BRICS—originally an acronym referring to the rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and later South Africa—held its first formal summit in 2009 in Yekaterinburg. After adding South Africa in 2010, the group has evolved into a multilateral organization claiming to represent the interests of the Global South. In its own telling, BRICS is a counterweight to the G7: an alternative platform for emerging powers to coordinate on matters of global governance, development finance, and institutional reform. With its 2024 expansion to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates, the group’s appeal as an alternative to the Western-led international order has gained more attention from Western governments and media alike. Yet beneath the surface of anti-Western posturing lies a deeply incoherent coalition, whose internal contradictions, regional rivalries, and lack of strategic alignment render it ill-suited to function as either a bloc or a meaningful alternative to the existing international order.
金砖国家（BRICS）最初是巴西、俄罗斯、印度和中国这四个新兴经济体的英文首字母缩写，后来南非加入，该集团于 2009 年在叶卡捷琳堡举行了首次正式峰会。2010 年南非加入后，该集团逐渐发展成为一个自称代表全球南方利益的多边组织。按照其自身说法，金砖国家是七国集团（G7）的制衡力量：一个供新兴大国就全球治理、发展融资和机构改革等问题进行协调的替代平台。随着 2024 年埃及、埃塞俄比亚、伊朗和阿拉伯联合酋长国的加入，该集团作为西方主导的国际秩序替代方案的吸引力，引起了西方政府和媒体的更多关注。然而，在反西方姿态的表象之下，隐藏着一个极度不协调的联盟，其内部矛盾、地区竞争和战略协调的缺乏，使其既不适合作为一个集团运作，也无法成为现有国际秩序的有意义的替代方案。
BRICS is the latest in a long list of multilateral organizations serving the “Global South.” The Bandung Conference and later the Non-Aligned Movement, the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have all served as similar projects, aiming to create coalitional power to shape global institutions in favor of states underrepresented within dominant multilateral organizations. The Non-Aligned Movement offered a forum for states seeking to exit the bipolar competition of the Cold War, while the NIEO and OPEC offered supranational economic projects for post-colonial African states and petrostates to exercise more power on the global stage, respectively.
金砖国家是长期以来为"全球南方"服务的众多多边组织中的最新成员。万隆会议及后来的不结盟运动、国际经济新秩序(NIEO)和石油输出国组织(OPEC)都曾作为类似项目，旨在建立联盟力量以重塑全球机构，使在主流多边组织中代表性不足的国家受益。不结盟运动为寻求摆脱冷战两极竞争的国家提供了论坛，而国际经济新秩序和 OPEC 则分别为后殖民时代的非洲国家和石油输出国提供了跨国经济项目，使它们能在全球舞台上发挥更大影响力。
But there is a crucial difference between these organizations and BRICS. You have to have alignment to have non-alignment, and bipolarity is a necessary condition of a “third way.” BRICS discourse has fallen victim to the lazy analogies that have proliferated through much of today’s foreign policy commentary, where every challenge is reflexively cast as either a replay of appeasement at Munich or a redux of the Cold War. While the Non-Aligned Movement, NIEO, and OPEC indeed offer examples of Global South multilateralism, they did so in the very specific context of US-Soviet rivalry and the exclusive international regimes of the communist East and capitalist West.
但这些组织与金砖国家之间存在一个关键差异。要形成不结盟，首先需要有结盟阵营；两极格局是"第三条道路"存在的必要条件。金砖国家的论述已沦为当下外交政策评论中泛滥的惰性类比之牺牲品——任何挑战都被条件反射式地套用慕尼黑绥靖政策或冷战重演的模板。尽管不结盟运动、国际经济新秩序和欧佩克确实提供了全球南方多边主义的范例，但它们都诞生于美苏对抗这一特定历史语境，存在于共产主义东方与资本主义西方各自封闭的国际体系之中。
Despite Western commentators pining for the proxy wars, interventionism, and aimless deficit expansion of the Reagan years, we are not currently in a Cold War with China, our third-largest trading partner (after Mexico and Canada). While many within the foreign policy establishment are nostalgic for the clarity of US-Soviet security competition, there is no cohesive “axis of autocracies” reminiscent of the Warsaw Pact. Furthermore, BRICS can hardly be compared to the Non-Aligned Movement, when China was a founding member of the organization in 2009. BRICS exists in an international system shaped not by ideological bifurcation, but by a pluralistic patchwork of regional competition and endemic geopolitical hedging among minor powers.
