Sergey Saenko, international observer

Since the beginning of the 21^st century, the world has begun to change rapidly. The COVID-19 pandemic, the crisis around Ukraine, unprecedented sanctions and information pressure on Russia by the United States and a number of other countries of the collective West have made these changes irreversible. No one will deny that today the world is really going through global changes, entering a new era of rapid development and large-scale transformations. Against this background, the modern system of international challenges and threats is becoming more complex, a dangerous degradation of the state of affairs in the world is observed, existing local conflicts and crises are aggravating and new ones are emerging.

The system of international relations that existed until recently is becoming a thing of the past, as are individual attempts by the United States to recreate a unipolar world. To make predictions about what the multipolar world will be like is, frankly, a thankless task. Only one thing is clear: the process of its crystallization will not be easy, perhaps even painful. One can only hope that the formation of a renewed system of international rules and institutions will take place without a global catastrophe.

The situation that has developed in the world today poses a number of issues, both current and strategic, for each country and international organizations. However, if the search for answers at the national level is mainly associated with the development of anti-crisis socio-economic measures, then at the regional level it is with the need to coordinate joint actions and develop a collective response to new challenges and threats that have arisen in connection with the crisis around Ukraine.

This approach is especially relevant for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO or Organization). Today this association includes Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It must be assumed that Belarus will soon be admitted to the  SCO family. Let’s also not forget that Azerbaijan, Armenia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Cambodia, Qatar, Mongolia, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Sri Lanka are included as observers and dialogue partners. Applications from a number of states to establish partnership relations with the SCO are at the final stage of consideration.

From a geostrategic point of view, the SCO member states are united by a common desire for independent, progressive development in the conditions of modern international realities, and the existing economic potential allows the Shanghai Nine to play the most active role in the international arena. In addition, the Organization is given special weight by the fact that out of nine de jure and de facto nuclear powers in the world, four – Russia, China, India and Pakistan – are members of the SCO.

In the context of the crisis around Ukraine, the issue of the coming food crisis is being raised again, now with renewed vigor, at all levels. Moreover, this topic is hotly discussed even in the industrialized countries of the West. At the same time, objective statistics show that the share of the SCO countries now accounts for about 40% of all world livestock and crop production, which allows us to conclude that the member states of the Organization are not in danger of starvation, despite the fact that about 3 4 billion people, which is more than 40% of the total population of the planet.

We emphasize that in the current crisis conditions, the SCO is faced with the need to critically analyze and take a fresh look at the state of cooperation in the trade, economic, banking and financial spheres. First of all, we are talking about improving the efficiency of the Interbank Association and the SCO Business Council, expanding the possibilities of using national currencies in practice in mutual settlements between the member states of the Organization, strengthening ties between the financial markets of the countries of the region and international banking institutions.

It is important to remember that when the Organization was created in 2001, the heads of state identified development through security as a priority area of ​​the SCO’s activities. Achievements here include the existing high level of interaction between the ministries of defense and law enforcement agencies; the growing authority of the SCO Regional Antiterrorist Structure (RATS) and regular joint antiterrorist exercises. The dramatic developments in Afghanistan in August 2021 demonstrated how important these aspects of the SCO’s activities are.

Against the backdrop of events around Ukraine, the topic of Afghanistan was somewhat lost in the news feeds, but it has not gone anywhere. It is difficult to predict what scenario events will develop in this country, left to the mercy of fate by the United States. The future of Afghanistan is largely in the hands of the Afghans themselves. However, it is obvious that the Afghan factor will remain an important external link for the development of the SCO for a long time to come, especially given the concentration of terrorists there and the illegal distribution of drugs from Afghanistan.

It should be emphasized that the regular SCO summit in Samarkand, held in mid-September this year, demonstrated the gradual process of strengthening the multipolar world and the increased interest in the Organization from other countries. Recent moves with the admission of Iran to the SCO have significantly expanded the geography of coverage, and applications from countries such as Argentina demonstrate the potential of the Organization’s global interaction beyond Eurasia.

Some NATO representatives fear that the SCO could turn into an anti-Western alliance that would become a kind of antithesis of Western hegemony, including manifestations of hard power. However, the value of the Organization initially lay in its non-bloc status, and this fact was emphasized by the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev on the eve of the summit in Samarkand. For this reason, the expansion of the SCO to include such countries as Iran and, in the future, Turkey, as well as the Arab states, is an extremely attractive option for the states of Central Asia (CA).

The Central Asian countries see this as an opportunity to establish multilateral ties, while being within the geopolitical umbrella of the Organization. Each participant retains both its sovereignty and introduces an additional element of diversity. This, on the one hand, limits the ambitions of individual members, but, on the other hand, shows a difference from typical Western models built on strict control and suppression of the will of subordinate members by the leader-patron, primarily the United States.

In addition, the SCO is also a platform for smoothing out contradictions, since it includes such rivals as Pakistan and India. At the same time, India still has certain disputes with China. Apparently, some countries associate their interest in joining the Organization precisely with the hope of finding a compromise and eliminating historical grievances. There are still quite tense relations between countries in the region. Armenia and Azerbaijan; Iran and Saudi Arabia, UAE; Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan; Turkey and Iraq are just those that are heard. Although, it should be noted, the prospects for removing these differences are still not clear. Therefore, the SCO remains the only working structure for the implementation of the policy of good neighborliness.

In conclusion, we note that in the future, the SCO should become not only a powerful financial and economic pole of the future multipolar world, but also a serious political decision-making center, since the world needs a new economic and political ethics, and strict observance of international law.