The headlines are breathless. Narendra Modi and Ferdinand Marcos Jr shaking hands on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in New Delhi. Geopolitical commentators are already writing long threads about shifting alliances in the Indo-Pacific, the encirclement of China, and Manila finally pivoting away from Washington toward the Global South.
It is absolute theater. And the entire foreign policy establishment is falling for it.
Let us get something straight right out of the gate. BRICS is not a monolith, it is not a military alliance, and it certainly is not an alternative to the Western security architecture. It is a loose, heterogenous grouping of nations whose primary shared characteristic is a desire to hedge against American financial hegemony while remaining fundamentally at odds with one another. India and China are nuclear-armed rivals sharing a contested Himalayan border. Egypt and Ethiopia are locked in an existential dispute over Nile water. Iran and Saudi Arabia are historical adversaries who tolerate each other through Chinese brokerage.
Dropping the Philippines into this mix as a sign of geopolitical realignment displays a profound misunderstanding of how Manila actually operates, how New Delhi calculates its strategic autonomy, and what these multilateral photo-ops are actually designed to achieve.
I have spent the better part of two decades watching foreign ministries stage-manage these summits. I have sat in the back rooms of multilateral forums where diplomats negotiate communiques that everyone knows will be ignored the second the private jets take off. The lazy consensus in international relations reporting assumes that whenever two leaders meet in front of a dozen flags, a historic shift is occurring.
It is not. It is diplomatic maintenance.
The Manila Illusion
Look at the Philippine foreign policy posture under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. For the past several years, the narrative has been clear cut. Manila is doubling down on its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States. It is granting the US military expanded access to bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. It is conducting joint patrols in the South China Sea with American, Japanese, and Australian forces. It is pushing back against Chinese maritime militia ships with aggressive transparency campaigns.
To imagine that Marcos is suddenly swapping out Washington for BRICS because of a fifteen-minute bilateral chat in New Delhi requires a suspension of geopolitical reality.
The Philippines has an economy deeply tethered to the West, a military structurally integrated with American logistics and intelligence, and an elite class whose children overwhelmingly study in the United States and Australia. More importantly, Manila’s primary national security threat is China. BRICS is an organization where Beijing holds immense economic and political weight. Joining or cozying up to a bloc dominated by the very power attempting to swallow your exclusive economic zone is not strategic genius. It is diplomatic suicide.
So why is Marcos engaging? Simple hedging. Small and middle powers in Southeast Asia do not put all their eggs in one basket. They smile at everyone, take the investments, sign the non-binding memoranda of understanding, and keep their powder dry. A meeting on the sidelines of a summit is not a marriage certificate. It is a coffee date.
New Delhi Does Not Do Alliances
On the Indian side, the confusion is just as acute. Western analysts constantly project their own alliance-driven mindset onto New Delhi, expecting India to act like a traditional NATO partner. When Modi shakes hands with a leader from a US-aligned nation like the Philippines, Western pundits see an anti-China coalition forming. When Modi engages with Russia or sits at the same table as Beijing within BRICS, non-aligned purists panic.
Both perspectives are wrong because they misread India’s core operating system.
India does not do alliances. India does multi-alignment. New Delhi learned the hard way during the Cold War that formal pacts limit sovereign maneuverability. Since the turn of the century, India’s grand strategy has been built on strategic autonomy. Modi will buy discounted oil from Moscow, run joint military exercises with the United States through the Quad, maintain a fiercely independent trade policy, and welcome leaders from Southeast Asia with open arms.
When Modi meets Marcos, India is executing a classic maritime outreach strategy. New Delhi wants to secure the Eastern Indian Ocean and project influence into the Indo-Pacific. Selling BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles to the Philippines was a major milestone in Indian defense exports. But selling weapons to a nation locked in a territorial dispute with Beijing is not about building an anti-China NATO. It is about establishing India as a serious regional security provider and an alternative hardware supplier to Russian or Western options.
To turn a defense export contract and a polite handshake into a sweeping geopolitical axis is lazy analysis for people who cannot read a map or a balance sheet.
The Myth of the Global South Alternative
We need to talk about BRICS itself. The acronym originally coined by an investment banker has somehow morphed into a mythical anti-imperialist vanguard in the minds of editorial boards.
Let us look at the actual mechanics. What does BRICS produce? Mostly communiques expressing concern about Western sanctions and the dominance of the US dollar. What does it execute? Very little. The New Development Bank has disbursed billions, yes, but its lending standards and currency exposures still largely mirror traditional multilateral lenders.
The idea that countries are lining up to join BRICS because they want to overthrow the international order is a comforting fiction for commentators who love grand narratives. Nations join BRICS for access. They join because being inside the room prevents decisions from being made entirely without them. It is an insurance policy, not an ideology.
When the Philippines engages with this ecosystem, it is doing what every smart middle power must do in a multipolar world. It is keeping channels open. It is reminding Washington that Manila has options, even if those options are largely diplomatic padding rather than substantive security guarantees.
What the Commentators Miss
The real story of modern diplomacy is not found in the joint statements or the handshakes captured by official photographers. The real story is found in the supply chains, the bilateral intelligence-sharing agreements signed away from the cameras, and the quiet reconfiguration of capital.
While everyone is hyperventilating over Modi and Marcos talking in New Delhi, commercial shipping routes in the South China Sea continue to face daily harassment. Semiconductor supply chains remain dangerously concentrated. Defense budgets in Southeast Asia are rising not because of multilateral summits, but because littoral states realize that international law without enforcement is just a suggestion.
If you are analyzing international relations through the lens of summit choreography, you are looking at the dust kicked up by the horses while missing the direction the army is marching.
Stop looking for the grand realignment. Stop pretending that a multilateral photo-op is a treaty. The nations of the Indo-Pacific are not picking sides in a new Cold War. They are playing everyone against everyone else to maximize their own leverage, protect their trade routes, and insulate their economies from great power friction.
Modi and Marcos had their meeting. They smiled for the cameras. They traded pleasantries about maritime security and economic cooperation. And tomorrow, both of their foreign ministries will go right back to pursuing their own narrow, national interests without a single second thought about the grand narrative you just read online.
Deal with reality. The theater is just for you.
