There is a flawed analytical framework that, in my view, is too often used to interpret Indonesia’s move within BRICS: the assumption that whenever a country joins a new forum, it is necessarily choosing sides. When President Prabowo Subianto sits as the head of state of a full BRICS member at the 18th BRICS Summit at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on 12–13 September 2026, some observers immediately place Indonesia within an outdated binary: pro-Western or pro-BRICS, leaning toward the dollar or toward de-dollarization. Such a binary framework may be convenient for headlines, but it is analytically misleading.
I see this moment not as a shift from one camp to another, but as an upgrade in Indonesia’s diplomatic standing within the international architecture. The distinction is significant. Switching sides means relinquishing one set of ties in order to establish another, whereas moving up means expanding one’s bargaining capacity without abandoning existing relationships. The more relevant question, therefore, is not “Whose side is Indonesia on?” but rather, “Can Indonesia genuinely convert its new status into meaningful bargaining power?”
From Participant to Rule-Shaper: The Structural Significance of Full Membership
The New Delhi Summit is the first BRICS summit attended by Indonesia as a full member since it officially joined the grouping on 1 January 2025. This difference in status is structurally significant. From the perspective of international regime theory, full membership provides a country with the right to participate in the process of shaping consensus, including in closed-door sessions, which is fundamentally different from being a dialogue partner or observer that primarily receives outcomes that have already been negotiated. The New Delhi Declaration, comprising 140 points and unanimously adopted by the eleven heads of state and government, was therefore not simply a document passively accepted by Indonesia; its position was also shaped through Indonesia’s participation at the negotiating table.
This is what distinguishes a genuine “status upgrade” from merely ceremonial participation. BRICS now represents approximately 49.5 percent of the world’s population and around 40 percent of global GDP measured in purchasing power parity (PPP), although the G7 continues to account for a larger share when measured at nominal exchange rates. Regardless of the methodological debate surrounding these figures, the grouping’s substantial collective productive capacity gives greater weight to the voice of each full member, including Indonesia, in shaping the future direction of the forum.
Why “Switching Sides” Is the Wrong Framework
The fundamental problem with the “switching sides” framework lies in its assumption that membership in multilateral institutions is inherently zero-sum—that benefits gained from one bloc automatically entail losses in another. This assumption does not correspond with the concept of a hedging strategy, developed prominently by Kuik Cheng-Chwee in his analysis of Southeast Asian states navigating great-power rivalry. Unlike bandwagoning, which involves aligning with a dominant power, or balancing, which seeks to counter that power, hedging allows states to deliberately avoid exclusive commitment to a single strategic pole while simultaneously deriving economic and diplomatic benefits from multiple sides.
Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Airlangga Hartarto has emphasized that Indonesia continues to promote an open, inclusive, and rules-based multilateral trading system while also supporting reforms to the WTO, IMF, and World Bank—institutions historically associated with the very international order that BRICS is popularly portrayed as seeking to challenge. This consistency demonstrates that Indonesia does not view BRICS membership as a substitute for its existing diplomatic and economic relationships, but rather as an additional channel of engagement, or policy layering, on top of its established networks with traditional partners such as the United States, the European Union, and Japan.
The Capital for Moving Up: From Food Importer to Food Exporter
A diplomatic status upgrade will not be credible without substantive capital to bring to the negotiating table. In his address during the open session of the summit, President Prabowo stated that Indonesia had transformed from being one of the world’s major importers of wheat, rice, and maize into a country capable of exporting these food commodities. This statement should not be viewed merely as an expression of national pride. Rather, it represents evidence of domestic transformation that supports a concrete proposal: his call for joint industrialization among BRICS members to optimize resources, productive capacity, and technology collectively.
From the perspective of economic diplomacy, demonstrating a track record of domestic transformation before demanding greater bargaining power in a multilateral forum can be understood as a credibility precondition. Without such substantive capital, a call for joint industrialization would risk becoming an empty slogan that other partners could easily disregard. With it, however, Indonesia has a stronger structural basis for seeking greater market connectivity, capital mobilization, and technology transfer through BRICS cooperation in the years ahead—objectives explicitly identified by Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya as concrete commitments of the Indonesian delegation.
Loose Consensus Does Not Necessarily Mean a Weak Bloc
International media outlets such as Al Jazeera and NPR have highlighted the language of the New Delhi Declaration, which consistently avoids explicitly naming countries on highly sensitive issues such as the Russia–Ukraine conflict. They have interpreted this pattern as evidence of the fragility of consensus within BRICS amid sharp differences among its members, including potential divergences between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over the Middle East. This criticism has a valid analytical basis. In the study of multilateral diplomacy, such language is commonly understood as constructive ambiguity—a linguistic instrument that allows states to reach consensus without requiring them to adopt a fully unified or explicit collective position.
For a country such as Indonesia, however, with a long-standing non-aligned foreign-policy orientation, loose consensus can represent a structural advantage rather than a weakness. A forum that is excessively cohesive and homogeneous would require a higher degree of conformity from its members, potentially narrowing the strategic space that Indonesia needs as it seeks to enhance its diplomatic standing. BRICS’s collective ambiguity gives Jakarta greater strategic latitude to benefit from the forum without becoming bound by exclusive alliance commitments that would once again lock Indonesia into the very bloc-based logic it seeks to avoid.
The Real Measure of Success Lies in the Domestic Public Sphere
Ironically, monitoring of trending topics on the X platform in Jakarta on 14 September 2026 did not show BRICS- or summit-related hashtags among the topics attracting significant public attention. At the time, public discussion was instead dominated by entertainment and other local issues. This stood in contrast to coverage by government-affiliated media outlets, which consistently emphasized the achievements and international recognition associated with Indonesia’s participation while offering limited critical perspectives.
In political communication studies, this gap can be understood as a manifestation of an elite-driven foreign-policy narrative—a situation in which foreign policy is produced and framed primarily within elite circles without a proportionate level of public engagement or deliberation. Interestingly, cautious voices questioning Indonesia’s BRICS membership have emerged largely from international relations scholars rather than formal political actors. This suggests that the critical and evaluative function in foreign-policy discourse is currently supported more strongly by epistemic communities than by formal political mechanisms of checks and balances. Moving up on the international stage without a corresponding improvement in the quality of domestic public discourse risks producing an uneven form of legitimacy.
Moving Up Is a Process, Not a Status That Ends with Membership
Full BRICS membership gives Indonesia a seat at the table where collective positions are formulated, but a seat does not automatically translate into influence. Moving up within the international diplomatic hierarchy is an ongoing process that must be demonstrated through concrete outcomes: technology transfers that are actually implemented, export-market diversification that is reflected in trade statistics, and development financing that genuinely reaches projects on the ground—not merely symbolic participation immortalized in official social-media posts.
For me, the true measure of “moving up, not switching sides” does not lie in Jakarta’s ability to articulate narratives of Global South solidarity on the international stage. It lies in the government’s willingness to subject the outcomes of this membership to honest and transparent public evaluation in the years ahead. A new class is only worthy of being claimed if its corresponding capabilities genuinely grow—not if it remains merely a title displayed with pride but never put to the test.
