If one only looks long and hard enough, one will see the seeds being sown for a massive shift in the geopolitical world order. While Donald Trump cannot help but piece-by-piece destroy the post-War constructs that have served both the West and the globe so well over the past 60 years, there is another giant forming in the East. To be sure, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, or SCO in abbreviation, is still young and in the making to be a true contender to Western institutions, but we are gradually getting there.
As I pointed to in yesterday’s
piece, more and more of the Eurasian plate as tomorrow’s economic miracle has been shaped at the most recent SCO meeting in China’s Qingdao that rivalled the G7 in Canada and Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un in Singapore, maybe not in news coverage but definitely in substance and meaning. SCO was initially created in 2001 by 6 Central Asian nations, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Last year, India and Pakistan joined as full members.
As if this alliance of eight nations didn’t already account for approximately half the world’s population, a quarter of global GDP, and about 80% of the Eurasian landmass, and if it didn’t already cover economic, geopolitical, educational, and technological grounds for cooperation from north to south, and from east to west, of pretty much the entire plate, there is more than a dozen additional nations and institutions that are attached to SCO in some shape or form.
For example, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia possess a so-called observer status that is meant to lead to full membership in due course. There are also six aspiring dialogue partners encompassing Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Turkey. Leaders of those countries have also been invited and participating at the Qingdao summit. In addition, there were four guest attendances, of Turkmenistan and representatives of the United Nations, the CIS, and ASEAN.
What was most noticeable in this year’s gathering was the warming relationship between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. In his keynote address, Xi went out of his way to demonstrate China’s engagement with Russia, among other things upgrading their partnership from comprehensive to strategic and awarding Putin with China’s first friendship medal. He also showered Putin with compliments of even a personal nature, calling him his best, most intimate friend.
For SCO and its purpose of a strategic alliance to progress further Beijing needs Moscow to lend its full weight. It is these two complementary superpowers that will have to drive the project into the future. China needs space, trading routes to expand its ecosystem, and resources to keep thriving as an economy and a civilisation, much of which Russia can bring to the table. Russia needs new consumers of its resources and someone who can build infrastructure across Eurasia that it can economically benefit from.
And both it appears can do with a reliable partner and defence structure in this new era of American polarisation. Funny that the rapprochement of China and Russia was first initiated by Washington’s biggest geopolitical blunder, namely to aggressively step up its containment strategy. Russia has been slammed with sanctions, yet again earlier this week, and the sabre-rattling in Eastern Europe seems to know no boundaries. China, on the other hand, is being threatened on trade and its South China Sea line-up.
Numerous NATO exercises of massive if not mind-boggling scales on Russia’s doorstep are scheduled for the rest of the year. It will be interesting to see what the NATO summit in July is going to produce, whether the tone on Russia will harden, or whether Trump manages to perform yet another stunt to undermine if not the most important piece of the Western alliance structure. Equally, we need to see what the consequences of US warships crisscrossing around the Chinese-built islands in the South China Sea will be.
The addition of India and Pakistan has certainly been a coup and opens SCO’s scope to the Indian Ocean. Pakistan has already been a faithful follower and an incremental part of Beijing’s BRI strategy. Bilateral proceedings seem to have brought India and China closer as well. The New Delhi leaders must have accepted that, with India’s unique demographic position and for a people of 1.6 billion no later than 2050, they can simply not afford to miss being part of this generational project. SCO provides an entry point.
In fact, SCO might serve as a foundation for deemphasising a highly dangerous conflict looming in South Asia. Russia’s constructive ties with both Pakistan and India (let’s not forget that India just decided to purchase substantial defence systems from Russia over the US), as well as China’s deep economic involvement in Pakistan and blossoming communication channels with India, could be a god-sent for the historically troubled Indian-Pakistani relationship.
Iran’s ascent within SCO should be one to watch. As is being reported, Putin is keen on Tehran to join the fray as a full member at the earliest possible. Not only is Iran important territorially, it is one of the economic cherries on the cake for Russian and Chinese companies to expand their businesses after Washington has retracted from the nuclear deal and been trying to pull Europe out with it. Also, an Iran within SCO as a defence alliance at one point would be much less dangerous than currently depicted.
NATO member Turkey’s positioning as a current dialogue partner should be interesting. What is Erdogan’s endgame in this? He has gradually been detaching Turkey from the Western world and will be well aware of the strategic value he could bring to SCO’s infrastructure ambitions. Also, we will have to see how economic opportunism will steer the Middle East and Northern Africa. Egypt and Syria have applied for observer status, Israel for dialogue partner, and Iraq, Bahrain and Qatar expressed interest.
It might sound crazy but only be a matter of time for European countries to become utterly disillusioned and to give up on trying to relate to a United States in decline, at least in relative terms, and to its leader who acts on instinct triggered by a deep domestic split in American society but lacks any strategic vision bar his America First battle cry. No one is yet willing to accept the looming end of this Trans-Atlantic alliance, at least in its current form, but at one point Europeans will have to make a call whether to look east.
The key to SCO and its growing nature as an alliance that will eventually cover both economic and security matters, apart from making sure that Washington doesn’t successfully boycott the efforts, will be for China and Russia to jointly lead its progression, enable unprecedented possibilities for Eurasian integration, and eventually develop into an Eastern NATO of sorts. But there will be no room for failure to credibly ensure that the construct isn’t just labelled as a new era of multipolarity, they will need to verifiably live it too.
