There is something remarkably convenient about announcing that the world needs less American leadership while expecting someone else to keep international commerce functioning, absorb financial shocks and provide a dependable place to put the money. Criticizing the existing order is easy. Taking responsibility for a better one is considerably harder.

That is the standard I apply to BRICS and the grand claims made on its behalf. If its major powers want to offer the world a credible alternative, they have every right to try. The rest of us have every right to ask what they have actually built that deserves our confidence.

Where are the enforceable guarantees? Who answers for misconduct? What happens when a smaller member disagrees with a larger one? And, especially, who controls the money?

Before anyone declares the arrival of a new world order, I would like to see a trustworthy and transparent banking system capable of supporting it. Show us the books. Show us the rules. Then show us that the rules still apply when someone powerful finds them inconvenient.

A Large Membership Is Not a Shared Purpose

BRICS began with Brazil, Russia, India and China, later adding South Africa and expanding further. Its own institutional description identifies it as a forum for political coordination and cooperation. It has no founding treaty and no permanent secretariat. It is not a unified government and it is not a collective-defense alliance.

That matters because the sweeping claims about an emerging replacement for the Western order often run well ahead of the actual arrangement. Countries can coordinate trade, finance infrastructure and advocate changes to international institutions without agreeing on a common geopolitical future. Those activities can be valuable. They do not automatically establish that the participants can govern a global system together.

China, Russia and India illustrate the problem. A September 2026 Chatham House analysis describes India and Brazil as favoring a more economically focused grouping, while China and Russia approach BRICS with stronger geopolitical ambitions. It also identifies continuing disagreement over the organization's purpose.

My reading is straightforward. These governments can agree that they want more influence without agreeing on how much influence their partners should have. India has little reason to welcome a future in which reducing American dominance merely increases Chinese dominance. Smaller participants should ask the same question about their own position.

Who writes the rules? Who supplies emergency support? Who gets told to accept losses? Who gets an exception? Until those questions have credible answers, adding together populations and economies proves scale. It does not prove cohesion.

America Has a Record to Answer For. It Also Has a Record to Stand On.

The United States has committed egregious wrongs. Slavery and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples belong in any honest account of American history. So do discriminatory laws, failed interventions and abuses of power. Those were human catastrophes. Calling them mistakes must not become a way of shrinking their moral significance.

But a serious historical judgment must also account for what Americans contributed to the survival and recovery of other societies. American servicemembers helped defeat the Axis powers. The United States then committed substantial resources to rebuilding a devastated Europe. The National Archives records that Congress appropriated $13.3 billion over four years for European recovery through the Marshall Plan.

America did not accomplish those things alone. Allied soldiers and civilians made enormous sacrifices and Europeans rebuilt their own communities. American policy also served American interests. A recovering Europe offered greater stability and stronger trading partners. None of that makes the contribution imaginary. A policy can advance national interests and still benefit millions of people elsewhere. Courage does not become meaningless because strategy accompanied it.

The point is not that America deserves permanent obedience. No country does. The point is that a proposed alternative should be judged against the responsibilities America actually assumed, as well as the failures it accumulated. If the major BRICS powers want greater authority, what corresponding burdens are they prepared to carry? What commitments will survive an economic downturn or a change in political convenience?

Leadership has a cost. Announcing that someone else has exercised too much of it does not settle who will pay that cost next.

Trade, Assistance and Entitlement

Countries are entitled to disagree with Washington. They are entitled to seek alternatives to American institutions. Neither action is inherently illegitimate.

Trade does not require political submission. Americans buy and sell because transactions can benefit both parties, not because every customer endorses American foreign policy. But trade, financial assistance and security protection are different arrangements. Access to one does not create an unlimited entitlement to the others.

My position is that American assistance should serve a defensible purpose and come with reasonable expectations. Taxpayers are entitled to ask who benefits, what obligations exist and whether those obligations are being honored. The same scrutiny should apply to BRICS. A country seeking its financing should ask what the lender expects in return. A government welcoming its political support should ask how long that support lasts when circumstances change.

Reciprocity is a reasonable principle. It becomes hypocrisy only when we demand accountability from others while refusing to accept it ourselves.

The Banking Question Is the Leadership Question

Imagine a group of business owners announces a new bank. They have impressive holdings, plenty of customers and ambitious plans. They also agree that the established bank has too much influence. Would that be enough to persuade you to deposit your retirement savings?

I would ask about the financial statements, the ownership structure, the withdrawal rules and the people responsible if something goes wrong. I would want to know whether an independent court could enforce the agreement. I would be particularly interested in whether the bank's largest owner could rewrite the terms after receiving my deposit.

The international version of that question involves pension funds, exporters, central banks and governments. Their decisions affect jobs, public services and household savings.

These are the standards I would apply to an American institution as readily as to a BRICS institution. Transparency does not require exposing every customer's private account. It requires enough reliable information to assess the institution and enough accountability to challenge misconduct.

A Payment System Is Not a Financial Order

Much of the excitement about BRICS concerns trade in local currencies and alternatives to existing payment arrangements. Those initiatives deserve to be assessed on their practical merits. But three different ideas are often blurred together: paying for goods in a national currency, building a system that facilitates payments and creating a currency the world wants to hold as a long-term reserve. They are different achievements.

