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Shanghai Meet : India’s security stakes

	June 19, 2006

Harjit Singh



Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to keep away from the fifth Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit may be driven by some unexplained domestic pre-occupations. But, his absence from this regional security set-up may be misinterpreted in some quarters as keeping away from it because an interaction with Iranian President Mehmud Ahmedinejad, who too was invited, on the sidelines of the meeting, would not be viewed kindly in Washington. That the Prime Minister holds the External Affairs Ministry portfolio after the exit of Natwar Singh, had made it all the more important for him to attend the SCO summit where India enjoys observer status and may be upgraded as a full member.

Pakistan is already lobbying strongly for full membership as also some other countries. The United States would not have liked India’s involvement with the SCO for yet another reason: it views the organization as

a counterbalance to its own influence in the region. The nuclear deal with America is important and some

temporary restraints in foreign politics perhaps were not considered as a heavy price to win it on the

Capitol Hill when it was decided to send Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to Shanghai instead of the Prime

Minister.

The United States believes that China is using the SCO to make forays into Central Asia which is

falling into its economic and strategic zone after the decline of Moscow. Beginning with a rail link between

its Western Xianjiang province and Kazakhstan, China has used the past decade to tighten its grip on the

economies of Central Asian States. No wonder, the US is increasingly viewing the SCO as a military

confederacy that is being used both by China and Russia to squeeze it out of the region. The anti-US streak

in the grouping was visible from the declaration issued at the last summit meeting which called for the US

setting a deadline to withdraw air bases from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan which it established in the pre-

Taliban days to use them to support military operations against them in Afghanistan. While Uzbekistan

subsequently made the US vacate the base, the lease for its base in Kyrgyzstan expired on May 31.

In the early days of the SCO, the US had thought that with its emphasis on regional security and

regional economic cooperation, it would mainly concentrate on the Central Asian region. But, it was pained

to see its agenda being expanded to a multi-directional foreign policy that could play off the US strategic

and security interests in the region.

To some extent, the US itself is responsible for Russia strengthening its security and economic ties

with the erstwhile Soviet Republics with the help of China through the SCO. After the disintegration of the

Soviet Union, many of its former Republics like Ukraine and Georgia remained loyal to Moscow as their

economic sustenance depended on their linkages with it. But, slowly and steadily, the US began to woo

them into the American fold and gave covert and overt help to the people and the political leadership there

to rebel against Moscow. Revolutions like the Pink Revolution, the Rose Revolution and the Red Revolutions

were triggered against Moscow and in a very systematic way, through legitimate and illegitimate means,

electoral and non-electoral ways, pro-Moscow leaders were made to quit. This made Putin wary of

American designs and prompted him to join hands with China to float the regional grouping to secure his

country’s interests in its backyard.

Regardless of how the US views it, the SCO has today emerged as an international organization with

a considerable weight. It covers an area of over 30 million square kilometers or about three-fifths of Eurasia

and a population of some 1.4 billion. It also controls a large part of the world’s oil and gas reserves and

includes two of the world’s five declared nuclear powers. With India, Pakistan and other countries having

strong stakes in their energy security which they can secure by becoming full members of the SCO, in the

long run, it will be very difficult for the US to continue to use its clout to keep these countries, seeking full

membership of the grouping, away from it even by dangling the incentives of economic and nuclear energy

packages.