keynote at the BRICS Business Forum. More than symbolic, his presence sparked a cascade of bilateral engagements—many requested by other nations. Far from treating BRICS as an ideological bloc, Anwar positioned Malaysia as a bridge between East and West, showcasing the bloc’s appeal as a platform for pragmatic diplomacy, not polarised alignment. Domestic critics fearing retaliation miss the larger point: such engagements are precisely how smaller nations build strategic autonomy.

Then there’s the charge that BRICS lacks economic coherence. Yet the bloc has never aimed for a rigid single currency like the Euro. As detailed in BRICS’ Currency Dilemma, its focus is on practical instruments: BRICS Pay, local currency settlement, and a possible mutual credit clearance (MCC) system. The 2025 summit signalled real momentum toward a decentralised, asset-backed, inflation-resistant unit of account. In contrast, many Western systems remain burdened by debt saturation and reliance on fiat expansion.

Critics also accuse BRICS of authoritarian leanings. But this too is projection. The bloc includes vibrant democracies like Brazil, India, and South Africa. Indonesia’s full membership adds another democratic voice. What BRICS does not require, unlike many Western-led alliances, is ideological uniformity. Its diversity is not a flaw. It is a design. Can the same be said of Western coalitions that partner with monarchies, military regimes, and human rights abusers so long as they remain aligned?

In truth, BRICS is doing what the West once claimed to champion: empowering developing nations to co-shape the rules of global engagement. Its institutional growth is real, from think tank networks to cross-border infrastructure platforms. Its financial architecture is maturing. And its geopolitical posture, rooted in consensus, strategic neutrality, and legal principles, is far more stable than the zero-sum logic it is so often accused of.

The West’s critique of BRICS says less about BRICS itself, and more about its own anxiety over declining influence. As the world diversifies economically, technologically, and politically, clinging to unipolar narratives will only delay the West’s own necessary adaptation.

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