Global Affairs Session 85 1 September 2026

DEEP POLITICS OF SCO

Who controls Eurasia?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation began as a regional security mechanism but has evolved into one of the most revealing arenas of twenty-first-century geopolitics. Its real significance is not unity—it is how rival powers negotiate an increasingly multipolar Eurasia.

Every member’s SCO Geopolitical heavyweight China Russia India Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia Bishkek 2026

There is an SCO for every member!

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation began as a regional security mechanism but has evolved into one of the most revealing arenas of twenty-first-century geopolitics.

China sees it as part of a wider Eurasian architecture; Russia uses it to preserve strategic influence; India participates to prevent Eurasia from becoming a China-dominated space; Pakistan seeks strategic relevance; Iran sees diplomatic and economic breathing room; and Central Asian states use competing powers to maximise autonomy.

The September 2026 Bishkek summit brings these forces together at an extraordinary moment. The SCO's real significance is therefore not unity - it is how rival powers negotiate an increasingly multipolar Eurasia.

From border club to geopolitical heavyweight

• The SCO began with security, not world domination: Founded in 2001 from the Shanghai Five process, the SCO originally focused on border stability, separatism, extremism and security across post-Soviet Eurasia.
• Expansion fundamentally changed its character: With India, Pakistan, Iran and Belarus joining, the SCO evolved from a Central Asian security forum into a grouping of nuclear powers, geopolitical rivals, major energy producers and some of the world’s largest populations.
• Geography is its greatest strategic asset: Spanning Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia, the SCO occupies the strategic heart of Eurasia connecting energy, trade, security, Afghanistan, the Middle East, South Asia and Europe.
• But it is definitely not an Asian NATO: Unlike NATO, the SCO has no collective-defence obligation and is better understood as a geopolitical negotiating table among countries that often remain strategic rivals.
• Its ambiguity is actually useful: The SCO allows countries to cooperate on terrorism, connectivity and trade without requiring agreement on borders, wars, alliances or wider geopolitical disputes.
• That leads to the central question: Despite their contradictions, SCO members stay because Eurasia is too strategically important to abandon, making the organisation’s deepest function the preservation of dialogue among major powers.

China building a continental architecture

• China is the indispensable economic power inside the SCO: China uniquely combines geography, capital, manufacturing, infrastructure and trade, giving it an economic influence within the SCO that no other member can easily match.
• SCO complements China’s Belt and Road strategy: The SCO supports China’s Belt and Road ambitions by deepening Eurasian connectivity through railways, roads, pipelines, border crossings and logistics corridors.
• Central Asia is strategically crucial to Beijing: Central Asia gives China both a more secure western frontier and vital energy and overland trade routes that reduce dependence on vulnerable maritime pathways.
• Beijing also wants institutional influence: China uses the SCO alongside platforms such as BRICS to promote a more multipolar global order with greater influence for developing countries and the Global South.
• But China cannot simply dominate the SCO: India’s strategic autonomy, Russia’s continuing weight and Central Asian concerns about dependence force China to exercise influence through negotiation rather than command.
• China’s larger objective is therefore subtle: China benefits most from a Eurasia increasingly connected through trade, infrastructure and institutions in which Beijing is central, gaining influence without requiring formal alliance leadership.

Russia: indispensable, or increasingly dependent?

• For Moscow, Eurasia is its strategic backyard: Russia still views Central Asia as vital to its security and influence, even as China’s expanding economic presence increasingly overlaps with Moscow’s traditional sphere.
• The old division of labour is changing: The earlier pattern of Russian security dominance and Chinese economic leadership is blurring as Beijing expands its diplomatic, infrastructure and technological role.
• Ukraine increased the importance of non-Western institutions: Western sanctions and isolation have made forums such as the SCO more valuable to Russia as evidence that it remains connected to major non-Western powers.
• China-Russia partnership is getting stronger: Moscow and Beijing are deepening strategic coordination around multipolarity and global governance reform, strengthening their partnership despite underlying asymmetries.
• Yet Russia does not want a Chinese Eurasia: Russia wants China strong enough to balance Western power, but not so dominant that Moscow becomes strategically secondary across Eurasia.
• SCO therefore serves Russia in two ways: The SCO helps Russia resist Western isolation while preserving its place in Asia’s political architecture and limiting the emergence of an exclusively Chinese Eurasian order.

India: inside the SCO, but not inside the China-Russia camp

• India represents the SCO’s biggest geopolitical contradiction: India’s simultaneous participation in the SCO, Quad and partnerships with Russia, the West and Japan reflects multi-alignment rather than inconsistency.
• India cannot afford to abandon continental Asia: As a continental power, India needs the SCO to engage on Afghanistan, terrorism, Pakistan, Central Asia, Iran and Russia.
• Joining also prevents China from owning the institution: India’s presence gives the SCO another major power centre and prevents it from appearing exclusively China-Russia dominated.
• Connectivity exposes the India-China disagreement: India supports regional connectivity but rejects projects it believes violate sovereignty and territorial integrity, highlighting a core disagreement with China.
• Terrorism is India’s other pressure point: India uses the SCO to press for action against terrorist financing, recruitment, radicalisation and safe havens, with particular significance because Pakistan is also a member.
• This explains India’s real SCO strategy: India uses the Quad for the Indo-Pacific, the SCO for continental Eurasia and BRICS for global governance while preserving strategic autonomy across all three.

Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia: the powers people underestimate

• Pakistan gains relevance from being inside the room: SCO membership gives Pakistan sustained access to China, Russia, Central Asia and India while broadening its Eurasian role beyond its partnership with Beijing.
• India-Pakistan rivalry enters the SCO with them: The SCO does not resolve India-Pakistan rivalry but forces both countries to coexist within the same multilateral framework despite bilateral tensions.
• Iran changes the organisation’s geographical reach: Iran extends the SCO toward the Persian Gulf and Middle East while adding major energy resources, transport routes and wider geopolitical significance.
• The 2026 summit makes Iran especially important: Iran’s use of the 2026 SCO summit to address tensions with the United States showed how the organisation increasingly hosts diplomacy far beyond Central Asia.
• Central Asian countries are not pieces on somebody else’s chessboard: Central Asian states actively balance China, Russia, Europe, Turkey, the Gulf and India to maximise opportunities without becoming dependent on any single power.
• Kyrgyzstan’s 2026 summit demonstrates this agency: By hosting major Eurasian leaders in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan showed how smaller states can gain influence by creating the diplomatic table around which larger powers must gather.

Bishkek 2026: what the September summit really tells us

• The timing is extraordinary: The 2026 Bishkek summit brought the SCO’s major powers together amid overlapping crises in Ukraine, the Middle East, US-China rivalry and wider global instability.
• The Bishkek Declaration signals institutional ambition: The Bishkek Declaration and nearly 30 accompanying documents showed the SCO’s intent to deepen cooperation, including in military confidence-building and security.
• Modi offered a revealing three-word formula: India framed its SCO priorities as security, connectivity and opportunity, each tied to terrorism, sovereignty and the need for tangible economic benefits.
• India-Russia relations remain resilient - but India keeps distance on Ukraine: India maintained strong ties with Russia while continuing to advocate dialogue, diplomacy and an end to the Ukraine war.
• The China-India optics deserve careful interpretation: Renewed Modi-Xi engagement and border talks suggest diplomatic stabilisation, but India-China strategic competition remains structural and far from an alliance.
• The summit exposes what SCO is becoming: The SCO is increasingly becoming a forum where major Eurasian powers conduct geopolitical business without Western powers necessarily occupying the centre.

Value addition

Glossary and related terms

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)

A Eurasian intergovernmental organisation founded in 2001 from the Shanghai Five process, bringing together members for security, political, economic and connectivity cooperation.

Shanghai Five

The China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan grouping that preceded the SCO and initially concentrated on border stability and confidence-building.

Eurasia

The connected continental space of Europe and Asia, used here as the strategic arena linking Russia, China, Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

Multipolarity

A distribution of international power among several major centres rather than domination by one state or two opposing blocs.

Strategic autonomy

The ability of a state to make independent foreign-policy choices without becoming permanently tied to one alliance or power centre.

Multi-alignment

Simultaneous engagement with several countries and institutions, including groupings whose members may compete with one another.

Belt and Road Initiative

China’s international infrastructure and connectivity strategy involving railways, roads, ports, pipelines, logistics and investment links.

Collective defence

An alliance commitment under which an attack on one member is treated as an attack on all; the SCO does not contain a NATO-style collective-defence obligation.

Sphere of influence

A region in which a major power seeks a privileged political, security, economic or strategic role.

Connectivity corridor

A linked route of railways, roads, pipelines, ports, border crossings and logistics facilities that connects markets and regions.

Geopolitical hedging

Maintaining relationships with competing powers to gain options and avoid excessive dependence on any single partner.

Global South

A broad political term commonly used for developing and emerging countries seeking greater influence in global institutions and rule-making.

Military confidence-building

Communication, transparency and restraint measures intended to reduce misunderstanding, mistrust and accidental escalation between states.

Bishkek Declaration

The summit declaration described in this session as signalling the SCO’s priorities and institutional ambitions at the 2026 Bishkek meeting.

Sovereignty and territorial integrity

The principles that states exercise authority over their own territory and that borders should not be altered or violated without lawful consent.

Value addition

Conceptual references

• The Shanghai Five process, the founding of the SCO in 2001 and the organisation’s later expansion.
• The difference between a flexible Eurasian negotiating forum and a collective-defence alliance.
• Eurasian geopolitics, multipolarity, spheres of influence and institutional balancing.
• China’s Belt and Road strategy and the role of continental connectivity corridors.
• India’s strategic autonomy and multi-alignment across the SCO, Quad and BRICS.
• Geopolitical hedging by Central Asian states and the diplomatic role of the 2026 Bishkek summit.