5 July 2024, NIICE Commentary 9316
Arunima Singh
The SCO Summit 2024 was held in Astana, Kazakhstan, on July 4, 2024. The summit pulled together leaders from India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Belarus to deliberate on issues of global concern. The 24th meeting of the Council of Heads of the State of the Shanghai Cooperation commenced the meeting by adopting the SCO Development Strategy until the year 2035 by chiefly incorporating resolutions on combatting terrorism, separatism, extremism, economic development, anti-drug strategy, climate, energy cooperation, and eco-tourism. However, the SCO strived to bring regional cooperation and focused on security issues as an international concern to signal the world about border threats.
Furthermore, the notable attendees of the SCO Summit were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. This year, the theme of the SCO was “Strengthening Multilateral Dialogue- Striving Towards a Sustainable Peace and Prosperity. The summit espoused the Astana Declaration, 20 resolutions, and three statements from the Head of State, including the “World Unity for Just Peace and Harmony ” initiative and ON SCO Improvement. Though the SCO treats security as the bulwark against border intrusions, it is difficult to say that having China in its circuit that it can truly uphold the principles of non-intervention. Along with that the global audience must be aware of the leadership of the SCO by the communist camp over democratic values, ethos and human rights. As China is still seen employing violence against innocent Tibetan people just after the SCO summit.
Moreover, China and Russia are caught up in the race and are seen vying to exercise dominance and influence over Eurasian nations. Furthermore, the SCO achieved a capstone moment by giving Belarus membership to join the SCO Summit. This inclusion policy has signaled the world of SCO’s expanding membership and made a historic breakthrough but it must be observed that the membership has been only permitted on commands of the Sino-Russian partnership. In addition, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko thanked the SCO for his country’s accession as a full member, stressing Minsk’s readiness to cooperate with China (the new chairman of the SCO) to implement several important projects. Lukashenko called on the SCO members to take the initiative to build a genuinely indivisible global security and stressed that the projects reached by the SCO partners in the fields of energy, transport, logistics, finance, and industrial cooperation will bring significant benefits to the SCO member states and beyond.
The critical agenda of its meeting was premised on strengthening multilateral dialogue in which security and stability were marked as the top issues of concern and contention. Other areas of discussion were Promoting Economic and Trade Cooperation, Encouraging Cultural and Humanitarian Collaboration, Addressing Environmental Challenges, Advancing Digital Transformation, Strengthening Regional Connectivity, and Expanding membership. India has played a significant role in voicing its security concerns. In addition, India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar said that “priority must naturally be given to combating terrorism, saying, if left unchecked, it can become a major threat to regional and global peace.” India accentuated the need for “complete disengagement of troops and restoring peace along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).” Along with that, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Hi and India’s External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar concurred to fasten both military and diplomatic actions to carve out solutions for conflict-prone regions in Eastern Ladakh. During the summit, India took immense pride in announcing the “Make in India” initiative as an engine of international economic growth and expressed its will at a global stage to join hands with the Global South in boosting economic ties and capacity building.
Overall, it is noteworthy that India took a staunch side against terrorism, and at the SCO meeting, Dr. Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, made a caveat to other countries to seclude those countries that nurture terrorists and turn a blind eye to the acts of terrorism. He proposed the need to counter terrorism and has forthrightly paved the way for using the Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure, which deals with security and defense issues. What became a vital discussion was the consensus gained and support shown by Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, and Pakistan to execute the BRI spearheaded by China in the name of “collective interconnectivity.” Through text, Prime Minister Modi responded by saying, “Respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity is essential for connectivity and infrastructure projects. So, too, are non-discriminatory trade rights and transit regimes. The SCO needs to deliberate seriously on these aspects”. By and large, India also promulgated the proper execution and use of artificial intelligence at the summit’s center stage. It stepped up to work towards building a robust network for AI cooperation because it is the first country among the countries to develop a National Strategy on AI.
However, China’s geostrategic ulterior motives in championing the BRI and strengthening the CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) create an atmosphere of threat and tension for India. In addition, at the SCO summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly spoke about establishing trade and energy cooperation with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He also talked about providing food security to Pakistan by increasing the supply of food grains. It is henceforth evident that the SCO Summit 2024 may indicate that it may act as a harbinger of Chinese intent, or it can cause more polarization within the group because, in actuality, China and Russia are fighting to attain power, this is because one hand China under the leadership of Xi Jinping envisions to give momentum to its BRI project, the dragon aims to get its claws into the organization to fulfill its ambitions, while on the other hand, President Putin wants to maintain a “status quo” by firmly establishing control over Central Asia. This automatically shows the ambiguity present amongst the SCO members in giving justice to the principles of SCO that are contingent upon tackling double standards of terrorism and the vows proclaiming that the SCO would never militarize outer space.
Conclusion
To sum up, event though the SCO 2024 attempted to act as another international platform to deliberate upon ongoing issues of humanitarian concern the clash of priorities amongst the members depicted the scattered vision of the SCO. However, it did broaden its ambit of discussion by promoting dialogue on counterterrorism, trade, economic development, formulating anti-drug policies, environment, climate justice, and artificial intelligence to strive for excellence in mitigating global challenges but it is still vague to envision a bright future of the SCO due to polarization and instability.
Arunima Singh is a Research Intern at NIICE and is currently pursuing her B.A. (Honors) in Political Science at the Lady Shri Ram College For Women, India.
