... conflict for the stronger party, pushing hopes for a “final victory” into the distance. This explains why New Delhi and Moscow seek to limit their relations with Islamabad and Kiev to preserving the status quo and minimizing the threat of escalation.
What does this mean for the future of India–Pakistan and Russia–Ukraine relations? First of all, we need to acknowledge that conflicts of this type tend to drag on for ...
... be a challenge for New Delhi in SCO, particularly if the organisation morphs into an anti-U.S. grouping, yet the opportunity could be to leverage better ties with each big power to improve ties with others in this illustrative quadrilateral. Notably, India has improved its links will all SCO members, with the exception of Pakistan, in the last two years. This highlights the potential to reset great power relations with both Russia and China, with cooperation and not confrontation being the pivot of regional strategic orientation. Notably, the Wuhan spirit of cooperative ...
... declarations raises certain questions: To what degree is BRICS suitable as a platform for discussing anti-terrorist initiatives? And can breakthroughs in this area be achieved within BRICS?
Dattesh Parulekar:
BRICS Should Avoid Becoming an anti-US Group
SCO and BRICS
When India and Pakistan were admitted to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in June 2017, it seemed it would replace BRICS as the principal platform for discussing regional security issues. The SCO has several major advantages over BRICS in that regard: first,...
... Strategy until 2025 was an important political component of the summit, a matter of momentous importance for both the SCO itself and for its positioning on the world stage in its new and expanded composition. This was due to significant deepening of the SCO’s geopolitical dimension following the accession of India and Pakistan last year, whose leaders first took part in the organization’s activities at the Qingdao summit. As a result of the expansion, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has become the world’s largest association, the global nature of which Russian ...
... and various scenarios for the further development of the SCO to be implemented. However, the expansion of the organization that followed two years later changed its prospects significantly, narrowing the once-ample scope of opportunities. By embracing India and Pakistan, the SCO passed an important point of no return in its institutional development.
It is not about the expansion per se. Had the SCO accepted Mongolia, Turkmenistan and Belarus – or even Vietnam or a post-UN sanctions North Korea – as full members, for ...
... the officially financed Indian IDSA,
wrote
that “India joining the SCO has largely a symbolic meaning.” He adds that “there is lack of clarity about what it means for India in terms of any specific function and benefits.”
China agreed to let India (and Pakistan) join the SCO because China itself now largely sees the SCO in symbolic terms. China, for a number of years, tried to get Russia to agree on a greater economic focus within the SCO. But Russia refused, and instead continued to push its idea of — in the words ...
... biggest power in Asia in every respect — the Indian economy is slated to surpass that of Japan in size by 2030 according to some projections — should be a much more integral part of Russia’s Asian strategy.
The belief in some Russian quarters that Pakistan can be a participant in major SCO or BRICS infrastructure and other projects within the framework of the India-Russia strategic relationship is unlikely to find a positive echo in Indian thinking, given India’s seven decades of experience with Pakistan’s endemic hostility. Russia’s evolving optic on Pakistan is creating a gap in the hitherto strong ...
... policy. China and Russia have exercised pragmatism in dealing with Indo-U.S. Axis and made India member of SCO in perhaps a hope that India may revert to its so-called policy of non-alignment.Pakistan believes that the simultaneous inclusion of Pakistan and India in SCO would help in bringing the two countries on the same table and in reducing the trust deficit between them. However, there is a misperception that because of the so-called Indo-U.S. strategic partnership, Pakistan is drifting into the Sino-Russian ...
... materialized. China had previously announced its support for Iran’s membership when President Xi Jinping visited the county in January, but in the run up to the summit this support evaporated. Beijing reportedly wanted to focus on the accession of Pakistan and India before turning to Iran. Other SCO countries did not even acknowledge discussing Iranian membership in their official statements. A summary of the summit’s proceedings released by the office of Uzbekistan’s president merely mentions that Foreign Minister Zarif was in attendance....
... the status of full SCO member states in the near future will boost the organization’s potential and provide a fresh impetus to further securing its role on the regional and international arena.
The
signing
of the Memorandum on the Obligations of India and Pakistan for becoming SCO member states was a landmark event that took place in Tashkent (link in Russian). The final phase of their accession to the organization was thus launched. It also reaffirmed the positive dynamics of the SCO’s development achieved at previous summits,...
