The recent 26th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), held in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, marks the 25th anniversary of the organisation, which purports to represent a 'Global South-led' alternative to the West-dominated international order. Chinese President Xi Jinping gave that purpose concrete expression when he unveiled a New Global Governance Initiative at the 25th SCO Summit last year. Pakistan will host the next SCO summit; in 2024 it also hosted the meeting of the organisation's heads of government.
Pakistan is one of the few, if not currently the only, SCO member nations that maintain irritant-free relations with the West, particularly the US. The Bishkek summit was held against the backdrop of the US-Iran war, which is casting a long shadow over global security and the economy. The tightening of Washington's sanctions on Tehran and its warning to third countries, notably China, to stop trading with Iran or face the music is driving up global tensions.
The Bishkek Declaration issued at the end of the summit condemned US military strikes on Iran and supported the country's right to a peaceful nuclear programme under the NPT, of which it (Iran) is a signatory. The declaration also rejected unilateral sanctions (by the US on Russia and Iran), which it said are inconsistent with the UN Charter and expressed support for multilateralism represented by the world body.
The members also expressed their commitment to combat "terrorism, separatism, and extremism", which lie at the very foundations of the SCO towards the turn of the century. The 1990s saw China's quiet economic rise; it was already a nuclear power and commanded the largest armed forces on the globe. China's rise continued into the new millennium.
Although Beijing restructured a socialist and largely closed economy into a market-oriented and open one, it put its foot down on any attempts to change its political system, in which the Communist Party holds all the aces and calls all the shots. Beyond trade, democracy and human rights, a strong American military presence in East Asia has been a major sore point between Beijing and Washington.
A glance at the map of East Asia will reveal that China is encircled by US allies, which Beijing sees as its 'proxies' in the region. China, otherwise a remarkably stable country, had to cope with one major problem in its backyard at the turn of the century, which served as the catalyst for creating the SCO: grave unrest in Xinjiang. The involvement of non-state actors from China's western Muslim-majority neighbours in the Xinjiang unrest was suspected at a time when the Taliban were at the helm in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, three important developments were taking place on the European stage. One was the eastward expansion of the European Union (EU), taking several constituent republics or allies of the former Soviet Union into its membership. A similar expansion was made by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the flagship North American-Western European security mechanism, which would later prompt Russia to invade Ukraine.
The third was Russia's resurgence under Vladimir Putin, after a painful transformation from a socialist to a quasi-market economy. Moscow had inherited most of the nuclear capability of the erstwhile USSR. Once its economy was back on track, it was keen to recover the lost Russian glory.
The US-led unipolar global order, which had come into being at the end of the cold war in the late 1980s, was beginning to show some signs of giving way to a multipolar world. It is in this context that the establishment and expansion of SCO may be seen. SCO membership spans Eastern Europe, East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East - including four nuclear powers (Russia, China, India and Pakistan).
Hence, supporting stability and security in the region and beyond remains at the forefront of SCO. The organisation was set up to ensure stability and maintain security in the enormous Eurasian region and to address challenges and threats that could engender insecurity and instability. These range from poverty and backwardness to confrontations and conflicts, and from violations of international law with regard to state sovereignty and territorial integrity to transnational organised crime and drug trafficking.
If such political and socio-economic factors underpin insecurity, the disruptive use of technologies, particularly the internet (cyberterrorism), serves as the most lethal agent of proliferation of extremism, separatism and terrorism; while drug production and trafficking bankroll these evils. A fair and balanced international order is among the SCO's watchwords. World orders are a political-cum-economic contrivance but also have cultural and civilisational underpinnings.
Therefore, a multipolar world in which no single country, bloc, political system or economic doctrine has the uncontestable claim to supremacy is far better than a unipolar international order. However, currently the SCO is neither an economic union (unlike the EU) nor a mutual security pact (unlike Nato). Therefore, given its present architecture, it doesn't constitute a security or economic bloc in its own right.