The old quarrels at the table
In Delhi, Narendra Modi said the group should increasingly become 'rule-shapers'. Around the table were Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Cyril Ramaphosa. Bringing the leaders into one room was itself a measure of India's diplomatic reach.[1]
That same table also carries a history of quarrels. India and China fought a deadly clash on their disputed border in 2020. Iran launched missiles and drones at fellow member the United Arab Emirates during the Middle East war. Both quarrels happened between today's members, and recently.[1]
Why together now?
The war set the timing. The weekend gave members a platform to reassess their relationships in light of the Iran war, and that shared pressure is what assembled the table.[1]
The historian's question here is a simple one: what holds a group together? Ibn Khaldun's answer is asabiyya, and the kind fed by outside pressure is the first to loosen when that pressure lifts. The bond holding BRICS together in Delhi arises less from members resembling one another than from their feeling one pressure at the same time.[1]
Form, or binding force?
Writing about the Sahel confederation in August, I described a chamber that rebuilt the institutional form of the union it had left while the votes on law and budget stayed outside the room. The claim in Delhi rests on the same distinction: becoming a 'rule-shaper' describes a form, while what makes a rule bind is what happens where members disagree.[1], [2]
Here is where the comparison weakens. In the Sahel the members stood on the same side after a shared rupture; in Delhi two members were on opposite sides of the recent war and both still sit at the table. Assembling the leaders showed India's reach, and agreement proved harder. The concrete signal to watch is whether Iran and the United Arab Emirates stay together at the BRICS table.[1]