SCO: identity in crisis

ISN Security Watch

Commentary by Stephen Blank for ISN Security Watch

This year's SCO summit may turn out to be much more eventful that past summits, and may prove to be a milestone in its effort to become a new or alternative type of international organization.

As the 16 August summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, approaches, the interested parties are quite active trying to influence the eventual outcome of the meeting.

US diplomats have been actively attempting to prevent a repeat of the 2005 Astana summit that called for a withdrawal of US forces from Central Asia.

In addition, reports indicate that there have been moves, apparently inspired by Russia, to come up with an SCO document on information security for combating terrorism. Indeed, the Russian government is now claiming that it is time to move from documents and organizational moves to actual practical projects.

For its part, China has revealed that the SCO is also working on a document specifying the terms and conditions of membership and is apparently preparing to add new members.

At a recent meeting of SCO foreign ministers, Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Ednan Karabayev announced that there would be a new treaty on good-neighborliness, friendship and cooperation among members. He also echoed Russo-Chinese views that the SCO had become an influential new-type of organization based on new values and goals.

Still, it is not clear why the SCO's founding document needs to be revised and which new members will be added to it and why.

These aforementioned points illustrate the dilemma facing observers of the SCO. On the one hand its members, particularly Russia and China, call it a significant new departure in world politics and a new type of organization. On the other hand, it is difficult to see what in practice the SCO does or has done. At the same time, it seems that Moscow and Beijing have different ideas as to where the SCO is headed.

Chinese writings emphasize the SCO's political and economic component as a forum for building security and its potential to be a model for an international organization promoting a new multilateralism in Asia from which Washington would be absent.

Russia appears to emphasize the SCO's potential to be a hard security and military organization that would revolve around a Russian agenda as part of a new international solar system revolving around Moscow.

Whereas Beijing emphasizes the SCO's utility as a vehicle for coordination on soft security and economics (which includes anti-terrorist activities short of conflict), Russia apparently sees or hopes to see the organization as a military alliance in some way susceptible to its agenda.

Yet Russia's hopes of achieving this outcome have not been realized until now because of the opposition of China and the Central Asian states to a military bloc. They prefer an organization whose main purpose is anti-terrorism and economic cooperation and are ultimately suspicious of being included in any bloc, particularly one identified as being openly anti-American.

The SCO has also failed to bridge the hidden but real rivalry between Moscow and Beijing for military influence in the region. Moscow already has its own Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO),k which it seeks to promote and use as a defense alliance in Central Asia. Statements by leading Russian figures like chief of Staff General Yuri Baluyevsky strongly suggest an inclination to push the SCO into becoming a mainly military alliance. Moscow has also repeatedly pushed for NATO to recognize the CSTO and for cooperation between NATO and the SCO - but to no avail.

The SCO has also failed to overcome the hidden but real strategic rivalry for military bases and influence in Central Asia between Russia and China. Russia has reacquired or retained bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and access to the Navoi airfield in Uzbekistan during emergencies. China has sought bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan only to be opposed by Russia. Yet India has an air base collocated with Moscow's in Tajikistan, and Russia also began discussions with India in February 2006 on the possibility of enlarging the CSTO and on whether India might participate in its forums. Obviously, these policies suggest a partiality to India versus China which cannot be hidden by the SCO's platitudes.

It would appear then that Moscow wants India in the SCO as a member but may have to pay China's price, which would be membership for Pakistan. This extension of membership raises the possibility of two members of the same collective security organization who are still waging a proxy war against each other. Arguably, such an extension could only be accommodated by removing the SCO even further from a military role because it would then be hamstrung from the outset in responding to any kind of serious military or even terrorist threat.

Iran's future role in the SCO is also a serious problem for members because it would then appear as if they support Iran s nuclear program and could be called upon to defend it, e.g. against the insurgents operating inside Iran who are widely reported to be backed by Washington, or even more importantly against a direct American attack on Iran.

Certainly Iran has long argued for its membership in the SCO. This spring, Moscow deliberately fomented rumors of an impending US attack against Iran to take place on 6 April even though it had to know there were no such plans. Its motives for doing so are unclear, but they could be linked to the idea of bringing Tehran into the organization and creating another justification for taking steps to become a practical military organization. It is noteworthy that Central Asian media responded to this alarm with its own alarm that a US-Iran war would have serious reverberations throughout Central Asia and could even be a disaster for the region, not exactly what Moscow necessarily wanted to hear.

Finally, it is likely that both Moscow and Beijing have been urging Turkmenistan to forsake its previous neutrality and join the organization. Although Turkmenistan clearly wants to retain a tie to Washington, its new leadership is no less clearly committed to a more active and engaged multi-directional foreign policy and may well seize the opportunity to strengthen its regional affiliations as well as it is ties to Moscow and Beijing by joining the SCO. Doing so would formally end its neutrality, but it is unclear how Turkmen membership might modify the basic rules and conditions of membership in the organization, unless Moscow is able to turn it, as it sought to do in 2006, into an energy club. This last goal may well be another manifestation of Russia's effort to galvanize practical outcomes in the SCO especially as it is working hard to set up a gas cartel in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) under its auspices and Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan would be main producers in such a cartel.

These considerations and rivalries over the real purpose and direction of the SCO, future membership, questions about relations among Iran, India, Pakistan and other SCO members and Russian and Chinese efforts to impose their own agendas on the weaker members are all in the background of the discussions leading up to the summit in Bishkek.

If indeed there is a new treaty and some visible impetus towards more discernibly practical applications of the SCO then it might become easier for observers as well as members alike to see the real and tangible gains or consequences of this organization.

Until now the SCO has remained rather elusive in terms of its practical accomplishments other than being a forum for the discussion of issues of common concern and for Russo-Chinese efforts to use it, each in their own way, as an alternative form of international organization.

Certainly if the membership expands to include Turkmenistan, Iran, India and Pakistan, the nature of the SCO would undergo a serious qualitative change and stimulate new dynamics in the endlessly unfolding "new great game" for access and influence in Central Asia.

The outcome of this summit may also shed light on the degree to which Central Asian states can themselves set their own security agenda without depending on prior Russo-Chinese efforts to determine the course of events in Central Asia.

They certainly hope for more freedom of action than Moscow or Beijing are inclined to grant them and would probably be more loath to directly confront the West. Indeed, Tajikistan recently called on NATO to defend its border with Afghanistan, clearly a sign of mounting unease about the situation there. And Kazakhstan certainly wants to retain good ties with Washington.

As such, this year's SCO summit may turn out to be much more eventful that past summits, and may prove to be a milestone in its effort to become a new or alternative type of international organization.