The Chinese Defense Ministry confirmed on Friday that its military, alongside those of Russia and South Africa, would engage in drills known as “Will for Peace 2026” off the coast of South Africa.

The Chinese government depicted these maritime exercises as a “BRICS” event, though the vast majority of the nations in that coalition are not participating. BRICS is an anti-American economic and diplomatic bloc led by China and named after core members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS has since added five members — Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Indonesia — and a host of third-world anti-American states such as Cuba and Belarus as “partners.” None save for Russia, China, and South Africa are part of “Will for Peace 2026,” according to the Chinese Defense Ministry.

The military exercises follow a particularly challenging year for BRICS following the inauguration of President Donald Trump in the United States, who repeatedly threatened BRICS nations with tariffs if they attempted to move away from using the dollar for trade, bombed member Iran. In May 2025, Trump publicly embarrassed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office.

The announcement of naval exercises comes less than a week after the United States intercepted and seized a Russian-flagged tanker believed to be engaging in illicit oil trafficking with Venezuela.

According to the Chinese Defense Ministry, “Will for Peace” will take place in January and use as its base the Port of Simon’s Town, South Africa.

“Under the theme of ‘Joint Actions to Ensure the Safety of Key Shipping Lanes and Maritime Economic Activities,’ participants will conduct counter-terrorism and rescue operations, anti-sea strikes, and other activities such as professional exchanges and on-board tours,” the Defense Ministry claimed. “The exercise aims to further deepen military exchanges and cooperation among participating nations and enhance their capabilities in jointly tackling maritime threats.”

The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times explained that these exercises are the first of its kind to be branded a BRICS production, expanding the objectives of the coalition beyond economic partnerships and solidarity at global venues such as the United Nations and into military operations. The Times noted that Russia, China, and South Africa have conducted joint exercises in the past, but also claimed that these drills would be unprecedented as they would involve some of the non-member “BRICS Plus” countries, but did not name any of them in its coverage.

“The ‘Will for Peace 2026’ seems to stand out as the first multilateral exercise under the BRICS framework,” a Chinese regime-approved “expert” claimed, because “it marks that BRICS members have stepped up promoting maritime cooperation, which is very important for the safeguarding of international maritime security and world peace.”

BRICS members were notably absent from the global conversation on “maritime cooperation” for much of 2024, when the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen launched a campaign to destroy global trade through the Mediterranean Sea. The Houthis claimed to be targeting ships doing business with Israel in support of fellow Iranian proxy Hamas, but ultimately bombed and otherwise attacked a host of irrelevant commercial ships, including ships with ties to BRICS countries such as Russia, China, and their patrons Iran.

The “Will for Peace” exercises were initially announced as “Mosi III” in 2024, but postponed reportedly due to concerns about stoking tensions with the United States. South African defense journalists reported that China would be leading the exercises and noted that, despite being branded a “BRICS” operation, India and Brazil, the other two major players in the coalition, will not be present.

The exercises have proven controversial in South Africa. The Democratic Alliance (DA), the major opposition party in the country, issued a statement on January 1 noting that the proposed exercises have been problematic geopolitically from the start.

“MOSI III was postponed because of its political and diplomatic sensitivity ahead of the G20 summit. That sensitivity has not disappeared,” the DA noted in a statement. “Calling the exercise “WILL FOR PEACE” does not change the reality. At the same time, China is conducting large-scale military exercises rehearsing a possible invasion of Taiwan. Using the language of peace to describe this kind of military alignment is misleading.”

“Hosting and training with such forces cannot be described as neutral or non-aligned. It is a political choice, whether the government admits it or not,” the statement continued, calling allying with dictatorships an unwise geopolitical move.

“While the government insists it is neutral, defense cooperation with democratic partners is falling apart. Joint exercises with the United States have been cancelled, U.S. participation in AAD has failed, and trust is being damaged,” it noted.

The shift away from economic and diplomatic cooperation to the military followed a disastrous year for BRICS. The annual BRICS summit, hosted by Brazil in 2025, dropped many of the organization’s major goals, including the creation of a joint currency to challenge the U.S. dollar. While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attended the event, neither Chinese dictator Xi Jinping nor his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin were present. Putin issued a pessimistic virtual address to the summit in which he lamented, “everything indicates that the liberal globalization model is becoming obsolete.”

“It is believed that creating an independent payment and monetary system within BRICS will expedite currency transactions while also ensuring their effectiveness and security,” he suggested, but he was alone in challenging the dollar in that summit.

In September, Xi Jinping presided over an emergency BRICS summit in an attempt to focus the group back on destroying America’s influence around the world — a clear indication that the official BRICS summit in Brazil had been a failure.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.