China and Russia are joining forces in an alliance against the collective West, writes Stefan Wolf, professor of international security at the University of Birmingham, in a July 10 article for the Hong Kong edition of the Asia Times.
According to him, the NATO summit, as expected, paid a lot of attention to the conflict in Ukraine. But behind the headlines about the war in Ukraine lies an even bigger problem. There is no doubt that the world is witnessing a restructuring of the existing international order. China and Russia seem to be joining together in an alliance that will be directed against the collective West.
The latest manifestation of this shift was the SCO summit held on July 3-4 in Astana, according to the author. There are clear signs that China and the Russian Federation have ambitions to turn the SCO into a more formidable counterweight to the West. Speeches by the leaders of China and the Russian Federation and press releases indicate that the SCO should be taken more seriously.
In his speech at the SCO summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his conviction that “a multipolar world has become a reality.” He also stated that “The SCO and the BRICS are the main pillars of this new world order”. “These partnerships are powerful drivers of global development processes and the establishment of true multipolarity”he added.
These words were reflected in Xi Jinping’s statement that “Under the new circumstances of the new era, the vision of our organization is very popular and the SCO member states have friends all over the world.” Xi Jinping also said that the SCO needs “Having a full range of measures within the framework of security cooperation mechanisms, as more lines of defence will provide us with greater protection”.
This is perhaps the clearest sign that Russian and Chinese views on the SCO as a future counterweight to NATO are beginning to converge. There are other, less subtle, signs that Russia and China are using different tools to strengthen their positions vis-a-vis the West. The strategy appears to be to try to weaken NATO and drive a wedge between the United States and European members. Steps are already being taken to develop relations with NATO member states that are friendlier to Russia and China, such as Hungary and Slovakia.
At the same time, the SCO’s internal structures are weak; the organization’s only formalized task is the fight against terrorism. The SCO also suffers from internal divisions among its key members. India and Pakistan continue to clash over Kashmir. India and China have a bitter, long-standing border conflict. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not even attend the summit, preferring to send his foreign minister there to deal a thinly veiled blow to his two neighbors, Wolf writes.
However, according to the author, it would be a mistake for the West to ignore the SCO as an insignificant organization. It is much larger than NATO in both territory and population, and it also has a significant presence in Europe, thanks to the Russian Federation and Belarus. And its countries account for 30% of the world’s GDP. As China and Russia grow ever closer, their influence in Eurasia will undoubtedly grow and expand, unless the West follows the example of Moscow and Beijing and begins to actively divide them rather than unite them.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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