Stronger multipolarity elusive in SCO

INDIA hosted the eight-member Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit on July 4 in the virtual mode, with the leaders making prepared statements. The bear hugs and handshakes were missing and this was expected, given the fact that New Delhi is preparing to host the ‘in-person’ G20 summit in September with fanfare. Hence, it was unlikely that the leaders of nations such as China and Russia, which are part of both the SCO and the G20, would make two in-person visits to India in a relatively short period.

China’s refusal to support global censure of Pakistan points to the reality of discordant relations among SCO members.

The genesis of the SCO goes back to 1996, when it began as the Shanghai Five under the Chinese leadership with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as members. The focus of this group was post-Cold War geopolitical tensions, with the Soviet Union having imploded (December 1991) and morphed into new states, including the Russian Federation.

At a time of relative flux and nascent nation-state consolidation in Eurasia and the Central Asian region, the agenda of the five members included the resolution of border disputes, an agreement on military deployments in border areas and addressing common security threats, with terrorism being a major concern. Recall that this was the period after the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had withdrawn from Afghanistan and there was considerable Islamic fervour, including the rise of the Taliban and its ideological affiliates in the region.

Subsequently, Uzbekistan was admitted in 2001 and the SCO was formally born with six members. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, and in the current summit, Iran has also been admitted, thereby taking the membership to nine. Belarus is now waiting to join the SCO and this is expected to happen at the next summit to be held at Kazakhstan in 2024.

The SCO prides itself on being the largest regional organisation in the world, mainly because of two factors geographical area and population and the subtext is that the core membership represented by China and Russia has an inherent anti-US orientation and the entry of Iran will further enhance this characteristic.

India is the only major nation in the SCO that currently has a high comfort level in its bilateral relations with the US and this was borne out by the very successful state visit of PM Narendra Modi to Washington in June, when he was hosted with visible bonhomie by President Joe Biden. To that extent, as part of the balancing act that India is pursuing as its ‘multi-alignment’ strategy, the optics of PM Modi in a bear hug with President Putin in Delhi, soon after the US visit, was better avoided.

While critics of India’s participation in the SCO are sceptical of the outcome of the collective effort of the group and its divergent membership, there is a strong case for Delhi to be in the SCO tent than outside it. The opening section of the New Delhi declaration issued after the July 4 summit noted: “Today, the world is undergoing unprecedented transformations and is entering a new era of rapid technological development that requires an increase in the effectiveness of global institutions. These fundamental processes are accompanied by stronger multipolarity, increased interconnectedness, interdependence and an accelerated pace of digitisation.”

The current buzzword in international relations is ‘multipolarity’ and while its meaning is differently interpreted and contested, the Indian objective is fairly consistent. The bipolar world of the Cold War was dominated by the US and the USSR and their camp followers ceased to exist when the Soviet Union unravelled. The post-Cold War period led to a brief phase of unipolarity when the US exercised sole hegemony, but it was short-lived. The imprudent 2003 war on Iraq and the inglorious retreat from Afghanistan in 2021 dented US credibility (but not its comprehensive national power). Currently, the rise of an assertive China and the totally unexpected Russian invasion of Ukraine have led to considerable flux and discord in the global arena.

In this grey zone, major and medium powers are forming clusters of shared interests based on the issue being negotiated and the nimbleness of the Modi government has been commendable in balancing immediate interests within the framework of legacy relationships, most noticeably in relation to the Delhi-Moscow dyad. One of the underlying tenets of the prevailing global contestation was elucidated by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar at the 2023 EU Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum, where he noted that “a multipolar world is feasible only by a multipolar Asia”.

However, the ‘stronger multipolarity’ referred to in the New Delhi declaration remains elusive and this was the most significant takeaway from the SCO summit. China sought to have its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) endorsed by all SCO members, but India opted to stay out of this part in the declaration. While all leaders prioritised issues relevant to their own core interests, consensus was discernible only in relation to Afghanistan, but in a muted manner. But even here, it was disappointing that there was no reference to women’s rights in the SCO document, while this was included in the June 2022 BRICS summit held in China.

In the BRICS statement, the Taliban regime was encouraged to ‘safeguard the fundamental rights of all Afghans, including women, children and different ethnic groups’, but the New Delhi declaration did not have this provision. While PM Modi unambiguously asserted that state support to cross-border terrorism was untenable and territorial integrity must be respected, this fell on deaf ears, with Pakistan and China pursuing their own inimical agendas.

China’s refusal to support the global censure of Pakistan and India’s recent statement in relation to the South China Sea dispute, where it has supported the Philippines, point to the reality of the discordant relations among major SCO members.

Hopefully, the G20 summit that India will host in September may accord a more enabling opportunity for a candid in-person interaction among the global political leadership.