The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: All Talk but No Action?
The 23rd Annual Council of Heads Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took place on October 16th, 2024, in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad. The summit witnessed the signing of eight key agreements that refer to the functioning of SCO’s secretariat, enhancing economic development amongst members and bolstering counterterrorism measures in the region. While the number of documents signed by the SCO are normal for a regional organisation, it is hard to substantiate these agreements into constructive action. Indeed, the organisation has come a long way from 2001 when the founding members were only Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The organisation has expanded thereafter with the inclusion of India and Pakistan in 2017, Iran in 2023 and most recently Belarus in 2024. It also includes of two observer countries (Mongolia and Afghanistan) and 14 dialogue partners that include emerging and middle powers such as Türkiye, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
The admission of so many countries who at times have divergent foreign policy positions make it hard to decipher what the organisation really stands for.
The SCO, established in 2001 was a Chinese initiative that aimed to counter the three evils in the Central Asian region, namely – separatism, extremism, and terrorism. The successes in these three domains could be limited, with its favourable outcome success heightened in the aftermath of American presence in the region post 9/11 to fight the Global War on Terror. Little has been done, thereafter pertaining these issues.
In terms of numbers, the SCO stresses quite strongly that it forms 40% of the world’s population and almost 25% of the world’s GDP. These statistics are reiterated to obscure the shortcomings of the organisation. With the expansion to countries that do not necessarily belong to the target region of Central Asia, the SCO has over the years struggled to come to consensus about what it really is. Is it a regional cooperation mechanism? An economic development forum? Or an anti-Western group that tries to defy what they call as a Western dominated world order? The SCO does not prove that it fulfils any of these terminologies concretely. Economic cooperation seems limited given the implicit power struggles between Russia and China. So does regional cooperation, since key players in the region such as Turkmenistan is still a member and that other alternatives exclusive to Central Asia exist for regional cooperation such as the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation. And security engagement seems like a distant reality now that it consists of both India and Pakistan, a relationship that has soured drastically and does not appear to improve for now. The SCO could be seen as amorphous despite rigorous paperwork by bureaucrats who are aware of the limited success their communiques might yield to.
The SCO has expanded over time with many countries expressing interest to join to forum. Expanding organisations does not always translate to greater legitimacy. The focus of the SCO has changed from achieving Central Asian regional harmony to becoming an alternative to NATO by including countries such as Iran and Belarus. However, this has not been successful – other SCO members such India and Pakistan continue to cooperate with the West, including the U.S. and such a stance does not appeal to them. While India has emphasised itself as not being part of any alliance system, its calls itself non-Western. Pakistan on the other hand was a former American ally and has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of American aid over the years. Additionally, Central Asian republic such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have voiced their reservations for the SCO being termed as Anti-West. Kazakhstan has also made sure it does not support Russian actions in Ukraine. The idea of expanding has brought challenges towards the definitions of the SCO’s goals.
The calls for expansion are also rooted in the power rivalry between Russia and China that has been intensely growing in Central Asia. While Russia has longstanding historical ties to the region and considers Central Asia as its ‘Near Abroad’ in its foreign policy, China’s initiatives after the Soviet integration have paid off. Russia’s initiative to incorporate India in the SCO could also be seen to contain China’s growing influence. To balance that out, China made sure that it also includes Pakistan. While Russia and China converge on the issue of American hegemony, they both have their own ambitions to create hegemony in a region central to their economic and security interests.
China also took the initiative with the SCO and has concurrently expanded its influence in the region with increasing levels of economic ties with the five republics on bilateral levels. For Russia, obviously this is not a good sign and hence it has also shown little interest in an organisation like the SCO led by China. Instead, it directly engages with the Central Asian republics through the Collective Security Treaty Organisation along with bilateral ties hinders the SCO’s efforts to remain coherent. Russia and China have also conflicted on initiatives within the SCO. For example, Russia did not support China’s idea for a development bank or a free trade zone as it recognises how this initiative could further reduce Russian hold in the region.
The SCO’s branches have often remained muted in terms of being effective and the goals they set out. The SCO Business Council for example, conducts so many meetings but has not been able to highlight a key business development amongst its members. The Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure invites itself to even more criticism. It did not conduct any working group to address the Taliban takeover in neighbouring Afghanistan or even structural engage when ISIS linked terrorists attacked Russia. Two of its members, India and Pakistan who have long standing disputes because of terrorism have not found a platform in RATS to address and unlikely to use multilateral forums to address terrorism. Moreover, India’s conflicts with China further exacerbate the incompatibility of member and the possibility of security cooperation. This has also pushed India westward with its increased engagements with the Quad, a creation that if not explicitly, implicitly wishes to contain Chinese expansionism.
Such aspects of the SCO limit the ambitions set forth by China and Russia to directly oppose the NATO. Moreover, the diverse yet divergent set of countries in the organisation puts these efforts to rest. Importantly, many Central Asian countries including Kazakhstan have desired to go beyond Russia and China and not get involved between their power struggles. Increasing American engagement with the region highlights the openness on behalf of the Central Asian republics to diversify their options. The C5+1 capitalises on this openness to break the Sino-Russian monopoly. It is noticeable that the C5+1 unlike the SCO and even the CSTO includes all the countries of Central Asia like Turkmenistan, only an observer country of the SCO and not a part of the CSTO (Uzbekistan too is not a part of the CSTO). While Russia and China dominated the early 2000s, we should realise that China initiated the SCO for its own purposes – to suppress Uyghur separatist movements, which it has also controversially termed as terrorism. The Central Asian republics shared these concerns with China along with their internal stability challenges. America was pre-occupied with its War on Terror and its engagement with Central Asia was only limited for military purposes connected to Afghanistan. China and Russia capitalised on this. Now that America is relatively free of Afghanistan, engagements are increasing, and a new Trump administration will be keen on building upon these developments.
Lastly, the authoritarian nature of the SCO especially with the Chinese government’s willingness to engage with the Taliban government of Afghanistan might do more harm than good for SCO’s legitimacy. This could effectively question the SCO’s ambition to represent the Global South. It is undeniable that democratic values make an organisation more valuable to potential members. Moreover, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the SCO’s silence on these matters might alienate Central Asian countries as well as other smaller countries who are extensively cooperating with Russia and China with the fears of a similar fate like Ukraine’s. By portraying itself as an anti-West organisation, the SCO would not make it any different from exclusive Western alliances like the NATO. Instead, it should focus on uniting countries that share similar values and become a fruitful platform that fulfils its purpose rather than just producing futile communiques.
Image Courtesy of the Kazakhstan Prime Minister’s Office Website via Wikimedia Commons, ©2024. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St. Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
