SCO EXPANSION IMPASSE PERSISTS
For the sixth year, the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) leadership summit declined to allow new countries to join the organization as full members or formal observers. There were strong expectations earlier this year that the June 15 gathering in Astana, which marked the institution’s tenth anniversary, would see the SCO leaders finally overcoming their expansion impasse, but this was not to be. Instead of expanding the number of full members, the SCO has resorted to proliferating new categories of external association. While the memberships of applicants such as India, Pakistan and Iran are opposed by key SCO members, Turkmenistan continues to show disinterest in the organization.
BACKGROUND: In their declaration announcing the SCO’s establishment in June 2001, the six founding governments announced that, “On the basis of consensus, it shall admit as its new members those countries which recognize the cooperation purposes and tasks within the framework of the organization … and whose joining will facilitate the realization of cooperation”. Despite this statement, the SCO has never invited another full member since its creation. The current roster of full SCO members includes only those six states that joined the organization at its founding in 2001: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The SCO designated its first formal observer, Mongolia, in June 2004, after having finalized its regulations to govern the status of observers the previous April. India, Iran, and Pakistan obtained formal observer status at the July 2005 summit in Shanghai. Although other countries have subsequently expressed interest in becoming formal observers, the SCO has not designated any since 2005.
The governments of Iran, Pakistan, and most recently India have applied to become full members of the SCO. Until recently, the stated reason why the organization has not acted on their applications or designated any other new members since its founding is that, despite several years of discussions and analysis, the SCO governments have been unable to define the legal basis for increasing the number of formal members. At their August 2008 summit, the SCO heads of state “set up a special expert group to consider a whole range of issues related to the expansion of the Organization”. The 2009 summit attendees simply instructed the Special Expert Group to continue working on their draft document establishing the legal procedures for admitting new SCO members.
The June 2010 SCO summit formally agreed on the minimum eligibility criteria a country has to satisfy to apply for full membership: the state has to be located in Eurasia, already have observer or partnership status within the SCO, maintain diplomatic relations and active economic and humanitarian ties with all existing SCO members, and not be subject to UN sanctions or in a state of armed conflict with another country. Yet, the SCO governments claimed they needed another year to finalize a memorandum detailing the commitments states wishing to become full SCO members must make before the SCO can begin formal membership negotiations with them. They formally approved the commitment memorandum at the Astana summit.
Despite these professed complexities, the real reason has been members’ recognition that expanding the SCO further could prove problematic due to several underlying problems. The enormous disparities in these countries’ populations, geographic size, economic resources, military power, and geopolitical orientation have already complicated the negotiation, approval, and implementation of SCO initiatives. Adding new full members could exacerbate these differences. For example, granting Iran that status would move the SCO more deeply into Middle Eastern issues. Promoting India and Pakistan could make the SCO an organization focused on South as well as Central Asia, which might disturb the four Central Asian states.
Furthermore, the entry of anti-Western Iran or Westward-leaning India could disrupt the SCO policy consensus on regional security issues such as the current position of supporting the continued deployment of NATO forces in Afghanistan, including by providing logistical assistance, but only until they restore much greater security there. At that point, the SCO is on record as calling on Western troops to withdraw their military forces from the region. Membership expansion could also complicate the SCO’s nonproliferation stance because several potential candidates for full membership possess nuclear weapons that were acquired outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or are likely seeking to acquire them. The SCO would find it harder to back Russian- and Chinese-supported nonproliferation initiatives if India, Iran, or Pakistan were to become full members.
In addition, none of the existing observer countries is an obvious choice for full membership. The most enthusiastic aspirants for full membership, Iran and Pakistan, are the least desirable entrants. The potentially most valuable new member, Turkmenistan, has not shown any interest in joining the SCO.
IMPLICATIONS: The organization’s consensus rule gives any member the right to block decisions, though Russia and China are clearly the most influential members in shaping SCO policies. Until now, while they have been able to agree which applications to reject, they have yet to concur in favor of any applicant. Beijing and Moscow have apparently accepted that neither Mongolia, a geographic outlier, nor Iran, a geopolitical pariah whose promotion to full membership would be seen as an anti-Western move, should become full members. In fact, Beijing and Moscow have sought to pressure Iran to moderate its nuclear behavior by adopting a rule that no country subject to international sanctions can become a full SCO member.
But Beijing and Moscow have disagreed about the applications of India and Pakistan. Russian officials have set aside their traditional wariness of Pakistan and been open to allowing both states to become full members, but the Chinese reportedly vetoed India’s application, even though this move effectively denied their regional ally Pakistan such a promotion since the consensus is that both countries need to be treated equally to avoid exacerbating their regional rivalry. At the summit, SCO leaders formally called on both countries to resolve their dispute over Kashmir to bolster their membership prospects. Yet, since the real problem is China’s opposition to India’s gaining international stature through full membership in the SCO (or on the UN Security Council), the likelihood is that New Delhi and Islamabad will be waiting in the wings for a long time.
The one country Beijing, Moscow, and the other four existing members would most likely welcome into their ranks, energy-rich Turkmenistan, has shown no interest in ending its long-standing policy of abstaining from joining regional blocs. Indeed, Turkmenistan is not even a formal SCO observer or dialogue partner. It would have to leapfrog over the existing observers in order to gain full membership, a step the other membership aspirants would not welcome.
The Astana summit attendees also deferred acting on Afghanistan’s application to become a formal SCO observer, despite acknowledging the need to increase their engagement with that country given the impending NATO military withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, the SCO governments still seemed confused over what type of security structure they would like to construct to preserve regional security after NATO reduces its military presence in Central Asia in a few years. Drawing closer to the Afghan government would help compensate for the NATO military withdrawal, but China appears reluctant to throw its weight behind Hamid Karzai for fear of antagonizing the Taliban, which could retaliate against the PRC’s growing economic interests in Afghanistan. Karzai again had to attend the SCO summit in Astana as a special guest of the summit host government.
CONCLUSIONS: Instead of expanding the number of full members, the SCO has resorted to proliferating new categories of external association, producing a confusing mixture of affiliated countries arranged according to the four general categories of full members, formal observers, “guests” of the rotating hosting government of the annual SCO leadership summit, and most recently “dialogue partners”. The existing SCO governments have resorted to proliferating new categories of external association because they have been unable to resolve their differences over which if any additional countries should be eligible for membership. In addition, the existing full members have sought to give other SCO affiliates, especially the observer countries, greater opportunities to participate in the organization’s activities. This approach partly compensates those countries that have tried but failed to elevate their status within the SCO. But it also seeks to take advantage of their assets and resources by engaging them in SCO projects.
AUTHOR’S BIO: Richard Weitz is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at Hudson Institute. He is the author, among other works, of Kazakhstan and the New International Politics of Eurasia (Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, 2008).