尽管西方评论员对里根时代的代理人战争、干涉主义和漫无目的的赤字扩张念念不忘，但我们目前并未与中国——我们的第三大贸易伙伴（仅次于墨西哥和加拿大）——处于冷战状态。虽然外交政策机构中许多人怀念美苏安全对抗的清晰格局，但当今并不存在类似华约那样具有凝聚力的"威权主义轴心"。更何况金砖国家与不结盟运动不可同日而语——须知中国正是 2009 年该组织的创始成员国。金砖国家所处的国际体系并非由意识形态分裂塑造，而是由区域性竞争与小国间普遍的地缘政治对冲所构成的多元拼图。
Without systemic pressures pushing the BRICS countries together, one must turn to the interests of the states themselves to find any hints of a common purpose. BRICS does not act as a commodities cartel (like OPEC) nor as a solidaristic bloc of post-colonial states seeking refuge from a neoimperial global economic order (like the NIEO). Their economic systems are split between petroleum exporters (Russia, Iran, and the UAE) and states working to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels (Brazil, India, and China). Notably, the motto of the recent 2025 BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro was “Inclusive and Sustainable Global South,” a slogan that loses its bite when backed by Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and the UAE. Without a shared energy model, commodity focus, or common position in the international division of labor, there is little space for these countries to coordinate economic policies in a way that would impact global markets.
由于缺乏推动金砖国家紧密联合的体系性压力，人们只能从各国自身利益中寻找共同目标的蛛丝马迹。金砖机制既非石油输出国组织（OPEC）式的商品卡特尔，也非新国际经济秩序（NIEO）那样寻求摆脱新帝国主义全球经济秩序的后殖民国家团结阵线。其成员国经济体系分裂为石油出口国（俄罗斯、伊朗、阿联酋）与致力于摆脱化石燃料依赖的国家（巴西、印度、中国）两大阵营——2025 年里约热内卢金砖峰会"包容可持续的全球南方"口号在埃及、印尼、伊朗、俄罗斯和阿联酋背书下尤显苍白。当这些国家既无共同能源模式、商品重心，又缺乏国际分工中的统一站位时，它们协调经济政策以影响全球市场的空间微乎其微。
Beyond economic interests, it is also unclear that BRICS membership offers any real geopolitical advantage. The coalition is an awkward mixture of neo-imperial and post-colonial powers, along with a divergence between “anti-Western” actors like Iran and US partner states such as Brazil. Russia and China each occupy an ambiguous space in the international hierarchy, clashing with the identity and rhetoric of post-colonial states such as South Africa and India.
除经济利益外，金砖成员国身份能否带来实质性地缘政治优势尚不明确。这个联盟是新帝国主义与后殖民国家的不协调混合体，既包含伊朗等"反西方"势力，也有巴西这类美国合作伙伴。俄罗斯和中国在国际等级体系中各自占据暧昧位置，与南非、印度等后殖民国家的身份定位和话语体系存在冲突。
These divisions are exacerbated by regional rivalries. Saudi Arabia received an invitation to join BRICS but has not formally accepted, maintaining an ambiguous position on potential membership for well over a year. While the Saudis’ hedging can be attributed to a number of factors, such as a hesitancy to antagonize Washington, more immediate geopolitics are also relevant. Joining a global multilateral organization like BRICS would position Saudi Arabia alongside second-tier international powers such as Iran and the UAE, while the Saudis would prefer to assert themselves as a dominant regional leader in the Middle East.
