SCO Expansion: A Double-Edged Sword

Belarus’ upcoming admission to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) shows that the once purely regional grouping – originally encompassing China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – is steadily expanding its geographic and geopolitical reach. After India and Pakistan in 2017 and Iran in 2023, Belarus will be the first exclusively European country to join. What began as a purely Central Asian forum focused on regional security cooperation will have become an increasingly diverse 10-member club with broadening global ambitions.

China and Russia’s Changing Interests in the SCO

The SCO’s shifting focus aligns most obviously with China and Russia’s evolving interests in the organization. As founding members, they were the driving forces in creating a platform for increased regional security and economic cooperation, and 23 years later they are willing to sacrifice that role to increase the SCO’s international weight. The group’s members comprise roughly 25 percent of the world’s economic output and half of its population, making it an ever more tempting tool for Moscow and Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions.

While Russia’s interest in the Chinese-initiated organization was initially lukewarm, Moscow began to take the SCO more seriously following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and ensuing Western sanctions. Since starting its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, Moscow has had to seek partners outside of Europe even more intensively. The Kremlin now sees the SCO as a useful forum for gathering support and countering Western claims of its international isolation, and as a result has adopted a “the more, the merrier” approach to membership. 

China initially pushed for closer economic ties alongside security, cultural and “humanitarian” collaboration among the members of the SCO. But proposals such as a free-trade area and an SCO development bank were rejected by Russia and other members. By the mid-2010s, Beijing was using settings like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Central Asia summit to promote closer economic cooperation with its neighbors in the region. As recently as May this year, China announced a separate mechanism for China-Central Asia emergency management cooperation, despite this task falling directly into the SCO’s purview.

In parallel, since the 2010s, China has consolidated its position as a major power in the international system, giving the SCO a symbolic value that far outweighs its practical effectiveness. Beijing uses the forum to showcase its ability to offer alternatives to existing U.S.-led institutions and to present itself as the champion of the Global South. These two goals make enlargement of the organization to include more countries beyond Central Asia nothing but beneficial – even if this means further undermining the SCO’s regional effectiveness.

Including India and Pakistan: Trading Effectiveness for International Visibility

Russia and China’s shifting geopolitical ambitions provided the context for the SCO’s first expansion. By embracing the South Asian heavyweights India and Pakistan in 2017, the organization bet on increasing its visibility on the world stage, while accepting the risk that decades of India-Pakistan tensions could weaken its core security cooperation mandate.

While the SCO had offered other states the opportunity to cooperate loosely as observers since 2004 and as dialogue partners since 2009, Beijing in particular had been reluctant to extend the circle of full members in the organization’s early years. A major argument against expansion had always been the need to first strengthen cohesion and find a “common identity” among the six founding members before adding new states and making the organization even more diverse.

Allowing India and Pakistan to join was also controversial given the SCO’s focus on fighting what it calls the “three evils” of terrorism, extremism, and separatism. Even some Chinese experts worried that both South Asian countries’ habits of regularly blaming their neighbor for terrorist acts within their own borders would make it increasingly difficult for SCO members to reach a consensus on how to combat such threats.

Hopes that the SCO could help ease bilateral tensions were realistically low from the beginning and fears about India-Pakistan tensions affecting SCO activities have materialized to an extent – for instance, a dispute with India over depictions on a map resulted in Pakistan staying away from an SCO seminar in New Delhi in 2023. Although the SCO sees itself as a forum for improving regional security, it insists that member states keep their bilateral conflicts outside the organization. And even the founding members have been reluctant to use the SCO as a platform to resolve bilateral tensions, such as water disputes between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and border clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Regardless of these obvious flaws, the first SCO expansion promised a major upside. It would bring the organization more legitimacy, especially by adding two major regional powers that were also nuclear states. On top of that, accepting India as the first undeniably democratic member country helped counter the common Western portrayal of the SCO as a “dictators’ club.” The first round of expansion also incidentally saw the organization become the largest regional organization worldwide, both in terms of geographic reach and population represented.

