The New Delhi declaration exposes the difficulty of bringing Iran, the UAE and Russia into a common diplomatic position. Its economic provisions reveal a more durable ambition: giving emerging countries greater control over the conditions on which they trade, borrow and develop.
Iran and the United Arab Emirates came to the BRICS summit in New Delhi with the war in the Middle East cutting directly across their relationship. Russia arrived with its war in Ukraine unresolved. Yet when the leaders issued their declaration, Ukraine was absent.
The omission was striking. Last year’s Rio declaration contained a separate paragraph acknowledging members’ positions on Ukraine and supporting mediation. In Delhi, even that qualified formulation disappeared. Russia’s war received no specific mention in the document setting out the grouping’s collective position.
On the Middle East, agreement came through carefully guarded language. The declaration called for restraint while preserving members’ separate national positions. Alongside the summit, senior representatives of Iran and the UAE discussed reducing tensions, a reminder that BRICS now brings countries with conflicting security interests into the same diplomatic setting.
The expanded grouping could sustain a conversation across those divisions. It could not make them disappear.
Further into the declaration, however, a more substantial common agenda emerged. Its subjects were payments, lending, insurance and industrial production: the arrangements that determine whether a country can turn political independence into economic freedom of action.
That is where the larger significance of New Delhi lies. BRICS is pursuing greater influence within international financial institutions while exploring additional ways to finance development and conduct commerce. Its members need not agree on every war to share an interest in having more economic choices.
The ambition is consequential. The evidence of delivery remains uneven.
The significance of silence
Ukraine’s disappearance benefits Moscow in a specific sense: its war is no longer singled out in the principal summit document. But the omission does not establish what each government intended, still less prove collective approval of Russia’s actions.
Silence records the outcome of a negotiation without revealing the negotiation itself. An article should distinguish the diplomatic advantage Russia gains from any claim about why other members accepted it.
The treatment of the Middle East is similarly qualified. Preserving national positions leaves responsibility for the regional escalation unresolved in the collective text. The language on Palestine and Lebanon is more explicit, including references to Israel. The document therefore speaks with different degrees of precision about different conflicts.
For the economic programme, the question is how much practical cooperation can survive these political differences. Governments may agree on the usefulness of additional financial options even where they cannot agree on a war. The harder test comes when cooperation entails costs.
Where economic power resides
International influence operates through arrangements that rarely command the attention given to a confrontation between leaders.
An exporter may have a willing buyer but still need a bank to process payment, finance to cover production and shipping, and insurance against commercial risks. An infrastructure project needs capital over many years, technology and a credible means of repayment.
At each stage, institutions decide whether to provide access, on what terms and at whose risk. These decisions can enable development. They can also constrain it.
A government may be free to announce an industrial strategy while lacking the means to carry it out. Its authority is sovereign; its options are restricted.
Delhi’s economic provisions address several parts of this problem. They cover payment cooperation, exploratory insurance and investment arrangements, and settlement infrastructure, alongside developing countries’ participation in production that captures greater value.
Taken together, these subjects suggest an attempt to widen the practical foundations of independence. A country with several credible lenders can negotiate differently from one with only a single option. A business with dependable alternative payment routes is less vulnerable to disruption.
These advantages have commercial value in ordinary times. Their political importance becomes more apparent during a crisis.
Bandung’s unfinished business
The declaration supplies a historical reference for this ambition. It invokes the 1955 Asian African Conference at Bandung and addresses slavery and colonialism elsewhere in the text.
The connection is to the distance between governing a country and possessing the economic resources to shape its future.
Formal independence does not determine the terms on which a state can borrow. Ownership of raw materials does not guarantee a strong position in the industries that process and sell them. Educating skilled workers does not ensure that domestic businesses can employ their capabilities.
Read through that lens, the economic agenda concerns a longstanding development problem: how to make sovereignty effective in an international economy characterised by unequal resources and bargaining power.
The history gives the programme depth without supplying a common ideology. Signing the same declaration does not mean BRICS governments share a single account of capitalism, colonialism or development. Their interests can overlap without becoming identical.