A company might accept a currency to complete a sale and then promptly exchange it. That does not mean its pension fund wants to hold that currency for decades. A faster payment mechanism does not independently establish the quality of the assets being purchased or the fairness of the courts governing them.

Reporting on September 12, 2026 quoted an Indian foreign ministry official saying there was no proposal for a common BRICS currency, while discussions about bilateral local-currency settlement would continue. That is a useful distinction between a practical initiative and a much larger monetary claim.

The dollar's established position illustrates the distance between economic ambition and financial adoption. The Federal Reserve's 2025 review, using 2024 data, reported that the dollar represented about 58 percent of disclosed official foreign exchange reserves, compared with about 2 percent for China's renminbi. The review connected America's financial advantages to market depth, economic scale, openness and legal protections. These are historical figures, not a live September 2026 measurement.

Reserve shares do not measure moral virtue. They reflect practical choices influenced by liquidity, available assets, established habits and expectations about risk. They do, however, expose the weakness of declaring a financial revolution merely because several governments prefer one.

Give BRICS Credit Where It Has Earned It

It would be inaccurate to claim BRICS has produced nothing or that its financial institutions publish no meaningful information. The New Development Bank publishes audited financial statements. Its 2024 statements include an independent auditor's opinion and financial disclosures. That is a substantive institution with reporting obligations, not simply a slogan.

That acknowledgment makes the larger criticism more credible. A development bank can finance projects and improve its governance without becoming the foundation of a replacement global banking system. Its accounts also cannot establish the transparency of every commercial bank, state borrower or national regulator across its member countries.

For comparison, the IMF's 2025 consultation with China, published in February 2026, called for timely and transparent recognition of financial losses and stronger measures to address financial vulnerabilities. Those recommendations identify work still required in the financial system of a central BRICS power.

Russia provides another illustration of why investors scrutinize political control over funds. Reuters reported in August 2026 that Moscow had relaxed certain deposit restrictions affecting foreign individuals and Russian-registered branches of foreign companies, following measures that had frozen those deposits. The exemptions matter and should be acknowledged. So does the underlying question of how political decisions can alter access to money.

These examples do not make every BRICS institution untrustworthy. They make sweeping declarations of a superior financial order premature. The burden of proof cannot be discharged with a summit photograph.

America Must Keep Earning Its Advantage

An argument for American institutions would be weak if it pretended American banking had never failed the public. The financial crisis of 2008 is sufficient to demolish that fiction. Fraud, regulatory failure and poorly understood risk can flourish inside institutions that claim to value transparency.

Nor should Americans assume international confidence survives every policy choice. The Federal Reserve's 2025 review itself discussed uncertainty, fiscal concerns and potential challenges to the dollar's position. The United States also uses financial sanctions. Governments concerned about their exposure to American decisions have understandable reasons to explore other arrangements. We can defend a particular sanction while recognizing the incentive it creates to seek alternatives.

That means the proper American response is to protect what makes the system attractive: credible institutions, honest information, enforceable rights and restraint in the exercise of power. A country cannot boast about the rule of law while treating legal constraints as obstacles whenever its own leaders encounter them.

My preference for American leadership rests on accountability. It should never become an excuse to weaken accountability.

Who Would You Invite Into Your Home?

Here is the allegory I keep returning to. If you had to invite a powerful government into your home, knowing it would influence your security, finances and freedom to make decisions, whom would you choose?

Among the American, Chinese and Russian systems, I would choose the American system. I would make that choice with a full awareness of American wrongdoing. My judgment would rest on the value I place on constitutional limits, public criticism and the ability to challenge officials through institutions that are supposed to operate independently of them.

I would still read the agreement. I would still insist on keeping my keys.

That is the standard smaller nations should apply to every great power. Does the relationship preserve their ability to say no? Can they leave? Can they challenge a decision without turning a commercial disagreement into a test of political loyalty? A government promising freedom from American dominance should be willing to answer those questions about its own conduct.

Why This Matters

Arguments over a new world order can sound remote until they reach a family's savings or a business's payroll. A financial system that conceals losses can leave ordinary people paying for decisions they never understood. Unpredictable restrictions can turn an account balance into money that exists on paper but cannot be used. Weak dispute procedures can leave smaller participants dependent on political favor. That is why trustworthy banking belongs at the center of this discussion.

BRICS does not need to replace the dollar or displace the United States to accomplish something useful. Better financing, more efficient payments and stronger representation can be worthwhile goals on their own. But those promoting it as the next great governing order are making a much larger claim, and that claim requires evidence of transparency, self-restraint and responsibility under pressure.

America has much to answer for. It also has substantial achievements to its credit. Any contender deserves to be evaluated with the same insistence on a complete record.

My challenge to BRICS is simple. Build institutions people choose because they trust them. Protect the smaller participant when the larger one objects. Publish the losses. Honor the contract. Establish rules that bind the people who wrote them. Then we can have a serious discussion about a new world order.

Until then, show us the books.