Iran Joins in 2023: Expanding the SCO Into West Asia

Compared to the accession of India and Pakistan, inviting Iran to join the regional security organization in July 2023 made more logical sense in terms of organizational effectiveness. With Tehran as concerned as other SCO members about drug trafficking and political instability in Afghanistan, Iran is a natural choice to help prevent spillover from its neighbor. The country has ample experience fighting the so-called three evils domestically, which it can now share through the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure. On top of this, Iran’s membership can help boost SCO trade links, especially through the Indian-operated port of Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman.

But by including Iran and thereby expanding into West Asia, the SCO blurred its regional focus even more and damaged any international legitimacy it had gained by admitting India. After gaining observer status in 2005, Iran was the associate state most eager to make the SCO more explicitly “anti-Western.” In 2011, Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad campaigned for the SCO “to form a united front against the West,” referring to Western countries as “enslavers, colonialists, [and] invaders.” This was one reason why several SCO members long refused to consider Iran’s 2008 application for full membership. But somewhere along the way their priorities shifted – after 2017, even Beijing saw more advantages than disadvantages in admitting the country.

The shift came at the same time Moscow and Beijing were individually forging closer ties with Tehran. Both Russia and China joined Iran, the United States, and Europe in signing the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. The deal removed a key hurdle to Iran’s SCO membership, as it no longer violated the organization’s rule that countries cannot join if they are under U.N. sanctions. When then-U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, China, Russia, and Iran saw this as confirmation of the United States’ unreliability.

Shared antagonism toward the U.S. brought China, Russia, and Iran closer together in the years that followed – and in late 2021 Beijing and Moscow proved instrumental in initiating the process to admit Iran to the SCO. More than anything, Iran’s accession in 2023 increased the geopolitical weight of the organization and solidified the China-Russia-Iran partnership. The addition of Tehran was a clear message to the United States and its allies that the SCO no longer cared about whether the West saw the organization as friend or foe.

Admission of Belarus Bursts the Regional Focus Once and for All

The accession of Belarus at the SCO summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, on July 3-4 seals the SCO’s transformation from a focused group of Central Asian states intent on improving the regional security situation into a geopolitical bloc at the center of a hardening global confrontation between the U.S. and its allies on one hand and China, Russia, and the partners they are collecting on the other. As the first entirely European country to join, Belarus expands the SCO’s reach beyond Central, South, and West Asia; adds an important ally of Russia and a “strategic partner” of China; and reinforces the SCO’s strategy of building a counterbalance to Western organizations and alliances.

Belarus was one of the first two countries to attain the affiliate status of dialogue partner in 2009, and it was granted observer status in 2015. The country is a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Russian-led groupings of largely contiguous, post-Soviet countries. However, SCO membership was initially regarded as a stretch – even Russia initially argued that Minsk was too far from the SCO’s regional core. But its change of heart speaks to Moscow’s evolving ambitions.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the SCO invited Belarus to apply for full membership. In Russia’s and China’s increasingly heated rivalry with the United States and its allies, SCO enlargement no longer seems to serve the effectiveness of the organization as a regional forum, but rather to assemble a bloc of countries favorable to Russia and China in their campaign to establish a global order not dominated by the West.

At the same time, Minsk’s interests in the SCO may go beyond geostrategic ambitions. For Belarus, trade with SCO countries is a welcome alternative to economic ties to Europe, given EU sanctions against Belarus for supporting Russian aggression against Ukraine. Belarus has enjoyed close economic relations to several SCO countries for some time. It was one of the first countries to join China’s BRI in 2014, a particularly useful move for China given its proximity to the EU and membership in the Eurasian Economic Union. But given its modest size and weak economy, Belarus stands to gain much more economically from SCO membership than the other members will gain from their new partner.

From the SCO’s point of view, Belarus adds nothing in practical terms to the organization’s legitimacy, like India had, and does little to bolster regional security and the fight against the “three evils,” capacities that Iran has brought into the club. The admission of Russia’s closest ally is largely symbolic, but in an important way: It fully commits the SCO to its role as a multilateral representation of the “new international order” championed by China and Russia.

The SCO at a Crossroads

The SCO’s next steps will be a measure of its future direction and role. Will it now focus on consolidating relations among its existing members – close partners of China and Russia who endorse the two countries’ vision of a “multipolar world order,” but are also interested in reaping the fruits of economic collaboration? Or will expansion become the new normal, as the SCO gathers as many countries as possible to establish itself as the voice of the Global South – albeit at the expense of practical security cooperation?

