Nepal, Sept. 20 -- When the leaders of BRICS gathered at Bharat Mandapam on September 12 and 13, the photographs carried an argument of their own, with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in New Delhi, Iran's President seated in the same hall as the Emirati delegation, and India, a Quad partner of the United States, presiding over the proceedings. For much of the Western commentariat, such images confirm a settled reading of the grouping as an anti-Western bloc in the making. That reading is not without basis, but it rests on a conflation of the non-Western with the anti-Western. The New Delhi Declaration, a 45-page, 140-point document adopted unanimously by the 11 members, offers a good occasion to separate the two.

Two postures within one gr...