As Brics leaders converge on New Delhi in September 2026, they arrive not as architects of a unified alternative order but as navigators of an increasingly fractured world — one where the closure of a critical oil strait, a widening Middle East war, and Washington's Operation Economic Outcast have forced every nation to weigh its loyalties against its ledgers. The summit reveals a fundamental tension of the multipolar moment: that belonging to many worlds simultaneously may be less a strategy than a condition, one that produces agility but rarely solidarity.