Eurasian bloc seeks world without West
By Nikolas K Gvosdev
What is the significance of "Peace Mission 2007" - the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) exercise now under way at the Chebarkulsk training ground in
Chelyabinsk, Russia - and the summit that will follow in Bishkek?
Is the SCO, which consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan
and Uzbekistan, on the verge of being transformed into a new Warsaw Pact, a
Eurasian counterbalance to the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO)? Simon Tidsall of The Guardian newspaper quoted Pavel Felgenhauer, a
Russian defense analyst, who observed: "As Moscow's relations
with the West deteriorate, the Kremlin is doing its best to seek allies and is
building up the SCO to counterbalance NATO. In propaganda terms, Peace Mission
2007 will be used to the full."
Meanwhile, the Russian newspaper Kommersant, in an article tellingly titled
"Maneuvers to go around the United States", sees the exercises and the summit
that will follow in Bishkek as part of a renewed Russian effort to push back
against the US "on all fronts", from opposing plans to deploy missile-defense
components in central-eastern Europe to "expelling" the US from Central Asia
altogether. Kommersant also highlights the role played by former defense
minister and current Deputy Prime Minister (and presidential contender) Sergei
Ivanov in acting as the godfather of this mission, beginning with his visit to
Beijing last year.
Statements coming from China, however, support the thesis advanced by political
scientists Naazneen Barma, Ely Ratner and Steven Weber that emerging powers are
seeking neither to integrate with nor balance against the US, but to create an
alternative international order that "routes around" Washington. Chen Hu,
executive chief editor of China's state-owned World Military Affairs magazine,
made a point of stressing that "Peace Mission 2007 targets no country, nor does
it mean a military alliance", and argued that the Shanghai grouping is not
trying to create a counterbalancing bloc against Washington. He described it as
a "new type" of regional security organization that has made obsolete the
"traditional security outlook" of seeking a balance of power.
Yes, Chen had a not-so-subtle dig at Washington - noting that countries felt
the need to work more closely together in the Shanghai framework since
"different countries have different anti-terror combat criteria and a few of
them push forward hegemony under the cloak of war on terror". But as Tidsall
commented, "No one in the SCO, least of all China with next year's Beijing
Olympics and its trade and development goals potentially in the firing line,
seriously wanted confrontation with the West."
One of the theses of Weber, Ratner and Barma is that countries in the "World
without the West" remain in play, and India's reaction to the exercises is a
case in point. The Hindu newspaper reported: "While favoring cooperation with
the SCO on trade and economic issues, official sources told The Hindu that
India would like to steer clear of aligning with this six-nation grouping in
military, strategic and political terms."
Security issue
But even if India (and even to a lesser extent China) is not interested in
confronting the West, the emergence of the SCO as an organization sends a clear
signal that that the US is not an "indispensable nation" in this part of the
world. And former ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, an Indian strategic analyst,
notes in Asia Times Online [1] that Moscow is pushing a new "alignment" between
the SCO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO, which includes
all full SCO members except China), which would then be in a position to set
the security agenda for Eurasia. He writes:
Last December, addressing a
Commonwealth of Independent States and Baltic States media forum, Deputy Prime
Minister (concurrently Russia's defense minister at that time) Sergei Ivanov
said, "The next logical thing on the path of reinforcing international security
may be to develop a cooperation mechanism between NATO and CSTO, followed by a
clear division of spheres of responsibility. This approach offers the prospect
of enabling us to possess sufficiently reliable and effective leverage for
taking joint action in crisis situations in various regions of the world."
And one area where this thesis may be put to the test is in Afghanistan.
Bhadrakumar notes that "Afghanistan has become a lump in NATO's throat". China
and Russia are wooing the Hamid Karzai government with promises of support via
the SCO mechanism against a resurgent Taliban - and it must also be noted that
Russia and Uzbekistan still have a good deal of influence over many of the
components that came together as the "Northern Alliance".
Will Washington be more inclined to work with Beijing and Moscow in stabilizing
the Greater Eurasian/Middle Eastern region if NATO falters and the European
Union does not live up to the promise Zbigniew Brzezinski outlined in the
Winter 2003/04 issue of The National Interest, that the US "can look to only
one genuine partner in coping with the 'Global Balkans': Europe"? Bhadrakumar
concludes that "the US will increasingly find itself under compulsion to
perform as a team player, which suits neither its geostrategy nor its standing
as the sole superpower".
At any rate, we are witnessing an interesting test of the "World without the
West" thesis unfolding before our eyes.
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