The world is waiting to see whether the expanding group of countries can take advantage of the window of opportunity presented by the restructuring of the international order and become new protagonists in global governance.

At its 17th summit in Rio, the expanded BRICS bloc faces a moment of reckoning as it seeks to balance growing ambitions with internal divisions, shown in its rare unified stance on U.S.-Israel strikes and push for Global South representation. While advancing financial tools and a climate agenda, BRICS’ core challenge is defining itself not as anti-West, but as a united advocate for a more equitable global order.

In the week of 25th May 2025, Kuala Lumpur played host to a landmark event: the inaugural ASEAN-GCC-China Summit. It brought together Southeast Asian nations, the Gulf states, and China - three pillars of the emerging multipolar order - in a signal moment of strategic realignment. While headlines may focus on trade, energy, and infrastructure cooperation, the deeper story lies in a quiet revolution in how the world’s fastest-growing economies trade, settle, and invest - increasingly without the U.S. dollar.

Challenges presented by Donald Trump, including tariffs and withdrawal from global leadership, give BRICS countries a chance to build a cooperation platform for the Global South and a to create a new channel for international discourse.

In a social media post on January 30, 2025, US President Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on BRICs countries unless they committed to “neither create

One question that 2025 may begin to answer is whether the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is becoming the new center of power in world politics. Now that the group has added new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates) and come to represent 45% of the world population, some believe that it is consolidating the (misleadingly named) “Global South” and posing a serious challenge to American and Western power. But I remain skeptical of such claims.

ASEAN and BRICS are both international cooperative organizations, much like the G7 - except both are led by non-Western aligned nations. The addition of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam to BRICS raises the question of whether these groups can harmonize their goals without disrupting ASEAN's long-standing geopolitical orientation.

The West’s dominating influence around the world has come under heavy scrutiny as open conflicts rage on in Europe and the Middle East. Does this year’s BRICS Summit, hosted in Russia, represent an inflection point in the global community’s tolerance for U.S.-led order?

BRICS countries, with a combined GDP approximately 1.5 times that of the United States, can be expected to retaliate against promised U.S. tariffs. These countries — many of which are major traders with China — are likely to make Donald Trump regret his bellicose bullying.