Nor does invoking colonialism settle whether new arrangements will be fair. That requires scrutiny of the terms on which cooperation takes place and the distribution of its benefits.
More influence, more options
The financial programme proceeds along two paths. BRICS seeks greater developing country influence in the IMF and World Bank while supporting additional financing capacity through the New Development Bank and greater use of national currencies.
There is a practical logic to combining them. Existing institutions retain resources and reach that members have reasons to preserve. A stronger voice within those institutions can be valuable even as other arrangements develop.
Alternative lenders can also alter bargaining conditions without replacing an entire financial system. Their significance lies partly in the availability of another credible offer.
The New Development Bank gives that effort an institutional foundation. Its contribution must ultimately be measured through the projects it finances, the terms it offers and its ability to mobilise resources sustainably.
Lending in local currencies illustrates the potential. A project earning revenues in the same currency as its debt can avoid one source of exposure to exchange rate movements. But that does not eliminate credit risk or make an unviable investment sound. Nor does it automatically create affordable funding.
These are the demanding details behind the aspiration to economic autonomy. Somebody must supply capital, evaluate projects and bear losses when forecasts prove wrong.
The dollar debate often obscures those questions. A financial alternative becomes important when it works reliably enough for governments and businesses to use it.
The verbs that matter
The clearest restraint on claims of a breakthrough comes from the previous declaration.
Rio already discussed payment interoperability, finance in local currencies, insurance cooperation, settlement infrastructure and a proposed investment platform. It also supported expansion of the New Development Bank. These ambitions were established before Delhi.
Continuity is necessary for institutional development, but repetition is not proof of progress. A proposal can recur because governments remain committed to it, or because they have yet to resolve the obstacles.
Delhi frequently uses exploratory language. Its financial sections acknowledge studies, encourage discussions and describe voluntary technical cooperation. That establishes work in progress, rather than a comprehensive alternative system already in operation.
For the prospective user, the distinction is uncomplicated. A payments initiative matters when it can complete a transaction safely and affordably. A financing platform becomes useful when an eligible borrower can obtain capital.
A serious assessment therefore needs to follow the progression from interest to agreement, from agreement to committed resources, and from resources to actual use.
The declaration’s breadth gives BRICS many opportunities to demonstrate value. It also gives the grouping many places in which to leave unfinished business.
When cooperation becomes costly
The wars surrounding the summit remain relevant to this economic programme.
Governments can agree that trade should be easier without agreeing on how to respond when participation in a particular arrangement carries political costs. They can support greater financial autonomy while differing over the obligations they are willing to assume.
The difficult decisions concern resources, regulation and risk. Who supplies the funding? Which standards apply? How are disputes resolved? What happens when a member’s priorities conflict with those of its partners?
Flexibility may allow willing participants to proceed. It can also leave an initiative without the commitment required to become dependable.
There is no need for every BRICS government to pursue the same ultimate objective. One may value lower transaction costs, another development finance, and another reduced exposure to external pressure. Shared practical benefits can sustain cooperation among countries with different strategic outlooks.
But the strength of that cooperation will become clear when benefits are uneven or the costs rise.
Who gains from a different order?
The final test extends beyond whether emerging powers acquire greater influence.
An additional lender can widen a smaller country’s choices while protecting its own interests. Expanded trade can support industrial development, but it can also leave a weaker participant supplying products that capture relatively little value.
Within countries, greater investment does not guarantee broad gains if employment, skills and domestic capabilities fail to develop alongside it.
The questions are therefore concrete. Are financing terms sustainable? Do projects strengthen local production? Do smaller participants gain bargaining power? Does more of the value created reach the people and economies producing it?
Those measures distinguish a redistribution of influence among states from an improvement in the economic prospects of their populations.
New Delhi showed both the reach and the limits of the expanded BRICS. The silence on Ukraine and guarded language on the Middle East exposed its political divisions. Its economic provisions nevertheless sustained an agenda across them.
The next test lies beyond the summit table: an exporter finding a dependable payment route, an enterprise obtaining affordable capital, a government securing investment that leaves its economy stronger.
That is where the quiet effort to redistribute economic power will succeed, or remain another declaration.