Geopolitical Twins: The Functional Symmetry of the G7 and BRICS in Global Realignment

The analysis of contemporary global governance is systematically obscured by a Manichean narrative: on one side, a "rules-based liberal West"; on the other, a "bloc of revisionist powers". This reading is comfortable for both sides — each needs the other as a bogeyman — but it is structurally false. Viewed from the outside, with the coldness of an analyst belonging to neither sphere, the G7 and the BRICS do not function as ontologically antagonistic models. They are mirrored geopolitical twins: two forums born of distinct histories and rhetorics, which converge on the same existential premise — to serve as platforms for the legitimation, strategic coordination and projection of a tutelary superpower's leadership over its respective sphere of influence.

The anatomy of symmetry

Begin with the most obvious and least recognised similarity: neither the United States nor China can exercise primacy in a purely unilateral fashion without incurring unmanageable diplomatic costs. Both superpowers need directories of multilateral validation — forums where national agendas can be dressed in the mantle of collective consensus. The G7 allows Washington to present its foreign policy as the "consensus of the developed world"; the BRICS offer Beijing the diplomatic endorsement to project its ambitions as the "collective will of the Global South". The grammar is identical; only the vocabulary changes.

The symmetry extends to the instrumentalisation of intermediate members. In both groupings, medium-sized powers play the role of credibility guarantors. In the G7, the presence of Germany, France, Japan and the United Kingdom lends institutional density and normative weight to directives conceived in Washington. In the BRICS, Brazil, India and South Africa ensure that the forum is not perceived as a mere diplomatic appendage of the Chinese Communist Party, but as a plural and genuinely representative club. In both cases, the mechanism is the same: the middle powers do not co-decide; they legitimise. They are co-signatories with notarial value, not co-authors with agenda-setting power.

The differences between the two poles are real, but superficial. The Western matrix aggregates through shared values, binding security alliances and high institutionalisation, legitimising itself through the discourse of the "rules-based international order"; the non-aligned matrix aggregates through geoeconomic interests and a pragmatic sovereignism that invokes multipolarity and non-interference. But the function is one and the same: to structure a sphere of coercion and normative attraction under tutelary leadership.

The G7: the centralised North Atlantic

Created in the 1970s to coordinate the response to the economic shocks of the era, the G7 evolved from an informal forum of finance ministers into the political and strategic arm of American leadership. Its central agenda — from sanctions on Russia to semiconductor restrictions applied to China — is fundamentally conceived in Washington and subsequently harmonised by the remaining members. And the forum operates as a regulatory amplifier: directives adopted within it are rapidly converted into international regulatory standards and sanctions imposed on the rest of the world through control of the dollar-dominated financial system. It is a mechanism of regulatory capture on a planetary scale.

The BRICS: the inverted mirror

The trajectory of the other twin is the reflected image. Born as an investors' acronym ("BRIC"), later formalised as a political bloc, the group was progressively moulded by Beijing to perform, in the non-Western ecosystem, the exact function the G7 performs in the Western one. China grasped something decisive: it does not need to impose a homogeneous political model in order to exercise leadership. By promoting "absolute sovereignism", it attracts autocracies, illiberal democracies and non-aligned nations that reject the political conditionality demanded by the West. And just as Washington uses the IMF, the World Bank and SWIFT to project power, Beijing instrumentalises the BRICS to erect a parallel financial architecture — the New Development Bank, currency swap lines, the CIPS payment system, local-currency energy settlement — that immunises the group against the reach of American sanctions. One shield is, point by point, the replica of the other.

Conclusion: functional bipolarisation

Categorising the G7 and the BRICS as geopolitical twins reveals the mirrored nature of the reordering under way. What is happening is not the triumph of universal multilateralism, but its functional bipolarisation. Just as the G7 exists to structure and legitimise US leadership over the Western-liberal ecosystem, the BRICS have become China's indispensable vehicle for consolidating its preeminence in the non-aligned ecosystem. The international system is not heading towards a genuinely multipolar order, but towards a structured rivalry between two mirrored blocs, each directed by a superpower and each sustained by middle powers that mistake their godfather's protection for autonomy of their own.

The consequence for everyone else — and here I speak above all for Europe, which chose to be a supporting actor in one of the twins — is uncomfortable: whoever sees only antagonists where mirrors exist ends up choosing between two versions of the same subordination.