India is losing interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

India appears to be having second thoughts about its involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as the group’s anti-Western orientation is increasingly at odds with the subtle pro-Western tilt of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign policy.

New Delhi’s creeping doubts about the SCO were first evident last year when as rotating host of the group’s annual leaders’ summit, Modi chose to convene the meeting online rather than in person. The prime minister is now expected to skip this year’s summit, which will be held next week in Astana.

India’s growing discomfort stems in part from the fact that rival China is increasingly in the driver’s seat at the SCO. In fact, except for India, the other members of the SCO are all participants in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which New Delhi has opposed since its launch as a neocolonial enterprise. India can also be said to be the only full democracy among the SCO’s nine member states.

The SCO was launched in Shanghai in 2001 by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. China has spearheaded the subsequent evolution and expansion of the group, while calling on other members to uphold shared values that it labels as the “Shanghai Spirit.”

Much as China has blocked India from joining the 48-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group pending agreement that its strategic ally Pakistan be simultaneously admitted, Beijing also made sure Islamabad was brought into the SCO alongside New Delhi in 2017.

The Sino-Pakistan strategic alliance against India is just one example of the disparate interests at play in the SCO, hindering its transformation into a more powerful and cohesive bloc like the Group of Seven.

Against this backdrop, why did the Modi government agree to join the SCO in the first place?

The decision related in part to India’s known proclivity to hedge its bets. In an era of sharpening geopolitical competition, New Delhi has remained loath to be associated with any power bloc, preferring to be seen as the world’s ultimate “swing state” amid the transition from the post-World War II U.S.-led international structure to a new global order whose contours are still not clearly visible.

In this way, India likely believed SCO membership could help balance its international relationships, including the perception that it was tilting toward the West. The SCO was also viewed as the only multilateral forum that could link India with the countries of Central Asia.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization defense ministers at an April 2023 meeting in New Delhi: India’s presence helps to blunt the tagging of the bloc as an anti-Western grouping.   © AP

In line with the ancient saying, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” advocates of India’s entry argued that the presence of China and Pakistan in the SCO should not be a reason to hold back from participating.

Seven years later, however, it is becoming apparent that the SCO carries diminishing value for Indian foreign policy.

To be sure, the participation of India, the world’s largest democracy and now the fastest-growing major economy, has helped confer a new level of international legitimacy on the SCO, which can otherwise be branded as an anti-Western club of autocracies, especially following Iran’s admission last year.

For Beijing and Moscow, the SCO is a symbol of their deepening cooperation, which has included holding joint military exercises with other bloc members, including drills with Iran in the Gulf of Oman in March.

Indeed, China and Russia see the SCO as constituting an Eurasian alliance to counter Western domination. It serves as their response to U.S. President Joe Biden’s narrative that the world is witnessing a “battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

India’s presence in the SCO not only undermines the framing of global tensions as pitting democracy against autocracy, but also helps to blunt the tagging of the SCO as an anti-Western grouping.

But what does New Delhi get in return? In truth, India secures little tangible strategic benefit. At best, the SCO holds just symbolic value for India by underscoring the independence of its foreign policy and its commitment to multialignment.

In the new global divide between the Western bloc and the emerging China-Russia strategic axis, India wants to serve as a bridge. But India, Russia and China are also members of the BRICS bloc, launched in 2009, so New Delhi does not need to be in the SCO to act as a bridge between world powers.

Furthermore, India’s membership of the SCO, originally established as a regional security bloc, appears incongruent with its close ties with the West and its support for a free, open and democratic-led Indo-Pacific region. Notably, China and Russia reject the very term “Indo-Pacific,” insisting that the region still be called the Asia-Pacific.

In fact, China’s championing of the Shanghai Spirit, which it says is anchored in mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and consultation, seems hollow, given how its furtive encroachments on Indian borderlands have triggered a tense military standoff for more than four years.

In this light, Modi has made a good call by deciding to give the Astana summit a miss. Government officials are offering the excuse that he will be tied up with parliamentary proceedings. But Modi has previously traveled overseas even when Parliament has been in session.

India increasingly appears to be a misfit in a grouping whose aims and objectives it does not fully share. Even as it hews to its independent approach to international affairs, Modi has come to be seen as the country’s most pro-U.S. prime minister ever.

India has now ratified the four “foundational” agreements that all close U.S. defense partners are expected to sign. Under Modi, India has also become more closely integrated into the Quad, including hosting its fellow members in drills wrapped into its annual Malabar naval exercises.

Modi’s withdrawal from the Astana summit does not mean of course that India intends to opt out of the SCO. Rather, it signals that India recognizes not only the SCO’s limitations but also the grouping’s declining salience for its foreign policy.

Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”

source : asia.nikkei