President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed the BRICS economic bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is anti-American, yet an expert on Indian politics argued on Wednesday that it has actually been quite ineffective in standing up to America.
“The current war in Iran suggests that U.S. concerns about Brics are overblown,” India and South Asia expert Sadanand Dhume wrote for The Wall Street Journal in a Wednesday editorial. “The group has shown itself to be utterly ineffectual, unable to come up with a unified response to an international crisis.”
Dhume pointed out that although four of the five BRICS members have condemned the joint US-Israeli war against Iran, India holds the BRICS presidency this year and has refused to join them.
“New Delhi clearly leans toward Washington and Jerusalem, as well as the Gulf states, rather than toward Tehran,” Dhume wrote. “So far, Brics hasn’t issued a statement on the war.”
Dhume pointed out that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone out of his way to cultivate a positive relationship with both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“At the end of February, days before the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran, Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a hero’s welcome in Israel,” Dhume explained. “He addressed the Knesset, lit up in the colors of the Indian flag, and emphasized Indian solidarity with Israeli victims of terrorism: ‘We feel your pain. We share your grief. India stands with Israel, firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond,’ Mr. Modi said.”
In addition to these diplomatic and other symbolic overtures, Modi has also linked India to both countries economically.
“The U.S. is India’s largest trading partner and its most important source of technology. Israel in recent decades has become a vital supplier of weapons and military technology to India, including in last year’s four-day India-Pakistan conflict,” Dhume explained. As a result of the culmination of these factors, Dhume characterized the right-wing Modi government as heavily disinclined to use BRICS’ potential clout to pressure America and Israel.
“India’s cold shoulder to Iran highlights the hollowness of Brics,” Dhume concluded. “The bloc lets diplomats rack up frequent flyer miles, and politicians pose for pictures with other leaders. But on the world stage it counts for next to nothing.”
In addition to the traditionally-conservative editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, explicitly conservative commentators are also denouncing the Iran war. One of them, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, served for President George W. Bush, who also mired America in an unpopular Middle Eastern war.
“We deserve to know,” Schmidt said. “There is no plan. There is no strategy. There is only incoherence. There is only incompetence.” Criticizing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for hiring military adviser Dan Caine, “a highly political chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, who should never have been confirmed by the Senate for the job,” Schmidt said “the result is a disaster.”
Similarly Jonathan V. Last, a commentator at the conservative website The Bulwark, characterized the Iran war in a Wednesday editorial as “led by idiots and incompetents.” Another high profile conservative, podcaster Joe Rogan, said on the Tuesday episode of his show “The Joe Rogan Experience that “a lot of people feel betrayed, right? [Trump] ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
