The recent 26th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, marks the 25th anniversary of the organisation, which purports to represent a ‘Global South-led’ alternative to the West-dominated international order. Chinese President Xi Jinping gave that purpose concrete expression when he unveiled a New Global Governance Initiative at the 25th SCO Summit last year.
Pakistan will host the next SCO summit; in 2024 it also hosted the meeting of the organisation’s heads of government. Pakistan is one of the few, if not currently the only, SCO member nations that maintain irritant-free relations with the West, particularly the US.
The Bishkek summit was held against the backdrop of the US-Iran war, which is casting a long shadow over global security and the economy. The tightening of Washington’s sanctions on Tehran and its warning to third countries, notably China, to stop trading with Iran or face the music is driving up global tensions.
The Bishkek Declaration issued at the end of the summit condemned US military strikes on Iran and supported the country’s right to a peaceful nuclear programme under the NPT, of which it (Iran) is a signatory. The declaration also rejected unilateral sanctions (by the US on Russia and Iran), which it said are inconsistent with the UN Charter and expressed support for multilateralism represented by the world body. The members also expressed their commitment to combat “terrorism, separatism, and extremism”, which lie at the very foundations of the SCO towards the turn of the century.
The 1990s saw China’s quiet economic rise; it was already a nuclear power and commanded the largest armed forces on the globe. China’s rise continued into the new millennium. Although Beijing restructured a socialist and largely closed economy into a market-oriented and open one, it put its foot down on any attempts to change its political system, in which the Communist Party holds all the aces and calls all the shots.
Beyond trade, democracy and human rights, a strong American military presence in East Asia has been a major sore point between Beijing and Washington. A glance at the map of East Asia will reveal that China is encircled by US allies, which Beijing sees as its ‘proxies’ in the region.
China, otherwise a remarkably stable country, had to cope with one major problem in its backyard at the turn of the century, which served as the catalyst for creating the SCO: grave unrest in Xinjiang. The involvement of non-state actors from China’s western Muslim-majority neighbours in the Xinjiang unrest was suspected at a time when the Taliban were at the helm in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, three important developments were taking place on the European stage. One was the eastward expansion of the European Union (EU), taking several constituent republics or allies of the former Soviet Union into its membership. A similar expansion was made by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the flagship North American-Western European security mechanism, which would later prompt Russia to invade Ukraine.
The third was Russia’s resurgence under Vladimir Putin, after a painful transformation from a socialist to a quasi-market economy. Moscow had inherited most of the nuclear capability of the erstwhile USSR. Once its economy was back on track, it was keen to recover the lost Russian glory. The US-led unipolar global order, which had come into being at the end of the cold war in the late 1980s, was beginning to show some signs of giving way to a multipolar world.
It is in this context that the establishment and expansion of SCO may be seen. SCO membership spans Eastern Europe, East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East – including four nuclear powers (Russia, China, India and Pakistan). Hence, supporting stability and security in the region and beyond remains at the forefront of SCO. The organisation was set up to ensure stability and maintain security in the enormous Eurasian region and to address challenges and threats that could engender insecurity and instability. These range from poverty and backwardness to confrontations and conflicts, and from violations of international law with regard to state sovereignty and territorial integrity to transnational organised crime and drug trafficking.
If such political and socio-economic factors underpin insecurity, the disruptive use of technologies, particularly the internet (cyberterrorism), serves as the most lethal agent of proliferation of extremism, separatism and terrorism; while drug production and trafficking bankroll these evils.
A fair and balanced international order is among the SCO’s watchwords. World orders are a political-cum-economic contrivance but also have cultural and civilisational underpinnings. Therefore, a multipolar world in which no single country, bloc, political system or economic doctrine has the uncontestable claim to supremacy is far better than a unipolar international order.
However, currently the SCO is neither an economic union (unlike the EU) nor a mutual security pact (unlike Nato). Therefore, given its present architecture, it doesn’t constitute a security or economic bloc in its own right.
The question of leadership is no small matter. In the West, US leadership has remained uncontested, a significant contributor to the success of the West-led international order. But in the SCO or the Global South, China and India – and potentially Russia as well – are rivals for leadership. For one thing, the US Indo-Pacific Strategy puts India and China in opposing camps. Washington coined the term ‘Indo-Pacific’ (originally, and still by Beijing, called Asia-Pacific) to counter China’s rise. The region has a network of US allies and several American military bases, encircling China.
In 2022, the US and its allies, including India, signed the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. The Framework seeks to promote a free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific and address economic and security challenges. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) is another important regional forum. Comprising the US, Australia, India and Japan – the four ‘liberal democracies’ – the Quad is an informal alliance to tackle security, economic and health issues.
Beijing regards both the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity and the Quad as key elements of Washington’s global anti-China strategy. It also sees New Delhi as an important player in this strategy. As long as India is a member of such anti-China platforms, a real breakthrough in its relations with China, and by implication realising the potential of the SCO, will remain highly improbable.
Both China and India are nuclear powers and have the two largest armed forces in the world. They’re also the two largest developing countries, the two most populated nations, the two biggest emerging economies and two of the world’s oldest civilisations. Given such credentials, it’s logical for each to stake a claim to SCO leadership. Not only that, India is the only country in South Asia which hasn’t joined China’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative. Instead, it’s part of a US-sponsored proposed economic corridor, announced in 2023 by the Biden Administration, linking India, the Middle East and Europe.
That said, the SCO is a forum where voices critical of, if not challenging, the current global order can be heard.
The writer is an Islamabad-based columnist. He tweets/posts @hussainhzaidi and can be reached at: [email protected]
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect Geo.tv’s editorial policy.
Originally published in The News
2026-09-11 08:29:00
