The BRICS bloc is riven with tensions

LIKE THE iPod and MySpace, the BRICS bloc is a product of the benign optimism of the 2000s. In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC in a paper about the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The quartet ran with the idea, holding its first summit in 2009. A year later South Africa was invited to join. Some analysts feared the BRICS might soon start to rival the G7, but the grouping quickly lost momentum. The non-Asian BRICS economies stagnated in the 2010s. At summits the bloc would issue garbled communiqués about the perfidious West—which the perfidious West would promptly ignore. The BRICS looked dead.