What India gains from Shanghai Corporation Organisation

India's membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) agreed to at the Ufa summit in Russia on July 9/10, but to be implemented sometime next year, should be welcomed, but also put in perspective.

The motive force behind the SCO, headquartered in Shanghai, is China. It is China’s spectacular economic rise and the huge financial resources at its disposal that give it a dominant role in shaping the organisation’s agenda.

Already, China has linked the energy resources of Central Asia, as well as Russia itself, to its economy. The One Belt initiative, intended to link China to Europe through Eurasia, is China’s answer to the US pivot towards Asia.

If the US aims to constrict Chinese power in the east, China’s strategy is to move westwards and bring Eurasia into its economic orbit. It has set aside $40 billion for connectivity projects in the region, to be built cooperatively for trade and investment gains. In the process, China will find the desperately needed outlets for its over-capacities in several sectors. Instead of creating political allies, China is forging economic partnerships first, and once having built Chinacentric connectivities in Asia, it will achieve its great power goals.

China’s rise

Russia has hitherto dominated the Eurasian space. With NATO/EU’s relentless expansion into the former Soviet space, Russia has been voicing for some years its Eurasian identity and referring to a “multi-vectored” foreign policy that takes into account its Asian geography and strategic interests in the east. The extraordinarily rapid rise of China has introduced an unanticipated dimension in Russia’s Eurasian policy. Whereas Russia intended to dominate the Eurasian space, China’s new Eurasian thrust changes the scenario. (The Ukrainian crisis has administered a further blow to Russia’s Eurasian Union project intended to create a common economic space encompassing key countries in the erstwhile Soviet space.)

China, for all its problems in the western Pacific, is the largest trade partner of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, not to mention the US. With its economic partnerships in the east flourishing, China has steadily extended its economic arm westwards, first towards Central Asia, and then towards Russia. It has become a much larger trading partner of the Central Asian states than Russia, creating, as a result, a new balance between Russian and Chinese influence in the region. The Central Asian states have been historically suspicious of China. Its brutal policies in East Turkestan (Sinkiang), which is the base for China’s extension into Central Asia, should normally have been a negative factor in its ties with Central Asia, but this is apparently not so. The consolidation of China-Central Asia relations, therefore, absolves indirectly China’s ruthless policies in restive East Turkestan.

That China could all these years insist that Pakistan must have membership along with India is evidence of China’s weight in SCO and Russia’s compulsion to accommodate its political preferences. The Central Asian states have been concerned about the spillover of religious extremism from Pakistan and Afghanistan into their countries and destroying their secular fabric. Pakistan’s role in promoting terrorism and its backing of the Taliban have for long been a consideration for Russia in opposing Pakistan’s membership, as it too has shared these concerns, more so because of the situation in northern Caucasus.

Russia’s adjustment

The sharp deterioration of Russia-US/EU relations, the sanctions imposed on Russia, and the revival of a Cold Warlike atmosphere have pushed Russia into a closer strategic embrace of China politically, economically and militarily.

This has had an impact on Russia-Pakistan relations, with Russia reaching out even militarily to the latter, even though, empirically speaking, Pakistan is becoming more radicalised within, jihadi ideologies in the country are not under control, and Pakistan’s support for the Taliban will continue for strategic reasons. Russia seems ready to adjust its policies towards Pakistan as part of closer strategic ties with China.

India's chance

The latter’s readiness to be a bridge between the Afghanistan government and the Taliban has also played in favour of Pakistan’s SCO membership. Indeed, on the sensitive Taliban issue, the Afghan, American and Chinese governments have aligned their policies, and Russia is not taking a discordant position. Pakistan’s entry would also make sense in the context of China’s One Belt One Road project and the linked China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

India’s entry into the SCO has come when the strategic balance in the Central Asian region has moved in China’s favour. The China-Pakistan nexus has become stronger and so has the Russia-China relationship, with consequences for our role in Central Asia.

On the positive side, however, India’s legitimate interests in Central Asia have been recognised despite Pakistan’s obstructionism, and India now has a platform for influencing the SCO’s agenda in some measure.