20 years of BRICS: From Wall Street acronym to global power center

What began as a four-country forum has become an economic heavyweight challenging the old global order The centerpiece of the BRICS program is underway in New Delhi. The group’s Business Forum was held on September 11, and the Indian capital is hosting the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12-13. This year’s gathering is deeply symbolic. Exactly 20 years ago, in September 2006, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China met for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Back then, the group was known as BRIC, and the idea of close cooperation among the four largest non-Western economies struck many observers as more of a political experiment than a project with a promising future. From an acronym to a new center of power It is now clear that this was not a fleeting diplomatic episode, but one of the first institutional responses to the transformation already beginning to reshape the world order. The term ‘BRIC’ was not coined in Moscow. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill introduced it in 2001. Read more BRICS 2026: India charts its own course between Russia and the West But it was Russia that proposed turning a clever economic acronym into a permanent political forum. That was Moscow’s moment of foresight: Russia recognized earlier than most that the rise of new centers of power would inevitably require new mechanisms for international cooperation. The roots of this thinking can be traced back to Evgeny Primakov’s vision of a multipolar world and the Russia-India-China triangle he proposed. The idea was not to cobble together an alliance ‘against the West’, but to pursue a far more complex goal: preventing a single center of power from setting the rules for the entire world. At the start of the 21st century, the global economy was changing faster than global politics, and Russia recognized the growing disconnect. The first full-fledged BRIC summit was held in Ekaterinburg in 2009.

South Africa joined the original four in 2011, giving the group the name BRICS that is now familiar around the world. Further expansion followed, and the group now has 11 members. The number of participants, however, is only part of the story. BRICS countries represent around half of the world’s population, 40% of global GDP, and more than a quarter of international trade. Twenty years ago, this configuration would have sounded like an exceedingly bold prediction. Today, it is a reality that cannot be ignored. Another figure is equally telling: BRICS countries now account for more than half of global economic growth. The question is no longer whether a more multipolar world will emerge. It already has. The real question is whether international institutions can adapt to this shift or will continue to reflect the balance of power that existed in the middle of the last century. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, at the BRIC leaders’ meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, June 16, 2009. © Sputnik/Vladimir Rodionov Keeping Asia’s giants at the same table Against this backdrop, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival in New Delhi carries particular weight. Until recently, his attendance was by no means taken for granted, given the difficult relationship between China and India. Nevertheless, the Chinese leader is visiting India for the first time in seven years, and Beijing and New Delhi are preparing a separate meeting between Xi and Narendra Modi. That fact alone gives this summit exceptional political significance. Russia’s unique role must also be acknowledged. Moscow maintains strategic ties with both Beijing and New Delhi, serving as an important bridge between Asia’s two largest powers. Russia cannot eliminate the tensions between them, but the forums