Russia’s a different story. Its biggest space partnership now is with Iran, and every recent Iranian launch (Opens in new window) has happened while Iranian drones fly over Ukraine, a shrinking space power bartering rocket rides for drone favours, not running a colonial project. India, meanwhile,gave its neighbours a satellite in 2017 (Opens in new window), built its own navigation system instead of signing onto BeiDou, and signed the Artemis Accords in 2023 (Opens in new window): less a rival patron than a country opting out of being anyone’s client at all.
Washington runs a nearly identical operation: theArtemis Accords (Opens in new window) passed 71 signatories this year,non-binding commitments (Opens in new window) that align signatories with American standards, the same impulse in a gentler wrapper. A signature isn’t a decade of satellite debt, but both patrons lock in clients, the difference a matter of degrees.
That’s where the “client” label needs qualifying: the hunt doesn’t land the same way on everyone. Egypt has bought satellites from Ukraine (Opens in new window),Russia (Opens in new window), France, Italy and China; if the Chinese package really trapped buyers, Cairo couldn’t shop this freely. And the lock is political. Ethiopia and Bolivia don’t have that leverage: Bolivia borrowed US$251 million from the China Development Bank against a satellite it’s still paying off, while Ethiopia followed its first satellite with a second in 2020 (Opens in new window), and now a third. They stayed because they had nowhere else to stand.
Indonesia’s playing all the angles: the Chinese satellite and training, an unresolved question over who controls the data, an Indian tracking station on Biak since the 1990s (Opens in new window). None of it is really about principle. Its “independent and active” foreign policy doctrine is a survival tactic. A middle power without enough leverage to refuse anyone, Indonesia is running the only strategy that’s ever worked while refusing to fully commit to anyone. It’s the oldest trick for a state stuck between larger ones: bank the technology, keep more than one door open, and then let yourself be fought over because being fought over beats being ignored.
So, BRICS isn’t racing the West to space. It’s reviving the West’s oldest manoeuvre, trading access for loyalty and calling it partnership, while its two biggest members trust each other too little to run that play together. What you get instead is separate deals that happen to close at the same summit. The talks in New Delhi will show whether that changes.
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