As U.S. President Joe Biden prepared to celebrate Independence Day in Washington, D.C., Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun hosting a virtual summit alongside his counterparts from China, Russia, Pakistan and several other nations to sign new deals in line with a growing bloc of non-Western powers.
In comments shared with Newsweek, the press office of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Secretariat outlined the group’s aspirations and what is to be expected from the Heads of State Council (HSC) gathering Tuesday, including securing Iran’s membership and extending a pathway for Belarus to join as well.
“The SCO Summit is a platform for demonstrating the common aspirations of member states and putting forward much needed initiatives,” the press office said, “a platform that is becoming increasingly necessary at a time of global political turbulence and the rise of devastating threats and challenges.”
The meeting is being held under the theme of SECURE, an acronym devised by Modi to incorporate the tenets of security, economy and trade, connectivity, unity, respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and the environment. The eight SCO leaders, who also include the heads of the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, are expected to sign 14 documents on initiatives ranging from counterterrorism to digital cooperation.
Also on the agenda, according to the press office, will be “an in-depth discussion on measures to combat contemporary challenges and threats” along with mechanisms to expand the SCO, which has witnessed an uptick in interest in recent years as more nations sought to fortify multilateral cooperation outside of forums traditionally dominated by the United States and its allies.
Despite the bloc’s expanding membership, however, which now represents around 44 percent of the world’s population, members and affiliates of the SCO are far from aligned in their broader geopolitical interests. A number of associated states are engaged in deep-rooted feuds that have long raised concerns about the group’s cohesiveness and effectiveness to act as a collective.
In particular, Russian President Vladimir Putin, who made his first virtual international appearance Tuesday since the abortive Wagner Group rebellion late last month, has touted the SCO as a tool to brandish non-Western perspectives on issues such as the war in Ukraine, a matter in which there is no consensus among SCO member states.
And yet Moscow’s role in the creation of the SCO has been formative and the organization has matured as Russia’s ties with China have intensified.
The origins of the SCO can be traced back to April 1996 when China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan formed the Shanghai Five to resolve post-Cold War border tensions and enhance economic, military and security cooperation. Five years later, in June 2001, these five nations were joined by Uzbekistan in establishing the SCO to accelerate these efforts in a new format as Beijing and Moscow prepared to ink their still-touted bilateral Friendship Treaty the following month.
The SCO continued to develop new cooperation mechanisms over the years and began to attract new interest. Nuclear-armed South Asian rivals India and Pakistan signed on in 2015 and became full members in 2017, marking the latest such accessions to date.
The SCO would also amass a number of observer states, including Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran and Mongolia, as well as an array of dialogue partners such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran’s bid to become the ninth full-fledged SCO member state has gained particular international attention as Tehran looked to strengthen relations with Beijing, Moscow and other regional powers in the face of an unwavering sanctions campaign by Washington over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
The SCO Secretariat Press Office told Newsweek that “the procedures for the Islamic Republic of Iran to join the Organization as a member state are to be finalized” at the leaders’ summit.
“We face the important task of promptly involving Iran in all cooperation mechanisms,” the press office said.
The move came as Saudi Arabia recently approved its own SCO dialogue partner status in the wake of a China-brokered deal for the resumption of diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran in March. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia have additionally applied to join the BRICS economic coalition, which also includes China, India and Russia, as well as Brazil and South Africa.
The SCO Secretariat Press Office said the organization was fundamentally “open-ended” and that, “at present, there are 11 West Asian countries that are members of the Organization in one format or another, and other Middle Eastern countries have repeatedly expressed their interest in cooperation with the SCO.”
And as Iran neared the finish line in its aspirations for achieving full SCO membership, Russia’s close Eastern European ally Belarus was also expected to advance down the same path at the gathering.
“Signing a memorandum of commitment of the Republic of Belarus to become a member state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is also planned during the HSC meeting,” the press office said. “Minsk has moved one step closer to joining the Organization as a member state. We expect that all the legal procedures will be completed in the near future.”
Belarus’ progression came as the nation became increasingly mired in Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine. Nearly a year and a half after allowing Russian troops to launch an attack from Belarusian territory into Ukraine in February 2022, President Alexander Lukashenko played a mediating role in halting an attempted armed mutiny launched late last month by Russian private military company Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin within Russia itself.
Despite this geopolitical strife, the press office said the SCO has only grown more popular among nations across continents. In addition to Belarus and Iran, other invitees to the summit include the heads of fellow SCO observer state Mongolia and frequent guest Turkmenistan, as well as the leaders of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
“The fact that the SCO is widely recognized by Euro-Asian states proves once again the effectiveness of the Organization and its international appeal,” the press office said. “An increasing number of countries see the SCO as a viable mechanism for multilateral diplomacy, for joint work on common challenges and threats to ensure security and stability in the SCO region.”
Still, differing views among SCO members, observer states and dialogue partners continue to stoke a degree of international skepticism toward the future of the bloc.
But the SCO Secretariat Press Office argued that the bloc was well-suited to overcome these disputes in order to work toward common goals. The press office stated that “we have not developed a mechanism to resolve disagreements and disputes between member states” as “all SCO member states follow the principles of the Shanghai Spirit, in particular the principles of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and respect, which helps create a favorable atmosphere for cooperation.”
So far, India’s first-ever presidency has appeared to support this ideal as the in-person SCO Foreign Ministers’ Council held in May saw the first travel by a top Pakistani diplomat to India in 12 years amid lingering border hostilities, along with the attendance of China’s foreign minister at a time when Beijing and New Delhi’s own territorial dispute was fueling high-stakes tensions.
India has also maintained a longstanding partnership with Russia despite New Delhi’s growing relationship with Washington, which has called on countries to isolate Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine. Modi returned less than two weeks ago from meeting Biden in Washington, D.C., where he strengthened U.S.-India ties while at the same time maintaining a policy of strategic autonomy that included building relations across Eurasia as well.
The SCO Secretariat Press Office noted that India’s presidency has been marked by “a period of intense activity,” including some 134 meetings at various levels since September last year.
“The SCO member states are committed to making the SCO region a peaceful, sustainable, prosperous and harmonious region,” the press office said. “To achieve this ambitious goal, all member states, taking into account the peculiarities and differences of each country, seek common ground and strive to understand each other in order to find a link and create a space of friendship and trust.”
“Just as there are differences and contradictions between people, so there are differences and contradictions between member states,” the press office added. “The basic rule of the SCO family is not to bring bilateral contradictions into the organization.”
Source : Newsweek
