The SCO: towards a global dimension

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) annual meeting represents the global showcase of an alternative geopolitical bloc led by Russia and China. This ambition appears supported by the fact that SCO countries account for over 40% of the world’s population and a third of its GDP: however, since its foundation in 2000, the SCO did not achieve its strategic goals and to realise Sino-Russian economic and security aims in the Eurasian space (T. Umarov the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Is Ineffective and Irrelevant, Carnegie Politika, July 5, 2024).

In the Astana Declaration after the summit held in Kazakhstan in July, the SCO’s heads of state  declared the intention to legitimise the bloc as “one of the key multilateral organisations in a multipolar world” (The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, Astana Declaration of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, July 9, 2024, https://eng.sectsco.org/20240709/1438929.html).

Furthermore, they also decided to extend membership to Belarus, that joins the original group (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), while India, Pakistan and Iran became members respectively in 2017 and 2023. This SCO’s further enlargement emphasises the current trend of the organisation to switch from its Eurasian original dimension to a global one.

One of the drivers of this change are the strategic interests of Central Asian republics (among SCO’s founding members) that, in a regional dimension, appear neglected and often colliding with foreign policy’s agenda of the “big geopolitical players” such as Russia, China, Iran.

Central Asian states are not interested on the anti-Western rhetoric, given that they privilege a multi-vector foreign policy entailing a greater engagement with the EU and US on specific strategic goals: the promotion of the Middle Corridor, the diversification of the critical minerals’ sources, the need to attract Western investments and to enhance trade cooperation (N. Castillo, Is the SCO “Anti-NATO”? Possibly not with Its Diverse Members, Caspian Policy, July 16, 2024).

Regional counter-terrorism coordination was one of the main key concerns discussed during the meeting: the terrorist attack in Moscow in April has underlined that the threat of the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) is real, pushing all members to provide more security and preserve stability.

Only three weeks after the summit, a first joint counter-terrorism live drill in Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region was carried out by all relevant security and intelligence agencies to improve intelligence sharing and advanced command and control. In the past, military drills were held only in bilateral or multilateral form. This large-scale security exercise has been conceived to show the bloc’s readiness to tackle the resurging terrorist threats, traditionally declared a shared concern (SCO holds first joint anti-terrorism drill in China featuring all member states, Global Times, July 23, 2024).

Nevertheless, this potential security umbrella must be further implemented though other concrete initiatives, namely the enhancement of the Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) – headquartered in Tashkent – increasing its capacity of intervening in the case of armed attacks as well as envisaging the adoption of preventive strategies to thwart destabilising threats.