这些分歧因地区竞争而加剧。沙特阿拉伯虽收到加入金砖国家的邀请，却迟迟未正式接受，一年多来对其潜在成员国身份始终持模糊立场。沙特的摇摆态度可归因于多重因素，包括不愿激怒华盛顿的顾虑，但更直接的现实地缘政治同样关键。加入金砖这类全球多边组织，将使沙特与伊朗、阿联酋等二线国际力量平起平坐，而沙特更希望确立自己作为中东地区主导性领袖的地位。
Regional antipathies have also contributed to Brazil’s veto of Venezuelan membership in the BRICS club, exacerbating the existing divisions between petroleum producers and consumers. Likewise, perennial geopolitical tensions between China and India cast ever more doubt on the group’s ability to transcend regional rivalries and act as a consolidated bloc at the global level. In a multipolar world, these local enmities will take precedence over abstract cross-regional pacts, further undermining any claim to speak for the Global South as a whole.
地区间的对立情绪也促使巴西否决了委内瑞拉加入金砖国家的申请，加剧了石油生产国与消费国之间原有的分歧。同样，中印之间长期存在的地缘政治紧张局势，使人们愈发怀疑该组织能否超越地区竞争，在全球层面形成统一阵营。在一个多极化的世界中，这些局部矛盾将优先于抽象的跨区域协定，进一步削弱其代表整个全球南方发声的宣称。
Despite these differences, the BRICS countries do share one common goal: reducing dependence on the US dollar. While true “de-dollarization” remains a distant fantasy, President Biden’s aggressive sanctions regime against Russia, combined with the freezing and attempted seizure of Russian foreign exchange reserves, has created considerable skepticism around the world regarding the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency. Desire to reduce dollar dependency has only accelerated with President Trump’s seemingly arbitrary application of tariffs. The United States is choosing to sacrifice its long-run institutional power in favor of short-run leverage—a decision that will only hasten the movement away from the US-led international order.
尽管存在这些分歧，金砖国家确实拥有一个共同目标：减少对美元的依赖。虽然真正的"去美元化"仍是遥不可及的幻想，但拜登政府对俄罗斯实施的严厉制裁，加上冻结并试图没收俄罗斯外汇储备的行为，已使世界各国对美元作为全球储备货币的角色产生了严重质疑。随着特朗普总统看似随意地加征关税，减少美元依赖的愿望只会加速。美国正选择牺牲其长期制度性权力来换取短期杠杆优势——这一决定只会加速背离以美国为主导的国际秩序。
That said, a shared distaste for the dollar is not enough to overcome the structural pressures undermining an ascendant BRICS. While a bipolar international system is generally characterized by clear alignment across two blocs, as in the Cold War, multipolarity rewards a more flexible approach to interstate relations, in which multilateral organizations are eschewed in favor of nimble bilateral deal-making. Alliances will become less fixed and more opportunistic without the clarity of a bipolar system, creating incentives for states to hedge and cultivate ties with multiple centers of power: India, for example, is a member of both BRICS and the US-aligned “Quad” alliance in the Indo-Pacific.
然而，对美元的共同厌恶并不足以抵消那些削弱金砖国家崛起势头的结构性压力。两极国际体系通常以两大阵营的明确对立为特征，如冷战时期；而多极化则更青睐国家间关系的灵活处理方式，此时多边组织被摒弃，转而青睐灵活的双边交易。由于缺乏两极体系的明确性，联盟关系将变得不那么固定，更具机会主义色彩，这促使各国采取对冲策略，与多个权力中心建立联系：例如，印度既是金砖国家成员，又是印太地区与美国结盟的“四方安全对话”成员。
In the absence of a unifying vision or common strategic threat, BRICS is unlikely to emerge as a transformative force in international politics. For all its ambitions, it is less the vanguard of a new world order than a symptom of the old one’s decay. Until BRICS can offer more than symbolic resistance to Western hegemony, it will remain what it is today: a coalition in search of a cause.
在缺乏统一愿景或共同战略威胁的情况下，金砖国家不太可能成为国际政治中的变革力量。尽管怀有雄心壮志，但它与其说是新世界秩序的先锋，不如说是旧秩序衰落的征兆。除非金砖国家能提供比象征性抵抗西方霸权更多的东西，否则它将保持现状：一个寻找目标的联盟。