Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin cover art

Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin

Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin

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 The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating — but rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-liberal powers, such as China and Russia, have in agreeing and implementing a credible alternative.Founded in Shanghai in 2001 with just six members — Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — the SCO has grown rapidly over the past decade. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024. Beyond these now ten member states, the SCO also has two observers — Afghanistan and Mongolia — and 14 dialogue partners, including Turkey, Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, several of the Gulf states, and a number of other Asian states. If measured by the population of its core member states, it is the world’s largest regional security organisation.Size clearly matters, but in the case of the SCO it creates problems instead of contributing to their resolution. The organisation did little in response to escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Kashmir that brought the two long-standing rivals to the brink of nuclear confrontation. It took US mediation to de-escalate the violence.The SCO’s subsequent failure to condemn cross-border terrorism explicitly in a joint statement of the meeting of defence ministers at the end of June led to India refusing to sign it.When Israel attacked Iran, the SCO issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the attacks. But India distanced itself officially from the SCO statement.These and other simmering tensions, such as between India and China over a new dam project in Tibet, are likely going to be papered over at the SCO summit in Tianjin. China’s president, Xi Jinping, will be keen to demonstrate Chinese leadership of a large coalition of like-minded countries who oppose the hitherto US-led liberal international order.The theme of this year’s summit — “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move” — sounds more like an aspirational plea to member states, observers, and dialogue partners rather than a concrete plan for action. The so-called Shanghai spirit — a hazy mixture of standard Chinese talking points about mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation — is little more than empty rhetoric. It is also very fragile. Two member states — India and Pakistan — have recently gone to war with each other. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been involved in several full-scale violent confrontations since they became dialogue partners almost a decade ago. And if they have now embraced the Shanghai spirit, they did so, ironically, in Washington and after both their relations with Russia significantly soured.Nor does the SCO have much of a track record of constructive involvement in internal conflicts in its member states and dialogue partners, such as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This is even more obvious in the case of Afghanistan where Russia’s recent official recognition of the Taliban government poses yet another challenge to the SCO. China has cautiously welcomed Russia’s recognition but not followed suit, while several Central Asian member states of the SCO already have a wide range of economic ties with Afghanistan. But Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states remain deeply ambivalent about the Taliban regime.It is also worth noting that the SCO’s very selective commitment to the Shanghai spirit does not extend to relations between the organisation and non-member states. That much is evident from the SCO’s lack of condemnation of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Previous summits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 produced lengthy declarations of intent — but little follow-through. It is, therefore, difficult to see where the SCO will move.The marked difference to these previous summits is, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House. On the one hand, Trump has demonstrated the near-irrelevance of the SCO as a security player compared to the indispensability of the United States when it comes to managing crises, such as those between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.On the other hand, Trump’s weaponisation of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO that might see the organisation’s most powerful countries — China, Russia and India — align more closely against the United States. Sanctions against Russia, however unlikely they may be to be fully implemented by Trump, are still on the table. Heavy tariffs have now been imposed on India for continuing to buy Russian oil. And the US trade war with China is only paused but not settled.For their own sake, and even more so for the sake of their actual and potential ...
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