ABSTRACT
Of all the regional organizations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is in a category of its own. It is unlike any other organization-for example, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) or the African Union (AU) or the European Union (EU). It seeks to promote regional economic and security cooperation in Central Asia but is named after a city located on the Pacific Ocean rim, has its headquarters in Beijing, is mostly dominated and led by two great powers (China and Russia), and more importantly, it regularly conducts military exercises not unlike those of collective defense alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Obviously, the SCO belongs to a different breed of multilateral organizations. The six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was founded by China and
Russia on 15 June 2001 (comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan). It is successor to the Shanghai Five grouping put together in 1996 which had clear criteria for membership-all its members shared a (disputed) border with China. It was set up to resolve China’s outstanding border disputes with the four former Soviet republics (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan). Having accomplished this task, the Shanghai Five accepted a new member, Uzbekistan, at its June 2001 meeting in Beijing, and agreed to rechristen itself as Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In June 2002, the heads of SCO member states met in St. Petersburg and signed the SCOCharter, which expounded the SCO purposes and principles, organizational structure, form of operation, cooperation, orientation and external relations. At its inception, the stated aims of the SCO were to combat the “three evils” of terrorism,
separatism, and extremism, as well as to promote various forms of cooperation among the member-states. The broader context was China’s troubled relations with the Uyghur Muslim minority which paralleled Russia’s troubles in Chechnya and Central Asian republics’ (CARs) own relations with restive Islamic communities. Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan all cast militant Islam as their main enemy. In November 2002, an antiterrorism center was established in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, with a secretariat in Beijing. Over the last decade, the SCO has slowly expanded its reach beyond counterterrorism into regional defense, energy and economic cooperation, and cultural fields. The SCO Six were later joined by Mongolia (2004) and India, Iran, and Pakistan (2005) as observers. Russia and China remain the leading actors of the SCO. In terms of total population, area and resources, the SCO dwarfs other regional orga-
nizations. Its member states cover an area of over 30 million square kilometers, or almost three fifths of the Eurasian landmass with a population of 1.5 billion, about a quarter of the world’s total. Along with members Russia and China, the observers India and
Pakistan bring together in the SCO four nuclear weapons states. In addition, the Chinese and Russian armed forces are amongst the three largest armed forces in the world. The SCO also includes four large energy producers (Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan) and two major energy consumers (China and India). Initially derided as yet another inconsequential “talk shop” of countries with conflict-
ing interests, the SCO has come to mean different things to different people following its evolution into a formidable forum with considerable weight. For some, it is a new “energy cartel” with more than 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas resources. To others, it is “an anti-US alliance” (dubbed “NATO of the East”) propped up by the Chinese and Russians. Many see it as “an autocrats’ club”whose leaders fear their own people more than external forces.2 This chapter will first examine the interests and roles of SCO members and observers and then analyze the problems and prospects of the SCO’s emergence as a military alliance, as an energy cartel, and other related issues.
