India inches toward Shanghai

Foreign Minister S M Krishna has declared India's desire for a larger and deeper role in the Shanghai CooperationOrganization.

Indian Foreign Minister SMKrishna declaredhis country'sdesire for "a largerand deeper role" inthe Shanghai CooperationOrganization(SCO). Thatpronouncement atthe forum's recentlyconcludedtenth summit makes supreme sense forIndia, since as a geopolitical and geo-economicreality that bridges the former Sovietspace, East Asia and South Asia, theSCO is hastening the global shift towardsmultipolarity.

India shares with the SCO the limitedgoal of a more "democratic internationalsystem," wherein power is widely diffusedamong multiple centers even as many ofthe organization's member states - China,Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistanand Uzbekistan - and applicants have undemocraticregimes.

Yet, as the summit in the Kazakhstancapital of Astana finalized negotiations forIndia (and Pakistan) to join the SCO, NewDelhi will be aware that its eventual promotionfrom "observer" status to full membershipof the group will necessitate subtlepolicy shifts that would require movingaway from its close embrace with theUnited States on certain issues.

If the historic purpose of NATO was to"keep the Germans down, the Americansin and the Russians out," then SCO is atleast minimally united around the motto of"keeping the Americans out." India'sstrategic establishment is contradictorilykeen on keeping the Americans inAfghanistan for as long as possible, believingthat a US withdrawal would throwopen the doors to renewed Pakistani (andindirectly Chinese) hegemony in ageostrategic lynchpin.

However much the SCO's leading lights- China and Russia - verbally deny that theSCO is a countervailing military allianceagainst the US-dominated North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO), it has undeniablevalue in the "new Cold War" thatMoscow has broached on and off.The latest iteration of an impending escalationwas uttered by Russian PresidentDmitry Medvedev recently in the contextof the United States pressing ahead to builda recalibrated missile defense shield inEastern Europe. Russia used the summit inAstana to reinforce this warning to theWest via a denunciation of "unilateral andunlimited build-up of missile defense" inthe joint declaration from all memberstates.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrovclaimed that this veiled attack on the USwas a "consolidated position" of all sixmembers of SCO and that Moscow did nothave to push to get this critique included inthe final summit communiqué. Most interestingly,he added that the US's missileshields "also covers the Southeast Asian region"- an allusion to China's fears thatWashington is encircling it with a chain ofanti-missile systems operable from Japan,South Korea and Taiwan.As has been the practice since the SCOwas created a decade ago, China lets Russiado the hard talking and snorting againstthe US, but agrees behind the scenes that ittoo would like to whittle down Americanpower and military encroachments in theterritories and waters that it prefers to dominatein Asia.

India must be conscious that its impendingfull membership of SCO would entailbeing called on to make statements similarcombative to the one just out of Astana.The SCO has suffered from absence ofunanimity on key global questions in thepast, and it would be an exaggeration to expectthat its two major patrons will imposeconformity on all other members.Some observers consider that even Russiais now making an exception to its phobiafor US military presence in its extendedneighborhood and is riding piggyback onan American solution to the jihadi virusthat stems in Afghanistan-Pakistan andseeps into Central Asia. An SCO with Indiaas a full member could see the organizationsplit right down the middle on the contentiousquestion of whether to welcome,resist, or play a mix of both, vis-a-vis theUS military hunkering down in the Af-Pakregion.

Still, the consequence of a move by Indiato a more equidistant position between theUnited States and SCO members in thenew Cold War is a price New Delhi considersworth paying. The SCO has materialbenefits in store for India, including integrationinto the about-to-be-launched "energyclub" that will facilitate contracts forsupply and demand for oil and gas betweenconsumers like China and India and producerslike Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan(a non-member, but an activeparticipant in SCO's affairs). SCO's generalsecretary Muratbek Imanaliyev has delineateda practical vision for this "club," viz"satisfying the interests of these twogroups."The SCO provides an umbrella to catalyzeexisting energy projects like theTurkmenistan-China gas pipeline andpipelines from Kazakhstan to China, andfrom Russia to China. The arrival of Indiaand Turkmenistan as SCO members willadd one major gas buyer and seller to themix, thus enabling more competitive pricesetting and weaving a web of thicker interregionalinterdependence. India's presenceas a full member will offset concerns thatChina presides over a monopsony situationin the SCO's energy market.An Indian seat in the SCO is just aroundthe corner, subject to procedural adjustmentsto the charter which are likely to beenacted soon by the existing six members.While for different reasons, China and theUS may be uncomfortable to see India as afull member, a deeper role in the SCOserves Indian interests and balances theglobal power scales.

(Sreeram Chaulia is Professor and ViceDean of the Jindal School of InternationalAffairs in Sonipat, India)NRI TODAY JULY 2011 7Foreign Minister S M Krishna hasdeclared India's desire for a larger anddeeper role in the Shanghai CooperationOrganization.

However much Russia andChina verbally deny that theSCO (Shanghai CooperationOrganization) is a countervailingmilitary alliance againstthe US-dominated NATO, it hasundeniable value in the "newCold War" that Moscow hasbroached on and off.

[ BY SREERAM CHAULIA ]