The Shanghai Cooperation Organization SIPRI Policy Paper No. 17 Alyson J. K. Bailes, Pál Dunay, Pan Guang and Mikhail Troitskiy Stockholm International Peace Research Institute May 2007 © SIPRI, 2007 ISSN 1652-0432 (print) ISSN 1653-7548 (online) Printed in Sweden by CM Gruppen, Bromma Contents Preface iv Abbreviations and acronyms v Map of member and observer states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization vi Table A.1. Basic data for the member and observer states of the Shanghai vi Cooperation Organization, 2005 1. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a regional security 1 institution Alyson J. K. Bailes and Pál Dunay The background and purpose of this assessment 1 Origins and basic features 3 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization members and their interests 8 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its members’ security 20 Evaluation and conclusions 27 2. A Russian perspective on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 30 Mikhail Troitskiy Introduction 30 Russia in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 31 Russia and the substance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s work 35 Looking ahead 40 In conclusion: Russia’s general vision 44 3. A Chinese perspective on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 45 Pan Guang Introduction 45 The strategic significance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization for China 45 The demonstrative role of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Chinese 46 diplomacy China’s driving role in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 48 The substance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s work: achievements 50 and challenges Looking ahead: big tasks and a long journey 55 In conclusion: key points 58 About the authors 59 Preface There is a clear trend in the 21st century for regional organizations to multiply, to become more multifunctional and to devote themselves in whole or part to security goals. Old-style alliances with a defined opponent are now rare, and most groups address themselves to the reduction of conflict (internally or externally) and to transnational challenges such as terrorism. It is no coincidence that regions where these structures are absent or weak are also those with the greatest remaining problems of interstate tension or internal violence. While all these phenomena are somewhat under-researched, the forms taken by multilateralism in the area of the former Soviet Union have been particularly little studied. There is a widespread assumption in the West that, because they involve imperfectly democratic states and often reject externally defined norms of govern- ance, such groups are bound to be illegitimate or ineffective or both. This Policy Paper sets out to test and challenge such generalized views by looking in detail at the most dynamic and complex of such groupings, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Founded in 2001, the SCO includes China as well as the Russian Federation and the Central Asian states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Its deeper goals thus include managing potential Sino-Russian tensions or com- petition, but its overt activities are directed first at transnational threats and, add- itionally, at economic and infrastructure cooperation. The present study seeks to illuminate the motives and experiences of the SCO’s members—with the help of two chapters contributed by a Russian and a Chinese expert, respectively—and to offer a dispassionate analysis of the organization’s qualities, strengths, weaknesses and effects. The judgements that emerge are mixed but include the recognition that the SCO makes some real impact on the security of the wide territories it covers and that it has real potential for further development. This Policy Paper forms part of a SIPRI study programme on modern regional security institutions and has benefited from specific project support by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I would like to thank Pan Guang and Mikhail Troitskiy for their independent contributions; my co-author for the opening chap- ter, Pál Dunay; and David Cruickshank for the editing. Alyson J. K. Bailes Director, SIPRI May 2007 Abbreviations and acronyms ARF ASEAN Regional Forum ASEAN Association of South East Asian Nations CIS Commonwealth of Independent States CSTO Collective Security Treaty Organization ETIM East Turkestan Islamic Movement EU European Union EURASEC Eurasian Economic Community NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe PFP Partnership for Peace RATS Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure SCO Shanghai Cooperation Organization UN United Nations Moscow RUSSIA Astana KAZAKHSTAN Ulan Bator MONGOLIA Beijing UZBEKISTAN Bishkek Tashkent Dushanbe KYRGYZSTAN Tehran TAJIKISTAN IRAN CHINA Islamabad PAKISTAN New Delhi INDIA SCO member state SCO observer state 0 1000 km Map of member and observer states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Table A.1. Basic data for the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 2005 Area Population GDP GDP per Military expend- State (km2) (m.) (US$ b.) capita (US$) iture (US$ m.) China 9 572 900 1 315.8 2 244 1 715 44 300 Kazakhstan 2 724 900 14.8 57 3 786 592 Kyrgyzstan 199 900 5.3 2 477 76 Russia 17 075 400 143.5 764 5 323 31 100 Tajikistan 143 100 6.5 2 364 . Uzbekistan 447 400 26.6 14 521 . = figure not available; GDP = gross domestic product. Sources: Area and population: Turner, B. (ed.), The Statesman’s Yearbook 2007 (Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2006); GDP: International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Eco- nomic Outlook Database, Apr. 2007, URL <http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2007/ 01/data/index.aspx>; Military expenditure: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database. 1. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a regional security institution ALYSON J. K. BAILES and PÁL DUNAY* The background and purpose of this assessment Established in 2001 with China, the Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as members, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has remained one of the world’s least-known and least-analysed multilateral groups. It makes little effort itself for transparency and is only patchily institution- alized in any case.1 Such useful research materials as are available on it are often in Chinese or Russian.2 Outside its participant countries, the SCO has attracted mainly sceptical and negative comment: some questioning whether it has anything more than symbolic substance, others criticizing the lack of democratic credentials of its members and questioning the legitimacy of their various policies. These points have been made especially strongly by commentators in the United States following the inclusion of Iran—along with India, Pakistan and Mongolia—as an SCO observer state and hints that it may attain full membership.3 The time is now ripe to attempt a more serious and, so far as possible, objective analysis of what the SCO is, what it means for its members and for the outside 1 The English-language section of the SCO website at URL <http://www.sectsco.org/> provides the organization’s basic documents. Some of its sections, such as ‘Media on SCO’, have little content and in general it does not reflect new developments in a timely fashion. 2 For a sample of the Russian literature see Lukin, A. V. and Mochulskiy, A. F., ‘Shankhaiskaya organizatsiya sotrudnichestva: strukturnoye oformleniye i perspektiy razvitiya [Shanghai Cooperation Organization: structural formation and perspectives of development], Analiticheskiye Zapiski, no. 2(4) (Feb. 2005). For a good Chinese analysis (in Russian) see Chzhao Huashen, Kitai, Tsentral'naya Aziya i Shankhaiskaya Organizatsiya Sotrudnichestva [China, Central Asia and the Shanghai Cooper- ation Organization], Carnegie Moscow Center Working Paper 5/2005 (Carnegie Moscow Center: Moscow, 2005), URL <http://www.carnegie.ru/en/pubs/workpapers/73064.htm>. 3 Before the SCO’s 2006 Shanghai summit, the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, com- mented on Iran’s application for full membership that ‘To think they should be brought into an organ- ization with the hope that it would contribute to an anti-terrorist activity, strikes me as unusual.’ Quoted in Saidazimova, G., ‘Eurasia: observer Iran grabs limelight ahead of Shanghai alliance anni- versary’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 13 June 2006, URL <http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/ 2006/06/1c64fc44-9081-49f0-8b69-2c144f52dcab.html>. * This chapter is based in part on Bailes, A. J. K., Baranovsky, V. and Dunay, P., ‘Regional security cooperation in the former Soviet area’, SIPRI Yearbook 2007: Armaments, Dis- armament and International Security (Oxford University Press: Oxford, forthcoming 2007), pp. 165–92. 2 THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION world and what direction it may be evolving in. First, it is clear that the SCO is here to stay. It has developed the self-elaborating dynamic and the influence on neighbouring states that are characteristic of successful regional initiatives else- where—such as in Europe and South-East Asia—but have never been attained in purely post-Soviet groups such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).4 It has also shown a remarkable speed of evolution, considering that its more informal precursor—the Shanghai Five group of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—was established only in 1996 and the first SCO summit was held just six years ago. As with the economic growth of some Asian countries, it may be doubted whether this rate of advance can be sustained, but there is no guarantee that it will not be. Second, the SCO both channels and illuminates many of the most interesting issues and themes of Asian security today. It embodies a new and unprecedented model of Chinese–Russian relations following the initial post-World War II Sino- Soviet pact,5 the relapse into hostile competition between two great Communist powers after 1958, and the gradual reconciliation that culminated just before the events of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square.6 It sheds light on China’s and Russia’s visions of their mutual interaction in Central Asia, on how the Central Asian states themselves view and react to this and on how the various SCO members view and treat the evolving US engagement in the region.