Role of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Goes beyond Managing Russia-China Relations in Central Asia
By Benyamin POGHOSYAN, PhD, Chairman, Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies
As the world comes closer to multi-polarity, the role of such organizations as SCO will grow further. Russia and China will seek to use them as a counterbalance to western dominated international political and economic organizations, such as G7, the EU, the World Bank and IMF. In the present context of emerging great power competition, the SCO started to be viewed less as a tool to manage Russia – China relations in Central Asia, or counter terrorist threats from Afghanistan, and more as a significant grouping of non-western powers in the emerging multipolar world.
The war in Ukraine has given a new impetus to the discussions about the transformation of the global order. Experts, academicians, and politicians have been debating the potential counter-weights of the emerging post-cold war order since the global financial crisis of 2008. There were different opinions about what the new world order could be like. Among the options discussed were a new bipolar world dominated by the US-China rivalry, a multipolar world where key players – the US, China, Russia, India, EU, and perhaps others – will be in a constant fight for influence and prestige, or complete chaos with no rules and no dominant players, opening the prospect of returning humankind back to a geopolitical jungle. READ MORE
| External Relations | The Caspian and Central Asia
