THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION AND ITS FUTURE

BACKGROUND: The
SCO came into being originally as a confidence-building mechanism to define the five
members\' (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China) collective borders and ensure
conditions for increased trade among them. However
it soon evolved into something else. In a
sense, China and Russia hijacked - or at least diverted - the SCO into becoming an
allegedly model forum for their joint resistance to American policies concerning missile
defense and support for Taiwan and for reform in Tibet and the American alliance system in
Asia. They also wanted to reinforce their
joint support for each other\'s integrity against secessionist threats. Central Asian states, for their part, increasingly
confronted violent insurgencies that they could not decisively defeat, just as Russia
faced secessionist forces in Chechnya and China in Xinjiang. In all these cases, it was assumed that the
insurgents were linked in a kind of terrorist international. Yet because none of these states could defeat
these insurgencies alone and America would not support Russia, China, and Central Asian states then given the tensions
over Chechnya, deteriorating Sino-American
relations, and human rights abuses in Central Asia, which was not then regarded as an
important theater, local governments had no choice but to join the SCO which became a
collective security organization by default. Even
though transforming the SCO into an anti-American organization for regional collective
security was not what Central Asian states wanted, there was no other alternative at the
time.

From 1998 to 2001 this evolution served both Russian and Chinese interests very
well. Russia gained China\'s support, rather than its rivalry in policing Central Asia and
resisting both American hegemonism and Islamic insurgencies. It also hoped to obtain markets for weapons which
were otherwise not competitive on the world market and preserve its own sphere of
influence in Central Asia with Chinese help. China
similarly sought Russian support against U.S. hegemonism and against separatism and
secessionism that it discerned in Central Asia. It
also wanted to be able to suppress the uprisings in Xinjiang by suffocating external
support for them from neighboring Central Asian states and showed the extent of its alarm
over these threats by pledging for the first time that it would respond to calls for aid
against such violence in member states by sending its own forces abroad. Thus the SCO reflected China\'s sense of its
growing capabilities and of rising threats to its rising power in Central Asia.

IMPLICATIONS: This
trend clearly did not reflect Central Asian preferences and evidently Russian policymakers
too began to have second thoughts given the intensity with which China pushed the
anti-American motif in the SCO\'s evolution during meetings in 2000 and 2001 and exploited
its newly found potential to project military force into Central Asia. As a result, despite numerous meetings and
communiqués citing progress in building collective forces, nothing was achieved.
Certainly neither Russia nor the local governments could produce sufficient quality forces
to combat Islamic insurgency, nor could they arrive at a common strategic viewpoint. Neither could Russia spare the military forces or
monies needed to launch a systematic campaign against
the terrorists, nor could it effectively assist Central Asian governments.

Indeed, Russian policy was decidedly equivocal since there is overwhelming evidence that Russian forces not only
colluded in the drug trade through
Tajikistan, they also rendered tangible assistance on many occasions to Juma Namangani and his Islamic Movement for
Uzbekistan (IMU). Thus the SCO was compromised at its source.

Accordingly, the events of September 9 (the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud)
and of September 11 failed to galvanize the SCO into action. This disharmony and lack of resources also
typifies all the previous efforts to create a regional security organization in Central
Asia and raises doubts about any future efforts to build one. However, both Russia and
China continue to search for new modalities
of collective security in Central Asia that will allows Russia to claim a hegemonic position, suppress the
military independence of Central Asian
states, and limit the American presence
there. However, such Sino-Russian moves are encountering resistance
form Uzbekistan and will undoubtedly
encounter continuing passive obstruction in the guise of

non-fulfillment of the decisions from the other Central Asian states. That obstruction
has been the pattern for all agreements since 1992 and has
contributed to the failure of Russian and joint Sino-Russian schemes for hegemony there.

CONCLUSION: The
SCO\'s failure reflects major issues in both regional and international security: China\'s
and Russia\'s inability to build a truly durable and capable mechanism to provide regional
security in areas of common interest, the abiding inability of Central Asian states to do
so as well, the difficulties in bringing effective military force to bear against
terrorism and insurgent forces, and the continuing great power rivalry over Central Asia. But it remains an open question how long American
military forces will remain in Central Asia and how lasting an imprint American power in
general will have there. Thus there is no
clear vision of what would supplant American forces as a provider of regional security in
the event that American power would leave or diminish in strength The absence of an answer
to this question imparts considerable urgency to the quest for an effective, durable, and
legitimate solution to the many acute problems facing Central Asia.

AUTHOR BIO: Professor
Stephen Blank, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA
17013. The views expressed in this article do not reflect those of the US Army, Defense
Department, or Government.