A club of Eurasian countries spearheaded by China and Russia to\u00a0advance their leaders\u2019 vision of an alternative world order is set to expand again this week \u2013 this time adding a staunch Russian ally that has openly supported Moscow\u2019s war on Ukraine. <\/p>\n
The expected admission of Belarus to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its annual leaders\u2019 summit in Astana, Kazakhstan is another push by Beijing and Moscow to transform the grouping \u2013 from a regional security bloc into a geopolitical counterweight to Western institutions led by the United States and its allies. <\/p>\n
Belarus, which helped Russia to launch its 2022 invasion of Ukraine,\u00a0will become the latest authoritarian state to join the club, after Iran became a full member last year. <\/p>\n
Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have arrived in Astana for the summit that begins Wednesday, in what will be their second meeting this year. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the world\u2019s largest democracy,\u00a0is skipping the event, pointing to unease among some members about the direction the SCO is headed. <\/p>\n
Founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to combat terrorism and promote border security, the SCO has grown in recent years in line with Beijing and Moscow\u2019s shared ambition to counter what they see as US \u201chegemony\u201d and reshape the international system in their favor. <\/p>\n
In 2017, the bloc underwent its first expansion to welcome India and Pakistan. After adding Belarus, it will boast 10 members, representing more than 40% of the world\u2019s population and roughly a quarter of the global economy. It also has two observer states, Afghanistan and Mongolia, and more than a dozen \u201cdialogue partners\u201d from Myanmar to Turkey and the Arab states. <\/p>\n
The SCO\u2019s expansion comes after another bloc led by China and Russia, the BRICS group of major emerging economies, more than doubled its membership and significantly extended its global reach last year. <\/p>\n
As the SCO grows in international visibility and economic weight, it has also broadened in geopolitical ambitions. <\/p>\n
The expected admission of Belarus, which borders the European Union,\u00a0\u201creally highlights how the SCO\u2019s mission has changed in the last few years,\u201d said Eva Seiwert, an expert on China\u2019s foreign policy at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin. <\/p>\n
\u201cUnlike Iran, you\u00a0don\u2019t really get much like economic or security cooperation out of Belarus joining. And that\u2019s why I argue that it\u2019s more of a geopolitical move.\u201d <\/p>\n
With Russia deep in the third year of its grinding war against Ukraine, the SCO has become a crucial diplomatic avenue for Putin, as well as a platform to showcase he\u2019s not isolated internationally. And as\u00a0China\u2019s relations\u00a0with the US have plummeted, Beijing is now less concerned about the SCO being branded an anti-Western organization \u2013 a perception that has only deepened following Iran\u2019s admission, Seiwert said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey want the SCO to be perceived as a major bloc that cannot be ignored anymore,\u201d she said. \u201cWith all these countries joining, China and Russia (want to show they) both have a lot of supporters for their worldviews.\u201d <\/p>\n
And in that shared worldview, there is no place for the US in Eurasia. <\/p>\n
In a meeting with his senior foreign ministry officials last month, Putin laid out a future vision for \u201ca\u00a0new system of\u00a0bilateral and\u00a0multilateral guarantees of\u00a0collective security in\u00a0Eurasia,\u201d with the help of existing organizations like the SCO and a long-term goal to \u201cgradually phase out the\u00a0military presence of\u00a0external powers in\u00a0the\u00a0Eurasian region.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cDuring my\u00a0recent visit to\u00a0China, President Xi Jinping and\u00a0I\u00a0discussed this issue. It was noted that the\u00a0Russian proposal is not contradictory, but rather complements and\u00a0aligns with the\u00a0basic principles of\u00a0the\u00a0Chinese global security initiative,\u201d said Putin, who visited Beijing in May. <\/p>\n
That big picture vison of an alternative future is going to be the \u201cheadline message\u201d for China and Russia coming out of this SCO summit, said Bates Gill, a senior fellow for the National Bureau of Asian Research. <\/p>\n
But the Belarus membership also creates big question marks that will hang over the organization, Gill said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt creates all sorts of problems and new questions about the reputation, legitimacy and mandate of the organization, given the nature of the Belarus regime and its support for Russia\u2019s flagrant violation of international law and invasion of Ukraine,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cClearly the SCO can tolerate authoritarian regimes, but for the mandate of the organization, it further diversifies and dilutes its original focus, which was to be on Central Asia.\u201d <\/p>\n
The bloc\u2019s expansion hasn\u2019t come without frictions \u2013 notably with the admission of bitter rivals India and Pakistan \u2013 while tensions between Beijing and New Delhi have also flared in recent years following deadly clashes on their disputed Himalayan border. <\/p>\n
The grouping\u2019s increasingly anti-Western orientation following its embrace of Iran and now Belarus has also fueled unease among members that want to keep good relations with the West, including the former Soviet states in Central Asia. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn some respects, it puts the Central Asian states in a very awkward position,\u201d Gill said. \u201cThey are pursuing what they like to call multi-trajectory diplomacy. They don\u2019t want to be committed to only dealing with one major power, like Russia or China.\u201d <\/p>\n
Gill, who visited Central Asia in April and May, said there was an ambivalence in regional capitals about the future of the SCO. <\/p>\n
India, too, appeared to be losing interest. Last year, it hosted the summit virtually \u2013 a muted arrangement that allowed Modi to avoid the optics of welcoming Putin and Xi to New Delhi as it sought closer ties with the US. <\/p>\n
This year, fresh from his third consecutive term inauguration, the Indian leader\u00a0is skipping the summit in Astana \u2013 despite Russian state media reports that he will visit the Kremlin next week. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis tells us that he does not see the SCO as the most effective channel through which to pursue Indian interests in this part of the world,\u201d Gill said. <\/p>\n
Even China, the main driver behind the SCO\u2019s expansion, is seeking a more direct way to engage with Central Asia \u2013 without Russia\u2019s involvement. <\/p>\n
Last year, five leaders from the region received a lavish welcome at the inaugural China-Central Asia summit in the Chinese city of Xi\u2019an, the starting point of the ancient Silk Road trade route that linked imperial China with civilizations to its west over a millennium ago.\u00a0In March, a permanent Secretariat for the China-Central Asia mechanism was established in the same city. <\/p>\n
And while China and Russia aspire to present the SCO as a counterweight to US-led institutions, it remains a much weaker and less cohesive bloc compared with the likes of NATO, the European Union or the Group of Seven nations. <\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the expansion of membership with India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus, the organization will be even less like an alliance or committed common grouping, and more like a strategic-vision type of organization \u2026 representative of a Eurasian identity,\u201d Gill said. <\/p>\n
After the summit in Astana, China is due to take up the rotating presidency of the SCO for a year. <\/p>\n
Seiwert, the expert at MERICS, said Beijing would work to find more common ground among member states. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor China, it\u2019s important that the SCO doesn\u2019t fail, that it is perceived as successful. I think they\u2019re also aware of all the difficulties that have come with all these different expansions,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf it keeps on expanding \u2013 if Russia and China keep on pushing it to expand \u2013 then I think its regional relevance will really just diminish.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
A club of Eurasian countries spearheaded by China and Russia to\u00a0advance their leaders\u2019 vision of an alternative world order is set to expand again this week \u2013 this time adding a staunch Russian ally that has openly supported Moscow\u2019s war on Ukraine. The expected admission of Belarus to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20470,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20469","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}