As a much-anticipated Brics summit opens Wednesday at Johannesburg, the economic group’s member countries are tied mainly by turmoil, as Communist China is undergoing an economic meltdown, revanchist Russia is mired in a no-win war and internal turmoil, and Brazilians and South Africans are dissatisfied with their leaders. In contrast, India is reaching for the moon. 

President Lula of Brazil, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov of Russia, Prime Minister Modi of India, Chairman Xi of China, and President Ramaphosa of South Africa were at Johannesburg Wednesday while President Putin was absent, fearing an arrest on war crime charges filed against him at the Hague.

Mr. Putin also might have been busy orchestrating the elimination of a mutiny leader. A June march on Moscow, led by the now presumably dead Wagner mercenary group’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, exposed the Kremlin’s in-fighting over execution of the as yet ill-fated Ukraine war.

Mr. Xi arrived as economists are increasingly raising doubts over the strength of the Chinese economy. Messrs. Lula and Ramaphosahad didn’t have much to crow about, either. Yet, there was Mr. Modi celebrating India’s Chandrayaan-3 landing on the moon’s South Pole. Mr. Putin, whose Russian Luna-25 crashed on Sunday, must have felt some jealousy from afar.

“This success belongs to all of humanity,” Mr. Modi told the Johannesburg attendees in a speech aimed also at the home crowd. He was speaking of a victory for the “global south” and has previously promoted a joint Brics space program. Yet, the landing during a summit of a grouping dominated by Beijing pointed to fundamental differences between India and the rest of the crowd. 

Following India’s 1948 independence after decades of British colonial rule, New Delhi became a founding member of a bloc known as the Non-Aligned Movement. While NAM was mostly non-aligned with America and often sided with its main foe, the Soviet Union, the group strived to represent the poorer countries that seemed to have no voice in the Cold War-era power structure. 

Non-aligned sentiments may have attracted modern Delhi to Brics, which was officially formed in 2009. At the same time, India is a member, along with America, Australia, and Japan, of the anti-Beijing Quad group. Much more worried about Mr. Xi’s imperial designs than the West’s, Mr. Modi’s India is warmly embraced at European capitals and Washington. 

While Beijing and Moscow thrive to turn Brics into an anti-Western alliance, “India knows its future is with the democracies, and that the danger comes not from the colonialists of the 19th century but the expansionists of the 21st,” the vice chairman of the advanced research group at Manipal University, Madhav Das Nalapat, tells the Sun. “We don’t want to run away from Brics, but Modi is the one leader there who is a friend of the West.”

One of the top issues at Johannesburg is a proposed expansion of Brics, which in its current form represents 40 percent of the globe’s population and more than 30 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. The bloc has overtaken the group of top economies known as G-7 in several economic measurements.

Beijing and Moscow are specifically eager to welcome Saudi Arabia, Iran, Indonesia, and other countries clamoring for Brics membership. Yet, while officially unopposed to expansion, India, as well as Brazil, demand that certain criteria be set for membership. Mostly, they fear that Brics would turn into a club for autocrats.

India’s population has recently surpassed China’s, even as its economy remains about a third of the communist behemoth’s size. Yet, innovation, democracy, and Mr. Modi’s efforts to create a free economy have the potential to quickly turn it into one of the world’s leading powers. 

“Structurally and aspirationally, the G-20, G-7, Quad and the like are where New Delhi is headed, but India’s accommodation in the most  influential among those forums is a long shot,” an international studies professor at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru university, Happymon Jacob, wrote recently in the Hindu newspaper.

As a result, he added, India is “located right in the middle of an emerging geopolitical faultline, with interests on either side, welcomed by either side, but fully belonging to neither.”

Communist China, meanwhile, is far from universally welcome. The New Development Bank, a Beijing-based Brics lending institution, has already distributed more than $30 billion in loans with few strings attached. Leftist leaders in Latin America and autocrats in parts of Asia and Africa are hitching their economies to the Chinese wagon. 

Yet, a slowdown in China’s growth, the collapse of its property sector, and haphazard decision-making in a government-led economy raise doubts among would-be trade partners. The confiscatory lending practices of the Belt and Road Initiative can scare borrowers even as America aggressively seeks to diversify supply chains away from China.

Thriving to find a golden path between 20th century global giants, India increasingly sees Communist China now as a foe. Further embracing Delhi may well be America’s most urgent task in the new Cold War.