19 July 2022 – The Hindu

Editorial Analysis à 19 July 2022 à The Hindu

Shanghai Cooperation Organization

SCO, what is it?

• A permanent intergovernmental international organisation is the SCO.
• It is a political, economic, and military organisation with Eurasian roots that works to uphold stability, peace, and security in the area.
• It was started in the year 2001.
• The SCO Charter was adopted in 2003 after being ratified in 2002. It is a legal document that outlines the organization’s objectives, guiding principles, organisational structure, and main functions.
• Chinese and Russian are the two official languages of the SCO.
• Its main office is in Beijing, China.

Members of SCO:

• The Shanghai Five, which included Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, existed prior to the establishment of the SCO in 2001.
• After several boundary demarcation and demilitarisation negotiations between China and the four former Soviet republics to promote stability along the borders, the Shanghai Five was established in 1996.
• The Shanghai Five became the SCO after Uzbekistan joined the organisation in 2001.
• India and Pakistan were admitted as full members in 2017.

Members include:

• China
• Russia
• Tajikistan
• Uzbekistan
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan
• India
• Pakistan

Observers include:

• Afghanistan
• Belarus
• Iran
• Mangolia

Dialogue Partners include:

• Azerbaijan
• Armenia
• Cambodia
• Nepal
• Turkey

What goals does SCO hope to achieve?

• to promote goodwill and mutual trust among the member states.
• to encourage productive collaboration in politics, business and the economy, science and technology, and culture.
• to strengthen connections in areas such as tourism, energy, transportation, and environmental protection.
• to uphold and guarantee regional peace, security, and stability.
• to establish a new, logical, democratic, and equitable international political and economic system.

What are the SCO’s founding principles?

• The SCO’s internal policy is founded on the values of equality, mutual benefit, mutual trust, tolerance for cultural diversity, and a desire for shared progress.
• The SCO’s foreign policy adheres to the values of openness, non-alignment, and non-targeting of any third parties.

What does the SCO’s structure look like?

• The SCO’s governing body, the Heads of State Council, decides how the organisation will operate internally, interact with other States and international organisations, and take into account global challenges.
• The Heads of Government Council approves the budget and deliberates on matters relating to economic interactions within the SCO.
• Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs — Examines daily operations-related topics.
• To combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism, the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) was established.
• Beijing-based SCO Secretariat provides organisational, analytical, and informational support.

What benefits does SCO offer?

Coverage:

• The SCO is the largest regional organisation in the world, comprising 22% of the world’s land area, 25% of the global GDP, and 40% of the world’s people.
• Because of its geographic importance, the SCO plays a strategically vital role in Asia. This enables the SCO to govern Central Asia and limit American influence in the region. In addition, the SCO is seen as a balance to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Equal partnerships: It is believed to be the first time in history that unbalanced, multi-scale states with various economic, political, cultural, and civilizational traits have been brought together in an equal partnership through:

• voluntary participation
• participant equality
• a paradigm of decision-making based on consensus.
• Driving principle: The SCO’s guiding principle is to place a priority on harmony, consensus-based decision-making, respect for other cultures, non-interference in other people’s internal affairs, and non-alignment.
• Fair structure for the coming world order: Due to current global trends, rising geopolitical tensions, and the complexity of threats and problems, we must work together to create a more equitable and polycentric model of the world order. SCO fits these requirements.
• Defend against extremism, secessionism, and terrorism
• When it came to battling terrorism, separatism, and extremism, the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) had notable success.
• Joint anti-terrorism exercises are carried out by law enforcement and the armed forces to enhance practical skills.
• The SCO’s campaign against the use of the Internet for terrorism and extremism is one of its key initiatives. The RATS SCO has stopped 360 people from engaging in terrorism and religious extremism-related online actions over the previous few years, and it has banned access to 80,000 Internet resources with 500,000 items.

Contribution to international drug-control efforts:

• Around 40% of the heroin and marijuana that was found in Eurasia during the previous few years has been seized by the competent authorities of SCO member states.
• Afghanistan’s stability: The SCO’s international agenda includes a number of concerns, including the restoration of peace and stability in Afghanistan.
• In addition to assisting the negotiation process, member nations also give Afghanistan important material and technical support, notably with regard to building railways and other forms of infrastructure.
• Hundreds of Afghan students also attend universities in member countries.

Examine the potential for the economy:

• The SCO Charter calls for the promotion of regional social, cultural, and economic development that is both comprehensive and balanced.
• Thus, a 20-year Programme of Multilateral Trade and Economic Cooperation for the establishment of a free trade zone inside the region governed by SCO member states was signed by SCO member states in 2003.
• With the potential to increase the use of national currencies in trade and investment operations, the organisation has recently prioritised areas such as transportation, energy, e-commerce, information and communication technology, tourism, agriculture, banking, and finance.
• The importance of cooperating within the SCO framework is made evident in light of the bad state of the global economy and the rise of protectionism on a worldwide scale.

What are SCO’s shortcomings?

• The SCO has so far gotten away with making assertions about its main purpose that are unclear.
• The 2010 revolution in Kyrgyzstan, which resulted in violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan, serves as the finest illustration of the wording’s ambiguity.
• Despite the Kyrgyz government’s requests for Chinese and Russian assistance, the organisation only made general statements calling for the stability to be maintained.
• The SCO’s brief history and the necessity for its member countries to first “grow into” the organisation served to largely justify this.
• Now that the SCO has allegedly matured, it is imperative for the organisation to take a more forceful stance in its area of expertise—improving the security situation in the region.

