New Delhi, India – Joint naval drills involving a number of members of the BRICS bloc, together with China, Russia and Iran, have kicked off close to South Africa’s coast with South Africa describing the manoeuvres as an important response to rising maritime tensions globally.
The weeklong Will for Peace 2026 workouts, which began on Saturday, are being led by China in Simon’s City, the place the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. They are going to embrace drills on rescue and maritime strike operations and technical exchanges, China’s Ministry of Nationwide Defence mentioned.
The drills involving warships from the collaborating international locations come amid frayed ties between South Africa and the USA. Washington sees the bloc as an financial risk.
The BRICS acronym is derived from the preliminary letters of the founding member international locations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – with South Africa serving as the present chair. India and Brazil, nonetheless, opted out of the drills.
So why do the drills matter, and what’s their purpose? And why are some founding members not collaborating?
Who’s collaborating within the drills?
China and Iran despatched destroyers, Russia and the United Arab Emirates despatched corvettes and South Africa deployed a mid-sized frigate.
Chinese language officers main the opening ceremony on Saturday south of Cape City mentioned Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia and Ethiopia have been becoming a member of the drills as observers.
Talking on the ceremony, South Africa’s joint job pressure commander, Captain Nndwakhulu Thomas Thamaha, mentioned the drills have been greater than a army train and an announcement of intent among the many BRICS group of countries.
The host nation described this as a BRICS Plus operation geared toward making certain “the security of delivery and maritime financial actions”. BRICS Plus is an growth that permits the geopolitical bloc to have interaction with and courtroom further international locations past its core members.
South African officers mentioned all members of the bloc have been invited to the drills.
Iran joined the group in 2024. The bloc was concurrently expanded to incorporate Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Why do the drills matter?
South Africa has beforehand carried out naval drills with China and Russia.
“It’s a demonstration of our collective resolve to work collectively,” Thamaha mentioned. “In an more and more complicated maritime surroundings, cooperation reminiscent of this isn’t an choice. It’s important.”
The South African Division of Defence mentioned in an announcement that this 12 months’s train “displays the collective dedication of all collaborating navies to safeguard maritime commerce routes, improve shared operational procedures and deepen cooperation in assist of peaceable maritime safety initiatives”.
The continuing workouts come amid heightened geopolitical tensions. They began simply three days after the USA seized a Venezuela-linked Russian oil tanker within the North Atlantic, saying it had violated Western sanctions.
The seizure adopted a US army operation that abducted President Nicolas Maduro from the capital, Caracas, together with his spouse, Cilia Flores and a pledge from US President Donald Trump to “run” Venezuela and exploit its huge oil reserves.
The Trump administration has additionally threatened army motion in opposition to international locations reminiscent of Cuba, Colombia and Iran and the semiautonomous Danish territory Greenland.
How does Trump see BRICS?
Trump has accused some BRICS members of pursuing “anti-American” insurance policies.
Whereas Washington’s relations proceed to be bitter with China and Russia, Trump has attacked Iran and imposed punishing tariffs on India, which it has accused of funding Russia’s warfare in opposition to Ukraine by shopping for Russian oil.
After taking workplace in January 2025, Trump had threatened all of the BRICS members with an extra 10 % tariff.
“After I heard about this group from BRICS, six international locations, mainly, I hit them very, very exhausting. And in the event that they ever actually kind in a significant means, it is going to finish in a short time,” Trump mentioned in July earlier than the annual summit of the growing nations. “We are able to by no means let anybody play video games with us.”
Of their joint assertion from July, the BRICS leaders took a defiant tone and referred to as out international concern over a “rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” with out naming the US and condemned the army strikes on Iran.
Who opted out of the joint drills and why?
Two of the founding members of the BRICS alliance, India and Brazil, will not be collaborating within the naval drills.
Whereas Brasilia joined the workouts as an observer, New Delhi stayed away.
Since Trump returned to the White Home, New Delhi has seen its inventory crash in Washington.
India’s buy of Russian oil is among the many largest flashpoints of their bilateral ties with a commerce deal hanging within the steadiness.
For New Delhi, opting out of the drills is “about balancing ties with the US”, mentioned Harsh Pant, a geopolitical analyst on the New Delhi-based suppose tank Observer Analysis Basis. “However these so-called wargames are additionally not the BRICS mandate.”
BRICS primarily will not be a army alliance however an intergovernmental partnership of growing nations centered on financial cooperation and commerce geared toward breaking an overreliance on the West.
Pant instructed Al Jazeera that for China, Russia, Iran and to some extent South Africa, the joint army train “helps [a narrative] about positioning themselves vis-a-vis the US at this juncture”.
“India would like to not be tagged within the BRICS wargames,” Pant mentioned, including that New Delhi would additionally not be snug with the gradual evolution of BRICS’s foundational nature. “This isn’t actually one thing that India can take ahead, each pragmatically and normatively.”
On prime of that, Pant argued, there are key variations between international locations in BRICS Plus – just like the UAE and Iran, or Egypt and Iran – for the bloc to grow to be a formidable army alliance.
When did South Africa final host joint drills?
South Africa carried out Train Mosi, because it was beforehand referred to as, twice with Russia and China.
The primary Train Mosi, which implies “smoke” within the Sesotho language, befell in November 2019. The second iteration, Train Mosi II, was held in February 2023, coinciding with the primary anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
South Africa had confronted warmth from the West for internet hosting the joint drills then.
A 3rd version was scheduled for late 2025, but it surely overlapped with a Group of 20 summit that was held in South Africa in November. Washington didn’t ship any delegates. The continuing Will for Peace 2026, now rebranded, is the third version of the drills.
What’s at stake for South Africa?
The workouts in South African waters will probably additional elevate tensions with Washington.
Since Trump took workplace once more, South Africa-US ties have deteriorated over a variety of points, and Trump has imposed 30 % tariffs on South African items.
Part of the fallout can be rooted within the South African authorities’s resolution to convey a genocide case in opposition to Israel, a prime US ally, earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice in The Hague. It accuses the Israeli authorities of committing genocide in opposition to Palestinians in Gaza. In a preliminary ruling, the world courtroom discovered it believable that Israeli actions amounted to genocide.
When South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White Home in Could, hoping to fix ties, Trump falsely claimed that white South African farmers have been going through systematic killings.
Ramaphosa rejected the claims. None of South Africa’s political events says there’s a “white genocide” taking place within the nation because the Trump administration claims.
Internet hosting the wargames at a time of worldwide geopolitical upheaval has its personal dangers, on condition that the US sees a number of the individuals as a army risk.
Ramaphosa’s authorities additionally faces criticism from one among its largest coalition companions, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA). A DA spokesperson, Chris Hattingh, mentioned in an announcement that the bloc has no defensive function or shared army plans to warrant such workouts.
The social gathering mentioned BRICS had “rendered South Africa a pawn within the energy video games being waged by rogue states on the worldwide stage”.
