The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: The Inconceivable Competition with the United States in the Global Order
A previous study published by ICGER discussed the illusion that the BRICS group can be an objective equivalent pole to the United States and the West.[1]
Some may claim that BRICS’ failure to actualize such a posture is economic in nature – despite some indications of Russian-Chinese efforts to create geopolitical characteristics for it. Therefore, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) may ascend to the position of a global pole comparable to that of the West, what BRICS failed to accomplish, especially since China has been discussing an “Asian security structure” since 2018, with Russia persistently seeking to establish a multipolar world since 2012.
Iran becoming a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in July 2023 may ostensibly broaden its scope and add new strength to its position. Effectively, it widens the ideological cleft and deepens its initial rift. It does not bridge the gap between Shiite Iran, committed to Marxist China, Orthodox Russia, radical Sunni Pakistan, and militant Hindu India in terms of principles, opinions, historical heritage, or ideology.
What is valid and truthful about BRICS applies to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. India and Pakistan’s memberships starting in 2017 further weakened SCO’s position. The enmity between India and Pakistan and the conflict between their interests, policies, beliefs, religions, and cultures are beyond the ability of major powers and the whole world to reconcile. India and Pakistan have engaged in three conventional wars between 1947-1965 and 1971. They were on the brink of a nuclear war in 1999 after the Kargil Crisis, another in 2008 after the Mumbai hotel crisis, and in March 2019 following the explosion crisis of an Indian soldiers’ bus in Kashmir in February 2019.
Therefore, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is incapable of political action, and it may occupy itself with resolving some minor border crises between these countries.
The SCO was founded on June 15, 2001, initially comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Later, India, Pakistan, and Iran joined. Turkey is currently awaiting formal accession, a strange occurrence since it is a NATO member joining an organization whose purposes include weakening NATO and fragmenting its dominance in the global geopolitical arena.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is characterized primarily by its security, political, and strategic aspects, unlike the BRICS group, which is dominated by economic interests among its members. Similarly, the Eurasian Union, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, is primarily concerned with customs, financial, and trade issues. One of the goals of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is to achieve security coordination among its members and to engage in political and strategic cooperation to protect their interests. However, this organization is unable to fulfill the burdens it has allocated to itself, nor does it perform the strategic global functions some analysts claim it does, and the roles attributed to it as an international pole competing with the United States in the international system by some analysts in an unfounded illusion.
The reason for the failure of this organization to assume the role of a global pole lies in the absence of an ideology that unites its members on political principles that converge in shaping similar domestic policies and establishing balanced international relations. What analysts contended about thr SCO’s capabilities would have been valid if the international relations of the members of this organization stemmed from a unified system of political principles or a shared ideology.
Scrutinizing the SCO’s policies reveals more discord among its members’ policies than harmony and more contradiction between their strategic interests than confluence. Historical animosity and religious conflict among them outweigh what brings them together.
If we overlook the wars between India and Pakistan in the second half of the twentieth century and disregard their impact on the work of this organization, we find that a nuclear war almost broke out between twice in the spring of 2019 them due to the Kashmir issue; once in February, when Indian aircraft bombed Pakistani military sites in Pakistani Kashmir, and Pakistan’s air defense shot down an Indian aircraft, capturing its pilot. India and Pakistan then mobilized their nuclear forces. Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan openly threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war against India when India suspended the constitutional provision granting the Indian-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir the right to self-rule, declared a curfew in the region, and cut off communications in August 2019. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization failed to ease the tension between them. Moreover, during the Shanghai summit in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, in June 2019, China stated that it was not the role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to resolve the Indian-Pakistani conflict.
If two members of an alliance are threatening each other with nuclear strikes, with this alliance incapable of reconciling them, can one believe the illusion that such an alliance can rival the United States and assume a global pole position? The Shanghai Cooperation Organization needs more than ever to seek reconciliation between its members, and the United States or the European Union should work to mitigate the danger between India and Pakistan and improve relations between China and India.
India developed and tested new missiles in 2019. One of the tested missiles successfully downed a target in Earth’s orbit. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s ascension into the club of countries capable of destroying satellites alongside the United States, Russia, and China. India also launched a missile carrying 24 satellites into Earth’s orbit as well as the supersonic BrahMos missile, launched from an SU30 aircraft, and which travels five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5. This provoked Pakistan and incited its anger, prompting it to respond by testing a Nasr missile with a range of 70 km and a Shaheen missile with a range of 1500 km, both capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Each side intensifies its stance against the other in international forums and accuses it of terrorism.
If that is indeed the case, then the claim that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) rivals the West and represents a security structure challenging the dominance of the United States in the world is a fallacy and a delusion that cannot be supported by sound analysis.
There is no way for the SCO to become a global structure and a pole in the international system except if it satisfies two conditions:
The first is the resolution of historical, religious, and strategic disputes and contradictions among its member countries, which may be impossible.
The second is the formulation of a common ideology that unites its member states and serves as the basis for their domestic policies and international relations, which is a much more difficult and challenging condition than the first.
If this is confirmed and becomes evident, then the notion that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is an emerging force in the international system is an empty claim. There is no benefit in an international structure or alliance that does not rely on a solid ideology to shape its policies and formulate its strategies.
[1] https://eng.icgers.com/index.php/2023/10/25/the-disintegration-of-non-ideological-alliances-brics-as-a-conspicuous-examplethe-disintegration-of-non-ideological-alliances-brics-as-a-conspicuous-example/