THE clue is in the name. The Shanghai
Co-operation Organisation (SCO) groups six countries—China, Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan—and aims to be the dominant
security institution in its region; but its origin and purposes are largely
Chinese. So it looks rather worrying from a Western point of view that the
group has agreed to expand and that India, Pakistan and Iran are all keen to
join: the rise of a kind of China-led NATO to which even America’s friends,
such as India and Pakistan, seem drawn. Yet that is to misunderstand the sort
of organisation the SCO aspires to be. It does indeed pose a challenge to the
American-led world order, but a much more subtle one.
On September
11th and 12th the SCO held its 14th annual summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s
capital. It agreed to adopt procedures for expansion, first for those countries
that are already observers. India and Pakistan are likely to join in the next
year. Iran is at present disqualified because it is under UN sanctions. Another
observer, Mongolia, is a democracy and has long had qualms about joining what
looks like a club for authoritarians. Afghanistan, the final observer, has
other priorities.
The SCO summit
came hot on the heels of one held by NATO, in Wales. This gave columnists in
China and Russia the chance to tut-tut about the “20th-century” or “cold war”
or “confrontational” mentality that animates NATO, and to boast about what
makes the SCO different from what Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has
called such “relics of a past era”, with the rigid discipline imposed by
particular blocs of countries.
In August the
SCO held its largest joint military exercises yet, an anti-terrorist drill in
Inner Mongolia in China involving more than 7,000 personnel. The SCO’s
boosters, however, insist it is not an alliance, like NATO, but a
“partnership”, with no adversary in mind. That is not entirely true. It has
always been explicitly directed against three enemies, even if they are only
abstract nouns: the “three evil forces” of terrorism, separatism and extremism.
China, in Xinjiang; Russia, in Chechnya; the Central Asian members, in the
Ferghana Valley and on their borders with Afghanistan. All SCO members face a
threat from Islamist extremism.
Hence the plea
in Dushanbe from Xi Jinping, China’s president, that the SCO should “focus on
combating religion-involved extremism and internet terrorism”. China’s problems
with violent extremism from ethnic-Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang have worsened
recently. Uighur militants have committed terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and
other parts of China. They have also been fighting for jihadist groups
elsewhere—in the tribal areas of Pakistan, for example. And reports suggest
some have joined Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. This month four Uighurs
with alleged IS links were detained on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
These men had
left China by way of South-East Asia. One of China’s successes in Central Asia
in recent years has been to secure the co-operation of local authorities in
deporting illegal migrants—meaning mainly Uighurs with a grudge—so more are
finding their way out through Laos and Thailand. That success, however, is
probably more the result of China’s growing presence and commercial clout in
the region, and the rendition agreements they have bought, rather than a
tribute to the influence of the SCO itself. The same goes for the economic
goals China has set the SCO. The countries it covers are on the “New Silk Road”
Mr Xi advertises. But it is bilateral deals that will build the dream, not
communiqués from an SCO summit.
Viewed like
this, not as a regional security bloc but as a rather ineffectual effort at
combating cross-border terrorism and boosting other links, the SCO seem less
threatening. Its appeal to India and Pakistan also seems more obvious,
especially as NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan opens up new uncertainties in
the region. Membership incurs few costs and may have some benefits. India, for
instance, is courted both by China—Mr Xi paid a much-trumpeted visit this
week—and America. SCO membership would be a useful way for India to flaunt its
independent foreign policy and its refusal to be drawn into an anti-China bloc.
For China,
however, and even more so Russia, the accession of India and Pakistan would be
a mixed blessing. The SCO would look less like a self-absorbed club focused on
Central Asia, and it would gain real global heft. However, as other regional
groupings have found, expansion would inevitably be at the expense of the SCO’s
cohesion. India, even under the leadership of a strongman like Narendra Modi,
would not sit comfortably in an authoritarian club. The SCO would be able to do
even less than it has so far.
Building brics
In fact, even
Russia and China seem unsure about how important they want the SCO to be. Four
SCO members also belong to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty
Organisation. Russia is also hoping its Eurasian Union with Belarus and
Kazakhstan can expand. And China has started lavishing attention on another
organisation, the leadenly named Conference on Interaction and
Confidence-Building Measures in Asia, or CICA.
But to note the
potential conflicts among the different multilateral organisations China is
promoting may be to miss the point. America’s leading role in Asia is based on
a number of bilateral security treaties and a plethora of inclusive
multilateral institutions, all open to Chinese membership. China itself is
building all sorts of institutions: the SCO, CICA, the “BRICS” (grouping China
with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa), a Trilateral Commission (at
present languishing) with South Korea and Japan and a Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership. Their shared characteristics are that China has a big and
sometimes dominant role and that the United States is not a member—and indeed
was rebuffed when it sought to join the SCO as an observer. China is not just
challenging the existing world order. Slowly, messily and, apparently with no
clear end in view, it is building a new one.
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