The Shanghai Competition Organization?
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki officially requested entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization this March 27. The move was sponsored by Tajikistan’s President, Emomali Rahmon.
Iran’s request and possible ascension into the SCO needs greater analysis: What are their chances for becoming an official member? How does it benefit Iran? How would it benefit/hurt China, Russia, and the Central Asian States? What would it’s membership mean to gas/energy dealings in the region/world? But before we will have this discussion, I want to first explore the SCO itself. What kind of organization is it anyway?
The February issue of Petroleum Economist (PE) contains one of the latest entries into the debate about the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) objectives and capabilities in Central Asia. Told in the back drop of SCO joint military maneuvers last August, the PE editors accurately describe an organization that is increasing its capabilities in the Central Asian region, but also one that continually fails to grow into a cohesive military/political heavyweight.
The SCO has indeed led to greater cooperation between Russia, China, and its four Central Asian members, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, specifically in regards to regional political stability, terrorism, trade, electricity, and as this article describes in detail, energy. However, though SCO member states have made many steps toward cooperation, state-to-state competition is still the main driver of relations in the region. Bilateralism, not multilateral cooperation, between individual SCO states has been the norm. For example, though the SCO created an Energy Club and its members have signed a multitude of oil and gas pipeline deals, its member’s specific energy interests are in many ways contradictory and have not been shown to be easily resolvable. Russia and China are competing for energy deals in the region, with China desiring pipelines to the east and Russia the north, and the CA states have used their strategic resources to play one Great Power off another, with Kazakhstan being the most successful.
The SCO, an organization that many experts have continually underestimated, has made great strides in furthering cooperation in the region and it is a multilateral group that must be carefully watched by all nations in the world, especially the US. For it is true that the organization’s true ambitions remain cloudy and its capabilities are continually debated. What are the SCO’s real intentions? Is it beneficial for the Central Asian states or are China and Russia using it to rob them blind and control their governments? Can the organization become another NATO?
Here are two contrasting views of the SCO’s intentions and capabilities:
Stephen Blank’s China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at Five
Yu Bin Central Asia Between Competition and Cooperation