China and Russia have taken the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation beyond its original mission. This could make some members more willing to cooperate with the EU.
Belarus’s upcoming admission to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) shows that the once purely regional grouping – originally composed of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – is expanding its geographic and geopolitical reach. Following India and Pakistan in 2017 and Iran in 2023, Belarus will be the first purely European country to join. What began as a Central Asian forum focused on regional security cooperation will have evolved into a diverse 10-member club with ever-broader global ambitions.
The SCO’s shift in direction reflects the evolving interests of China and Russia. As founding members, they were the driving forces behind the creation of a platform for regional security and economic cooperation, and 23 years later, they are willing to partly sacrifice that role in order to increase the SCO’s international weight: its members now account for about 25% of global economic output and half of its population, making it useful for the geopolitical goals of Moscow and Beijing.
Although Russia’s interest in the China-created organisation was initially ambiguous, Moscow began to take the SCO more seriously following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent Western sanctions. Since its invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, it has had to quickly seek partners outside Europe. The Kremlin now sees the SCO as a useful forum for building support and countering Western claims of its international isolation, and has adopted a “the more the merrier” approach to membership.
China initially failed to build closer economic ties alongside security cooperation. By the mid-2010s, it was using forums such as the Belt and Road Initiative and later the China-Central Asia Summitto promote closer regional cooperation. However, once its position as a major power had been consolidated, China embraced the SCO as an alternative to US-led institutions and as a forum in which to present itself as the champion of the Global South.
Increase the geopolitical presence of the organization
With the addition of South Asian heavyweights India and Pakistan in 2017, the SCO bid to increase its visibility on the world stage, while accepting the risk that decades of tensions between India and Pakistan would undermine its core mandate of security cooperation. Regardless of this shortcoming, the addition of two major regional powers that were also nuclear states promised to bring more legitimacy to the organization. Accepting India as the first unquestionably democratic member country would help counter the Western image of the SCO as a “democratic” state.club of dictators”.
Iran’s accession made more sense in terms of organizational effectiveness. Tehran was the natural choice to prevent drug trafficking and political instability from spilling over from neighboring Afghanistan, and it promised to improve trade ties through its Chabahar port in the Gulf of Oman. But Iran also further blurred the SCO’s regional focus and damaged any global legitimacy the organisation had gained by admitting India: several SCO members had long refused to consider Iran’s application for full membership, submitted as early as 2008.
But in 2015, Russia and China joined the United States and Europe in signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, under which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. After the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, antagonism toward the United States brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together. Tehran’s accession in 2023 showed that the SCO no longer cared whether the West viewed it as friend or foe.
Belarus’ accession to the SCO summit in Astana (Kazakhstan) will seal the transformation of the SCO into a geopolitical bloc in the centre of an increasingly harsh global confrontation between the United States and its allies on the one hand, and China, Russia and their partners on the other. As the first exclusively European member, Belarus expands the reach of the SCO from Central, South and West Asia; adds an important ally of Russia and a “strategic partner“and strengthens the SCO as a counterweight to Western organizations.
Choosing between China and the US
SCO enlargement now appears to be focused on forming a coalition that supports China and Russia’s ambition to establish a world order not dominated by the West. But Minsk’s interests in the SCO may not be just geostrategic. Trade with the other members will be a welcome alternative to ties with Europe, given EU sanctions for supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. Given its weak economy, Belarus stands to gain more from SCO membership than the other members would from Minsk’s addition.
The next steps of the SCO will be crucial. Will it focus on consolidating relations between its members, close partners China and Russia who share its vision of a “multipolar world order”? but who also want to reap the rewards of economic collaboration? Or will expansion become the new normal, as the SCO brings together as many countries as possible to establish itself as the voice of the Global South? The organisation’s so-called dialogue partners currently include, among others, Bahrain, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Maldives, Nepal and Qatar.
Since the SCO requires consensus, the organization is unlikely to rush to add more countries. Some SCO states are not interested in having to choose between loyalty to Russia and China and relations with the United States. Kazakhstan, for example, has refused to openly support the war of Russia against Ukraine. Its multi-vector foreign policy This should make it reluctant to turn the SCO from a tool for resolving regional issues into a geopolitical one.
Enlargement has raised the profile of the SCO and put it at a crossroads: international visibility has been accompanied by a loss of regional relevance. This presents an opportunity for the EU to increase its engagement with Central Asia. Diplomatic and economic have increased in recent years: 42% of the accumulated foreign direct investment in the region comes from the EU. Although the Union cannot act as an alternative to the original regional mandate of the SCO, it can leverage its position to offer more attractive partnerships focused on cooperation.
A longer version of this commentary was posted on the website of The Diplomat on July 1, 2024. Article translated from English from the website of MERICS.
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