At the moment, the SCO appears to be on its way to becoming an international – rather than regional – organization that encompasses many more states than its original regional focus envisaged. The organization’s dialogue partners currently include, among others, Bahrain, Cambodia, Egypt, Kuwait, the Maldives, Nepal, and Qatar – not exactly Central Asian countries with similar security or economic challenges. It remains to be seen whether these states will be able to upgrade their status or only remain loosely tied to the SCO. If expansion continues, the organization may shift from tangible regional security cooperation to addressing more abstract global political and economic issues.

But SCO decisions require the consensus of all members. This suggests that the organization won’t rush to add more countries, especially ones with which existing members have strained relations. For example, Iran would likely have qualms about admitting Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates and veto their accession just like Tajikistan had for many years opposed Iran’s full membership.

Although China and Russia are the SCO’s most powerful members, smaller states have always influenced its development. Even as the SCO contributes to the divide between the United States and its allies on one side and China, Russia, and partners on the other, many Central Asian states have no interest in being drawn into any one camp. Some members such as Kazakhstan have refused to openly support Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the country known for its “multi-vector foreign policy” will be reluctant to turn the SCO into a designated “anti-Western” club. Rather, several member countries continue to see the SCO as a grouping aimed at helping to solve regional issues.

Enlargement has raised the SCO’s profile and put it in a bind – international visibility comes hand in hand with a loss of regional relevance. If it continues to strengthen its role as a geopolitical bloc bringing together key Chinese and Russian political partners, the SCO will most likely continue to weaken its efforts to forge practical cooperation among neighboring states. This may encourage members to seek other formats for tangible regional cooperation.

For example, SCO founding members Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan attended the first China-Central Asia summit in 2023, with Turkmenistan also joining, and their leaders have attended five Central Asia-only summits from 2018 to 2023. Turkmenistan, which holds to what it deems a “positive neutrality” policy is not a member of the SCO, and only occasionally attends its summits as a guest; but Ashgabat has engaged fully with the Central Asia consultative leaders’ meetings since 2019, even hosting the 2021 meeting.

The SCO could benefit from building cohesion among current members before expanding again.

Opportunities for the European Union

The SCO’s current transition phase presents an opportunity for the EU to raise its engagement with Central Asia. Diplomatic and economic ties have grown in recent years – the EU accounts for 42 percent of cumulative foreign direct investment in the region – and Europe should use this position to offer more reliable and attractive partnerships than those offered through the SCO. While doing so, it shouldn’t expect Central Asian countries to fully move away from their close political, security, and economic partners Russia and China – and it should also continue pressing Central Asian states to stop helping Moscow circumvent European export restrictions, including by re-exporting dual-use goods to Russia. At the same time, however, Brussels should take advantage of the fact that both Europe and Central Asia are currently hoping to diversify their international relations away from overreliance on Russia and China.

Kazakhstan, the EU’s main Central Asian partner, for instance, wants to diversify its oil export routes, which is clearly of interest to the EU. Astana and Brussels have already signed a memorandum of understanding about raw material, battery, and renewable hydrogen partnerships, in line with Brussels’ strategy to diversify its supply of critical raw materials such as lithium. Other areas for close cooperation with countries in the region include water, energy, and responses to climate change. On top of this, as Kazakh scholar Zhanibek Arynov has noted, the EU could establish a European university in Central Asia to connect with the young people of the region.

If we think, for example, of the vague and non-transparent “SCO university” framework or the very apparent lack of initiatives on water management within the SCO format, it becomes clear that the EU could present itself as a (more) reliable partner to Central Asia, and offer more attractive partnerships than through the SCO. Of course, all this will be done on a much smaller scale, considering the SCO is a full-fledged regional organization and the EU’s engagement with different Central Asian countries remains limited. However, considering the countries’ interest in diversified relations, the EU could easily take some – initially small – steps in the right direction.

As the SCO expands for the third time, it faces the challenge of maintaining its regional effectiveness while increasing its international influence. This presents strategic opportunities for the EU to engage more deeply with Central Asia and provide an alternative to the SCO’s China-Russia dominated framework increasingly presented as an alternative to Western organizations.