What problems does SCO face today?

• Combating terrorism, extremism, and separatism, as well as trafficking in drugs and weapons, illegal immigration, and other security threats, are among the primary difficulties facing the SCO.
• Making Decisions: SCO decision-making is made more difficult by the members’ great diversity in history, backgrounds, languages, national interests, forms of government, wealth, and culture despite their proximity geographically.

Why were Pakistan and India given full membership?

• China’s viewpoint The fact that China is the main actor in the group and wants to demonstrate to the rest of the world its strength and capacity to lead an international organisation is a major factor in its decision to accept India and Pakistan as full members.
• SCO’s viewpoint By including India and Pakistan, the SCO has assisted China in transforming the organisation from a grouping that was largely ignored outside of the region into the largest regional organisation in terms of both population and geographic coverage, with a gross domestic product that accounts for about 25% of the global total.
• As a result, the expansion has greatly increased the SCO’s international reputation and helped China succeed within the organisation.

What does India’s membership in the SCO mean?

• India’s SCO membership may aid in promoting connectivity and stability across borders, as well as regional integration.

Security:

• India may strengthen its counterterrorism capabilities with RATS’ assistance by focusing on intelligence sharing, law enforcement, and the development of best practises and technologies.
• India can combat the spread of small guns and drug trafficking with the assistance of the SCO.
• cooperation when it comes to tackling the shared problems of terrorism and radicalization.

Energy:

• India, a country with expanding energy demands and an energy deficit, has a chance to use regional diplomacy to meet its energy needs thanks to the SCO.
• The SCO can provide much-needed momentum for discussions on the construction of pipeline projects that have stalled, such as the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline and IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) pipeline.

Trade:

• Direct access to Central Asia is made possible by the SCO, which removes a significant barrier to the expansion of trade between India and Central Asia.
• India receives a market from Central Asian countries for its IT, telecommunications, banking, finance, and pharmaceutical companies.

Foreign Affairs:

• India’s extended neighbourhood includes Central Asia, and the SCO gives India the chance to pursue its “Connect Central Asian Policy.”
• It enables India to realise its aim to take an active part in its wider neighbourhood and to balance out China’s expanding sway in Eurasia.
• It provides a forum for India to interact with both its adversaries and its ally, Russia (China and Pakistan).

What are India’s SCO Membership Challenges?

• Pakistan: India may encounter obstacles in achieving its objectives as a result of Pakistan’s inclusion in the SCO.
• India may have to play a subsidiary or subordinate role because China and Russia are both co-founders of the SCO and its leading powers, which would limit India’s capacity to express itself.
• West partnership: Given that the SCO has historically had an anti-Western stance, India may also need to either scale back its growing partnership with the West or engage in diplomatic negotiations in a sensitive and balanced manner.

The Kashmir issue and terrorism:

• One of the main goals of the SCO is to combat terrorism, extremism, and separatism.
• China may talk the talk, but it is unlikely to exert any actual or implied pressure on Pakistan to stop aiding separatist in Kashmir and cross-border terrorism.
• The SCO may be used by China to encourage India to talk to and negotiate with Pakistan on Kashmir in the name of the “good neighbourliness” that the SCO intends to foster regionally. This would be a worsening of the situation.
• Moscow is unlikely to support India in the Kashmir dispute, as it formerly did, given that it is now closer to China and Pakistan.

Fostering connection:

• The promotion of connectivity and regional integration throughout Eurasia is another priority for the SCO. Any possibility that this could benefit India currently seems remote.
• The group serves as the security guarantor for the Belt and Road programme, and all SCO members are involved in it.
• India, however, has declined to take part in the BRI since Beijing’s economic, political, and geopolitical goals are all at odds with India’s territorial sovereignty and regional dominance in South Asia and the Indian Ocean.

Way ahead:

• If SCO members truly want to claim the organization’s status as an effective international institution, they must do more than simply make vague assertions.
• SCO must approach its new obligations with seriousness. To reduce tensions between India and Pakistan, a plan must be developed. By doing this, the SCO will be able to maintain its existence and gain recognition on a global scale.
• One strategy would be to create a temporary Contact Group, comparable to the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, as a tool for mediation. To facilitate the resolution of the concerns between the Indian and Pakistani members, the committee can include one person from each of the member states.
• However, no decisions in the SCO should appear to put undue pressure on either side.
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• India should remind the region that China is a party to India’s territorial issues in Kashmir and is an ally of Pakistan in order to deter Pakistan and China from surprising Delhi on the Kashmir issue at the SCO summits. The SCO charter, which forbids the bringing up of bilateral problems, should be India’s only guide.
• India must also seize the few diplomatic chances the SCO may offer in order to step up its relations with Central Asian nations.
• India needs to get ready to take advantage of any long-term changes in SCO politics.
• China and Russia are ready to reach separate bilateral agreements with Trump even as they discuss “multipolarity.”
• In Central Asia, Russian and Chinese objectives might not entirely coincide.
• It should endeavour to gain by retaining a regional presence in the interim, monitoring regional trends in connectivity, trade, energy, security, and cultural interests.
• India should take advantage of the SCO environment to forge stronger ties with China and Russia while lessening the intensity of China’s alignment with Pakistan, which actually hinders India’s direct access to Eurasia.