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 a significant response to rising maritime tensions globally.
The weeklong Will for Peace 2026 workout routines, which began on Saturday, are being led by China in Simon’s City, the place the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. They’ll embrace drills on rescue and maritime strike operations and technical exchanges, China’s Ministry of Nationwide Defence mentioned.
The drills involving warships from the taking part nations come amid frayed ties between South Africa and the US. Washington sees the bloc as an financial menace.
The BRICS acronym is derived from the preliminary letters of the founding member nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – with South Africa serving as the present chair. India and Brazil, nevertheless, opted out of the drills.
So why do the drills matter, and what’s their goal? And why are some founding members not taking part?
Who’s taking part 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 had been becoming a member of the drills as observers.
Talking on the ceremony, South Africa’s joint activity drive commander, Captain Nndwakhulu Thomas Thamaha, mentioned the drills had been greater than a navy train and a press release 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 transport and maritime financial actions”. BRICS Plus is an enlargement that permits the geopolitical bloc to have interaction with and courtroom further nations past its core members.
South African officers mentioned all members of the bloc had 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 advanced maritime atmosphere, cooperation similar to this isn’t an choice. It’s important.”
The South African Division of Defence mentioned in a press release that this 12 months’s train “displays the collective dedication of all taking part navies to safeguard maritime commerce routes, improve shared operational procedures and deepen cooperation in assist of peaceable maritime safety initiatives”.
The continuing workout routines come amid heightened geopolitical tensions. They began simply three days after the US seized a Venezuela-linked Russian oil tanker within the North Atlantic, saying it had violated Western sanctions.
The seizure adopted a US navy 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 navy motion towards nations similar to 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 towards Ukraine by shopping for Russian oil.
After taking workplace in January 2025, Trump had threatened all of the BRICS members with a further 10 % tariff.
“After I heard about this group from BRICS, six nations, principally, I hit them very, very laborious. And in the event that they ever actually kind in a significant manner, it should finish in a short time,” Trump mentioned in July earlier than the annual summit of the growing nations. “We will 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 world concern over a “rise of unilateral tariff and non-tariff measures” with out naming the US and condemned the navy strikes on Iran.
Who opted out of the joint drills and why?
Two of the founding members of the BRICS alliance, India and Brazil, are usually not taking part within the naval drills.
Whereas Brasilia joined the workout routines 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 greatest flashpoints of their bilateral ties with a commerce deal hanging within the stability.
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 isn’t a navy 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 navy 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 comfy 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 high of that, Pant argued, there are key variations between nations in BRICS Plus – just like the UAE and Iran, or Egypt and Iran – for the bloc to grow to be a formidable navy 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 suggests “smoke” within the Sesotho language, passed off 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 workout routines in South African waters will possible additional elevate tensions with Washington.
Since Trump took workplace once more, South Africa-US ties have deteriorated over a spread 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 towards Israel, a high US ally, earlier than the Worldwide Court docket of Justice in The Hague. It accuses the Israeli authorities of committing genocide towards 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 had been dealing with systematic killings.
Ramaphosa rejected the claims. None of South Africa’s political events says there’s a “white genocide” occurring within the nation because the Trump administration claims.
Internet hosting the wargames at a time of world geopolitical upheaval has its personal dangers, on condition that the US sees among the contributors as a navy menace.
Ramaphosa’s authorities additionally faces criticism from considered one of its largest coalition companions, the liberal Democratic Alliance (DA). A DA spokesperson, Chris Hattingh, mentioned in a press release that the bloc has no defensive position or shared navy plans to warrant such workout routines.
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”.
