Photo Rafa Neddermeyer/BRICS Brasil

The seventeenth summit of Heads of State and Government of BRICS, a group formed in 2009 by Brazil, Russia, India and China, later joined by South Africa, takes place this year in Rio de Janeiro, following the expansion approved last October in Kazan, Russia. Currently, there are 11 full members and 10 associate members, including the Latin American countries Cuba and Bolivia. Together, they produce 43 out of every 100 barrels of oil in the world and represent a quarter of global trade.

Without the presidents of China and Russia, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, BRICS will try to show their weight against the policies of United States President Donald Trump, at a summit in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday and Monday, although prudence may prevail to avoid tensions in relations with Washington. Xi Jinping will be absent for the first time since assuming power in 2012, and Putin, subject to an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine, may participate virtually.

Beyond the war in the Middle East, the meeting will be marked by tensions arising from new threats by United States President Donald Trump. “The tendency is for the summit’s tone to be careful: it will be difficult to name the US directly in the final declaration”, said Marta Fernandez, director of the BRICS Policy Center at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio.

Trump’s threat of tariffs on countries abandoning dollar conditioned summit

The summit takes place amidst global tensions and, to avoid internal tensions during the meeting, Brazilian diplomacy attempts to postpone discussion on replacing the dollar in commercial transactions, a strong bet by Russia, but also by the president of the BRICS Development Bank, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who two weeks ago met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg to study his proposal for expanding “liquidity of national currencies” and creating a “digital investment platform”.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended the creation of a new financing model for developing countries, which is sustainable and without conditionalities. He also defended the use of local currencies in transactions between countries in this mechanism; two months ago, Trump threatened to impose a 100% tariff on countries that abandon the dollar. “A new commercial currency is extremely important, I know it’s complicated, but if we don’t find a way to do it, we’ll end the 21^st century like the 20^th century and it won’t be beneficial for anyone”, he affirmed.

In the previous summit, the Trump factor was not on stage. The US President is trying to tilt the balance of the global decision-making process in favour of Washington’s interests. This is a theme that marks the meeting and was evident in the preliminary meetings. Lula da Silva described the current global scenario as increasingly unstable, marked by the resurgence of protectionism, unilateralism and the impact of the climate crisis.

Currently, it is unlikely that Brazil will adhere to Russian initiatives. United States President Donald Trump threatened to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries that decide to replace the dollar as a commercial or reserve currency.

Middle East tensions

Another sensitive issue is the war in the Middle East. The last-minute cancellation of the trip by Masoud Pezeshkian, President of Iran, who cited security risks, removed some tension from the summit. Brazil has Iran’s diplomatic respect. In 2010, it mediated with Turkey an attempt at negotiation with Tehran about uranium enrichment.

Brazilian geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar sees Israel’s attack on Iran as an aggression against BRICS, whilst Ana Saggio Garcia, associate researcher at the BRICS Policy Center, states that the Iran issue adds more fuel to the fire of international polarisation. “Iran is a reflection of the double standards of the international system. Several signatory countries of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are enriching uranium with the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, but they are not attacked”, she states.

Brazil’s great bet for the Rio de Janeiro Summit is trying to implement the environmental agenda and green economy, in order to channel BRICS proposals towards the UN COP30 [United Nations Climate Change Conference], to be held in the Brazilian city of Belém do Pará in November.

Condemnation of Israel and USA for attack on Iran may drive away Saudi Arabia

At the end of May, the eleven BRICS member countries - South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, China, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia, Indonesia, India, Iran and Russia - agreed to criticise the bombardments by Israel and the United States. Unlike the G7 of the most powerful countries, which legitimised the attack, BRICS called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

But BRICS support for Iran provokes the first internal short-circuit, as it drives away Saudi Arabia from the bloc, which has not yet finished presenting all documentation to become a full BRICS member and which may abandon ship if the summit’s final declaration explicitly mentions Israel or the US.

The Israeli and North American attack on Iran disrupted all of Lula’s plans. After Brazilian leadership “strongly” condemned the US attack and denounced it as a violation of international law, the British newspaper The Economist published a harsh article against the ’incoherent’ Lula, criticising Brazil’s irrelevance in global geopolitics and its “increasingly anti-Western” position. Meanwhile, the Brazilian government defended Lula’s coherence regarding “democracy, sustainability, peace and multilateralism”.

The attack on Iran triggered the “perfect storm” for a meeting where Brazil was using all its conciliatory soft power to give greater geopolitical weight to the Global South. “It’s not just an attack on Iran, it’s an attack on the international order as it was conceived, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is part of that order. The Security Council has ceased to exist. There is no UN. There is no World Trade Organisation (WTO). Soon there will be no World Bank”, said former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

Brazil, which opposed the expansion of the initial BRICS group so as not to lose weight, faces the challenge of seeking a consensual position during this weekend’s summit. Brazilian analyst Gustavo de Carvalho, researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said that BRICS “historically do not seek to play a strong role in geopolitical issues and this occasion will be no exception”.

Criticism of unilateralism reaches the UN

Lula’s criticism of unilateralism reached the United Nations (UN). “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen our UN as insignificant as it is now. A UN that was capable of creating the State of Israel, but is not capable of creating the Palestinian State, which was not able to reach an agreement in that region of the world to end a genocide that is killing men and women in Gaza”, added Lula in a forum promoted by the New Development Bank (NDB) [the BRICS development bank].

European countries join the US to attack BRICS. The harsh article by The Economist against Brazil’s international policy recognised that Lula put Brazil on the map, but that he has not adapted to the “evolution of the world”. In 2009, The Economist published a cover with Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer [iconic statue overlooking Rio] rising to heaven, simulating a rocket, with the title “Brazil takes off”. Brazil was welcomed with open arms as a power, as long as it remained in the Western orbit and under neoliberal logic.

The inverted world map

At the beginning of May, the prestigious Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) [Brazil’s national statistics agency] launched an inverted world map. Designed to celebrate Brazil’s presidency of BRICS (group initially formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the new world map is a statement of geopolitical intentions by the government of Brazilian President Lula da Silva.

The inverted world map, inspired by the work América Invertida (1943), by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres García, continued the inertia of Brazil’s G20 presidency in 2024, which ended with a joint declaration in favour of a tax on the rich and a ceasefire in Gaza. And it prepared the ground for 2025, the most global year of Lula’s current mandate: presidency of BRICS in its expanded phase (already counting eleven members and ten collaborating countries), presidency of Mercosul [South American trade bloc] (which began this week) and the holding of UN COP30 in November in Belém.

New order

Despite Donald Trump’s threats, geopolitical chaos opens a breach for geopolitical action by the Global South. Celso Amorim believes that the time has come to rebuild the world order: “We have to hold a great conference, like Versailles (referring to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919), like San Francisco (the 1945 conference that gave birth to the United Nations Charter). Developing countries must be taken more into account. I think BRICS will be very important in this new global construction”.

Special forces from the Brazilian army and navy are protecting the city by air, sea and land. A group specialised in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks positioned itself at the Museum of Modern Art, in Flamengo Park, near Santos Dumont Airport.

This Sunday and Monday, the venue - one of Brazil’s most important cultural spaces - will receive the leaders of nations where half the world’s population lives and where four out of every ten dollars of the global economy are generated.

About the author

Álvaro Verzi Rangel is a sociologist and international analyst, co-director of the Observatory of Communication and Democracy and senior analyst at the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE, www.estrategia.la). Article published by CLAE.