As leaders gather for the 18th BRICS Summit, a quiet but consequential shift in the architecture of global power is becoming harder to ignore. What began as an informal dialogue among four emerging economies has grown into a coalition of eleven full members and ten partners — representing nearly half of humanity and 40 percent of global economic output — drawn not by ideology but by a shared desire for agency in a world order still shaped by decisions made in 1945. The deeper question BRICS poses is not whether it will replace existing institutions, but whether nations long designed out of glo