🌏 The history of the 20th and early 21st centuries proves that Eurasia continues to be the centre of global political processes, and that the geopolitical map of the world depends on the alignment of forces on the continent.

Analysing the new borders of the SCO, one involuntarily comes across the idea that they increasingly fit into the geopolitical map of the world conceptualised by the English scientist Halford Mackinder, as described in his works The Geographical Pivot of History (1904) Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919). Today’s contours of the alliance completely cover the territory of the so-called Heartland, which controls the river basins of the Arctic Ocean, as well as the Caspian Sea and the historical Silk trade corridor. However, the announced expansion of the SCO reaches the borders of the “Inner Crescent” — a territory capable of controlling the leading sea routes, including the Suez Canal and the New Suez Canal, which connect the Red and Mediterranean Seas. In other words, the contours of a new macro-region are being formed in the SCO space, with international “North-South” and “East-West” corridors, as well as key water arteries.

The expansion of the SCO towards the Rimland is of strategic importance, as since the Cold War, the American foreign policy strategy towards the Heartland has been to locate US military bases in the Rimland and foster the emergence of loyalist regimes there. Such a policy fits into the “anaconda” plan, which implies the control and strangulation of the Heartland territory. Accordingly, the integration of the Rimland countries into the SCO is the formation of a belt of friendly states, Daria Osinina writes.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/sco-new-borders-new-tasks/

#EconomicStatecraft #Rimland #Eurasia #SCO #geopolitics

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🌏 Today, the SCO hosts a variety of meetings and initiatives focused on interregional trade, transit, industrial cooperation, innovation, start-up projects, poverty reduction, the digital transformation, tourism, public diplomacy and other spheres.

This broad and diverse agenda presents a significant challenge for the SCO's secretariat, which must coordinate and manage the various initiatives and activities of its member states. 

Generally, regarding “horizontal expansion”, the SCO should stop this rapid process and answer key questions before launching any new horizontal expansion, including: how far does it plan to expand geographically? Will the process of changing the membership of observer members to main members continue in the future? Can dialogue partners become observer members and in the next step switch to maining members? Is the SCO able to face numerous conflicts and differences in the vast geography of Central Asia, Afghanistan, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and the Caucasus? 

But in vertical development, it seems that the structure of the SCO's secretariat should be fundamentally changed in order to be able to effectively deal with a wide and diverse range of goals and missions. The structure of the European Union Commission can serve as a suitable model for organising and defining the various missions and tasks of the SCO. 

The rapid and significant horizontal and vertical expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has had a negative impact on the coherence, coordination, efficiency and especially the executive guarantee of the organisation's policies and decisions, writes Vali Kaleji.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/challenges-of-expanding-the-sco-to-caucasus/

#ModernDiplomacy #SCO #Eurasia

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🌏 BRICS and the SCO are the antipodes of NATO and the European Union -the pinnacles of the institutional building of the West.

NATO was built around the rigid core of absolute US military dominance over its allies. This allows this organisation to avoid serious internal conflicts, and also ensures its most important task - maintaining the strategic internal stability of the participants. All NATO governments are handing over the crucial function of defence planning to the United States, and in doing so, rid themselves of one of the most frequent sources of domestic political upheaval.

In the case of the European Union, it is about a more complex balance of power between the big countries, allowing the sustainability of overall cooperation despite the persistence of injustice towards the interests of the weaker countries.

BRICS and the SCO have nothing in common with this nature.

For the BRICS and the SCO, the risk of following the path of the West is much lower than one might assume, with traditional ideas about the consequences of strong institutions for global peace. In any case, both examples are new in their philosophy; an assessment of their nature and potential gives us rich material for a better understanding of how a more just world order can be organised, writes Timofei Bordachev, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/false-and-real-international-institutions/

#Asia_and_Eurasia #WorldOrder #BRICS #SCO

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🌐 What determines the ability of the states to cooperate?

NATO is an old military alliance created in the very first years of the Cold War, while the SCO is a young association that appeared only 10 years after its end.

NATO has a powerful infrastructure for collective military planning, rich traditions and serious executive discipline, while the SCO is an amorphous organisation with a rather weak secretariat, the absence of binding decisions and the inability to talk about any discipline in principle.

NATO brings together 32 countries around one leader; its military and economic capabilities significantly exceed all others. There is no and cannot be a leader in the SCO: it includes countries which are comparable in scale such as India, Russia and China, but the others are not ready to subordinate their policies to the will of the largest countries in the association.

The main thing in which both international organisations differ is their purpose. The central mission of NATO is to preserve the internal political inviolability of the ruling regimes in the participating countries.

The SCO's task is a dialogue on a wide range of issues of international security and cooperation, but it in no way ensures that the ruling circles of the member countries can feel calm about their own future, writes Timofei Bordachev.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/sco-nato-and-the-fate-of-international-cooperation/

📍 This article is the first part of reflections on the future of international cooperation.

#WiderEurasia #SCO #NATO

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🌏 Eurasia is rapidly emerging as a formidable centre of power.

Its dynamic economic growth and expanding military capabilities are generating unease among the traditional power centres of the West. This shift is bringing the Eurasian states face-to-face with a shared set of security, military, and economic challenges. 

Eurasian alliances like the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) already provide a framework for promoting the security and economic interests of the Eurasian countries.

The security system proposed by President Putin appears to be the most appropriate option, writes Raza Muhammad, President of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, for the 21st Annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club. 

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/eurasian-security-new-principles-and-new-reality/

#valdai2024 #Eurasia #SCO #security

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🌏 For the Russian Federation, cooperation with partners in the SCO in multilateral and bilateral formats is one of the international priorities enshrined in the current Foreign Policy Concept of 2023.

Moreover, this not only details using the SCO's potential to develop relations on the Eurasian continent, in particular, to form a broad integration circuit - the Greater Eurasian Partnership (Clause 54 of the FPC), but also to influence the international system by "facilitating the adaptation of the world order to the realities of a multipolar world" (Clause 19 of the FPC).

The SCO understands existing difficulties and is taking steps to systematise multilateral cooperation, developing common goals and objectives, as well as strengthen the mechanisms for their achievement by the organisation’s members, writes Sergey Mikhnevich. Read his articles:

🔹 ‘Globalise It’: The SCO and the Future of the Economic Agenda in the Organisation's Globalisation

🔹 The SCO and the Restart of the Trade System

#WiderEurasia #SCO

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