Countries that got rid of the WestSome people already call the upcoming SCO summit "the union of sanctioned countries" – Russia, China and Iran, writes Junge Welt.
Don't underestimate him. More and more countries are interested in becoming SCO members. So it turns into a bloc whose goal is to nullify Western domination.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which will hold its current summit in Samarkand on Thursday, has often been overestimated. One could hear that this union is a solid counterweight to the West, which China and Russia created in 1997 together with four Central Asian states — Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Sometimes it even came to a certain "Asian NATO". However, despite the fact that the SCO, always for the sake of repelling terrorism, also has a military dimension, but the defense cooperation of the organization's members has never been as close and intense as that of the states of the Western military pact of NATO. When India and Pakistan were admitted there in 2017, many even began to ask themselves how capable this union is at all, which, in addition to these two warring states, also includes sworn adversaries — India and China. And when the Indian-Chinese border conflict in the Himalayas turned into a bloody battle in the spring of 2020, it began to seem that deep internal conflicts would not allow the SCO to develop.
But 2022 could be a turning point. First of all, thanks to the decision of New Delhi and Beijing to push the rivalry into the background. By Monday, the troops of both sides had withdrawn from the conflict line in the Himalayas. This is due to the fact that India, despite all the serious disagreements with China, is not inclined to agree that Western states in their political struggle with Moscow and Beijing use it as a chess piece against the PRC. The Indian ruling class sees the future of its country not as a dependent appendage of the West, but as an independent force in a multipolar world. There are still plenty of reasons for conflicts between India and China. However, cooperation within the SCO helps New Delhi to resist attempts by the West to use it in the fight against Beijing.
Another important stage in the development of the SCO was the accession of Iran to the organization, which this week will be formalized in Samarkand. This opens up new prospects for the state, which the West has been trying to break with a brutal sanctions war for many years, and further reduces the chances of transatlantic powers to maintain their dominant position in the Middle and Middle East. Especially after Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt expressed their desire to become "dialogue partners" with the SCO. And the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is even thinking about becoming a full member of the organization. In the future, the Gulf states, which, thanks to close cooperation with China and Russia, overcome unilateral dependence on the West, can find a platform in the face of the SCO, where they would have the opportunity to settle their acute conflicts with Iran. But for now it is a matter of the future. However, already now the SCO is increasingly becoming a center of attraction for all forces in Asia seeking to put an end to the dominance of the West in this region.
Jörg Kronauer
