The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: Towards a full-grown security alliance?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is a regional international organisation comprising China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as member states and Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India as observer states. Encompassing a considerable territory in and around Central Asia, a large part of the world population, energy sources, nuclear arms and significant armed forces, the SCO in theory has a formidable economic, political and military potential.

Recently some remarkable developments have taken place in the area of security policy of the SCO. August 2007 saw - for the first time - simultaneously conducted military exercises and a political summit of the Heads-of-State. Other new conceptual approaches on intensified military-political security cooperation are: the de facto application of a 'military assistance' concept in the 'Peace Mission 2007' drills; the intensifying relationship between the SCO and the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO); the signing of a structural arrangement for joint military exercises; and the development of threat response and conflict prevention mechanisms. In addition to military-political issues, energy security, which increasingly is identified as a vital element of security policy, is gaining weight in the SCO. In July 2007 the 'SCO Energy Club' was established, with which the organisation may aim for a common energy approach, above all in strengthening energy security.

This Clingendael paper analyses these current advances in and other aspects of SCO security policy and its possible implications. Should they be regarded as the onset of a movement of the SCO towards becoming a solid military-political alliance, or are these occurrences nothing more than ad-hoc events?

The SCO still lacks a considerable number of elements essential to become a mature security institution. Moreover, SCO member states and observers also display large differences, such as contradictory political and economic interests. Nevertheless, the intensification of the security policy of the SCO is to such an extent that a cautious development towards a full-grown security organisation can no longer be excluded. If this is the desire of its member states, such a development will still take a considerable number of years before the SCO can truly be described as the 'NATO of the East'.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dr Marcel de Haas, Senior Research Fellow of the Clingendael Security and Conflict Programme, was responsible for drafting the structure and most of the contents of this paper as well as for the overall editing. Dr Frans-Paul van der Putten, Research Fellow at the Clingendael Asia Studies (CAS) on behalf of the Clingendael Security and Conflict Programme, drafted Chapter 6 'China's interests and the possibility of a security role for the SCO outside Central Asia'. CAS also funded dr. de Haas' fact-finding mission in August 2007.