US, Sept. 16 -- For a generation of American strategists, "BRICS" has worked less as an object of study than as a Rorschach test. Say the word in a Washington seminar and the reflexes fire on cue: an anti-American club, a de-dollarization plot, a talking shop that issues communiques and little else.

The 18th BRICS Summit, hosted by India in New Delhi on September 12-13, ought to retire those reflexes. Read on its own terms, New Delhi 2026 was not a bloc sharpening its knives against the West. It was a demonstration of something a hegemon finds harder to digest: a functioning, multipolar order being built with or without American participation.

Begin with diplomacy, because the process, not the slogans, is the real story. Eleven members...