THE SCO AND THE WEST
Abstract
The world community is showing an ever-mounting interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which appeared in 2001 on the basis of the Shanghai Five. The United States (and the other NATO members for that matter) is apprehensive of China’s stronger regional profile and the SCO’s possible anti-Western vector for the simple reason that the Western political and academic community knows next to nothing about the new structure and the negotiations inside it. These fears do nothing for the relations between the SCO members and the West, where a large number of skeptical (at best) or even negative assessments have cropped up in numerous articles.
The relations between the West and SCO are developing under the impact of the bilateral relations between the United States and individual SCO members and their rivaling interests in many regions, Central Asia in particular. This means that future cooperation among the interstate security structures present in the region depends on whether the West revises its SCO policy and whether the SCO members (Russia and China in particular) reciprocate.
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Not infrequently, Western analysts regard the SCO as an eastern alternative to NATO (see, for example: [http://www.
nfoshos.ru/ru/?idn=330]).
It should be said that the West will not object to India’s SCO membership because of its good relations with the United States and the other Western countries. China will object to its membership if Pakistan is left outside the SCO: Bei-jing’s relations with Delhi are too complicated.
See: “Uverennaya postup Vostoka vyzyvaet drozh u Zapada,” 18 August, 2007, available at [http://www.
ergananews.com/article.php?id=5292].
[http://www.centrasia.ru/newsA.php?st=1120666800].
For more detail, see: I. Safranchuk, “The Competition for Security Roles in Central Asia,” Russia in Global Politics, Vol. 6, No. 1, January-March 2008.
Sun Zhuangzhi, “The SCO Cannot Become a Military Union,” 24 November, 2010 (in Chinese), available at [http://news.163.com/10/1124/17/6M97CJE900014JB6.html].
A.V. Lukin, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: What Next?” Russia in Global Politics, No. 2, July-Septem-ber 2007.
See: Pang Guang, “Corrections of the U.S. Central Asian Policy and Starr’s Greater Central Asia Project,” The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (in Chinese), available at [http://www.coscos.org.cn/200806022.htm].
“Robert Blake: SShA ne stremyatsya k chlenstvu v ShOS,” available at [http://www.newsland.ru/News/Detail/id/57728/cat/94/].
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