SCO’s multilateralism splits India’s foreign policy ambitions

Regional aims, mobilised through the SCO, will more than often collide with India’s aims for strategic autonomy and multipolarity

India playing host to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has been diluted around the larger G20 agenda being promoted as the main multilateral forum where New Delhi wishes to exert its influence from a global perspective. Nonetheless, success of the SCO summit is also being seen as a critical deliverable, which relies on visits by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping attending both the SCO and G20 alike.

For the Government of India, the coming months will be a test for how well established its push towards ‘multipolarity’ truly is. Scholar and author Harsh V Pant has rightly called the SCO a “strange beast”, considering the wide gap between the agenda that birthed the original ‘Shanghai Five’ in 1996, that of counterbalancing American unipolarity, to the situation today where Russia’s war against Ukraine may end up pushing Moscow to become Beijing’s satellite state.

Also Read | Two top meetings with poor outcomes

Nonetheless, both Russia and China have found common goals packaged under the narrative of building stronger anti-West ecosystems, specifically as tensions around Taiwan increase and other, newer quasi-alliances such as the ‘Quad’ take shape. “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we have not seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together,” Xi said to Putin in Moscow in March.

For India, the SCO’s ambit interestingly is much more closely grounded in regional realities than, say, the G20, or other multilateral institutions. The foreign ministers’ meet in Goa brought in China’s foreign minister to India for the second time within weeks as the situation on the border regions continues to remain tense. Even Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari attended, becoming the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India since 2011. Expectedly, both New Delhi and Islamabad marketed the visit as a function of the multilateral nature of the SCO, and having no bilateral connotations despite Bhutto’s visit coinciding with a terror attack in Rajouri, Jammu & Kashmir, that killed five Indian Army soldiers.

The tangible benefits of the SCO are still worthy for India. The platform remains a point of engagement for India and China. Previously, New Delhi had hoped that it could leverage both its access and the power wielded by Russia to counter-balance China and its influence, particularly in its neighbourhood. This viewpoint was rendered moot as the Ukraine conflict unfolded. The other aspect which was a core concern for the SCO was countering terrorism, which also has been brought into question as Central Asia increasingly becomes a geography where a battle for influence is unfolding, not just between the West and the East, but between Russia and China. The SCO members have previously come to odds among each other here, as seen in October when Beijing blocked four times in as many months moves by India and partner countries at the UN to sanction terrorists from Pakistan-supported group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Also Read | Bhutto calls for collective approach by SCO to combat terrorism

Afghanistan returning once again under the thumb of the Taliban in 2021 saw China, Russia, and Iran (a future SCO member) take centrestage in filling up the geopolitical vacuum left behind by the US and its allies. The democratic process designed around the US presence also collapsed, making it easier for Moscow and Beijing to deal with a Kabul under an authoritarian rule. This, worked for the Taliban as well, as within months the group found some international support that went beyond just the Pakistani military. This rejig also made it crucial for India to remain proactive in the SCO for the sake of its domestic and regional security aims even though Pakistan-supported groups such as LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed among others seldom feature in the SCO’s counterterror narratives by name, thanks to the Beijing-Islamabad duopoly.

Regional aims, mobilised through the SCO, will more than often collide with India’s aims for strategic autonomy, multipolarity, and trying to find its balance between an incoming bi-polar world order as tensions between Beijing and Washington DC get magnified. While India sees economic and strategic interest in Central Asia, Iran, among others, in what it approaches as its ‘extended neighbourhood’, the impact of China is becoming increasingly paramount, with the future of Russian polity, economy, and influence up in the air.

India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that overall, the foreign ministers’ meet successfully pushed the agenda of this year’s summit forward, that of moving towards a “secure SCO”. How the SCO realistically navigates the ongoing geopolitical churn remains to be seen.

(Kabir Taneja is Fellow and Head of West Asia Initiative, Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.