SHANGHAI COOPERATION
ORGANISATION
BACKGROUND GUIDE
THE 2015 GREATER WASHINGTON
CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
GWCIA XX • NOVEMBER 7, 2015
WELCOME FROM THE CHAIR Hello Delegates! My name is Mackenzie Fusco and I am your chair for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization! I'm a sophomore at George Washington University double majoring in International Affairs and Anthropology with a concentration in Contemporary Cultures and Societies. I participated in MUN during my junior and senior years of high school, and was active on the collegiate circuit last year. Additionally, I am the director of the George Washington University Program for International Education (GWUPIE), which teaches MUN skills and procedure to DC high school students. Originally from Pennsylvania, I came to GWU to pursue my passions in our nation's capital. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world has been run by a US-­‐led liberal international order based on the beliefs and ideals of western civilization. Globalization, the global economic catch-­‐up, and unparalleled integrated markets however have allowed states, such as the People’s Republic of China, the Russian Federation, and other “emerging” countries, to demand a greater say in how the globe is governed. Fast forward to today, and we see that the West is no longer the invincible powerhouse it once was. Economic woes such as the 2007 Financial Crisis in the United States and the Debt Crisis in the European Union both highlighted the dangers of the western capitalist system and have dealt a major blow to the legitimacy of the current world order. These problems have highlighted domestic issues in United States and other European countries, forcing them to look inwards and craft ways to address these issues. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was founded in 1996 originally to stop what was seen by the Russian Federation and the PRC as an expansion of western influence in Central Asia. Since then it has developed into an organization that promotes economic ties, military cooperation, and cultural understanding to better integrate its member states. While some might see these activities as simply neighbors seeking to better relations with each other, others see an organization meant to rival the United States, NATO, and the current world order. The recent addition of India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan to fully fledged members from observers and the soon addition of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the roster of SCO members will add further credibility that the SCO is not an organization to be taken lightly. During this committee you will be acting as representatives from a variety states that see an opportunity to increase your own nation’s standing as well as to protect the territorial integrity of your borders. Whether you’re worried about unauthorized drones flying over your skies, armies ignoring your borders, or being taken seriously on the international stage, even guests to this SCO session will have much to gain. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at [email protected]. Looking forward to a great GWCIA! MACKENZIE FUSCO, CHAIR SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
VICE CHAIR BIOs
COLE PERRY
Cole Perry is a Freshman Civil Engineering major at GW from Memphis, Tennessee. He previously served as Vice President of the General Assembly for the Tennessee Model United Nations, and this is his first conference with the George Washington International affairs Society. He would like to thank the International affairs society and the conference staff for this wonderful opportunity.
LINDA LUO
My name is Linda Luo, and I am a freshman at the Elliot School of International Affairs. I am originally from China but have lived in Bangladesh for the past nine years. In my freshman year of high school, I started my journey as a MUN delegate, and in the past four years, I have attended multiple Dhaka MUN Conferences held in Bangladesh, and participated in the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools in Manila, as well as the Harvard MUN Conference in Beijing. For me, MUN is dressing up in formal attires that you have never imagined you would wear, screaming at the top of your lungs to defend a resolution that forced you to pull an all-­‐nighter to finish, using hilarious analogies to attack a country that stands against you on a particular issue and forming friendships that are nothing short of absurd with delegates you have just criticized. I’m confident that with your participation, we will have a fantastic conference and in the meantime, feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. ABOUT THE COMMITTEE
About the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
The purpose of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) purpose is to promote economic, political, and military ties between member states. While it has at times been described as the geopolitical foe to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), SCO does not yet have either the membership or authority to be considered to be so. SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
Brief History of SCO
The SCO was first founded in 1996 and was then known as the “Shanghai Five”. At the time it was not an official organization and was used as an informal designation for a group of countries (Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) that had come to a number of agreements on economic cooperation in various annual summits. Following a 2001 summit in Shanghai, the original “Shanghai Five” and Uzbekistan (then a newly admitted member) signed the Declaration of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that created the contemporary SCO. Since then, the SCO has come to numerous agreements on trade and economic cooperation and has created new sub-­‐organizations to deal improve coordination of political, economic, and military ties between member states. Member States
The actual members of this committee are Central Asian states and those states that have a strategic interest in their stability and continued status quo in the region. However, due to the far-­‐ reaching consequences of a potential SCO military agreement, there have been a plethora of states that have been invited to participate in the discussion of increasing military cooperation within the region. The states invited, also known as “guest” or “observer” states, are primarily those who believe that they are marginalized by the current international balance of military power and stand to gain by banding together with the SCO to be in a powerful organization that takes their concerns more seriously. The Russian-­‐led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) is also a participant in the discussions primarily to lend its expertise in the creation of a far-­‐reaching military-­‐
treaty organization. Delegates should view this committee as a truly historic moment in deciding the fate of international security. Just as the creation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the early days of the Cold War dictated global politics for decades to come, a military alliance based on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization would have far-­‐
reaching effects on the world order and fundamentally change the balance of power in the international community. SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
TOPIC: MILITARY ALLIANCE
Overview
A military alliance is an agreement between one or more military factions or countries to cooperate typically for the sake of collective security. According to the US Department of State in a 1950s memo, military alliances are created “to advance respective nationalistic interests of the parties” and to provide coordinated, joint military action if one of the involved parties were to go to war. The main motivation for the creation of military alliances is for countries to protect themselves against threats from other countries; however, entering into a military alliance also typically strengthens relations among the nations in the agreement. While there have been several attempts in the past to create a more militarily integrated Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they were primarily based on fighting terrorism in Central Asia. Military exercises, information sharing, and capacity building were primarily on the agenda while the questions of military alliances were considered strictly off the table. This was due to the People’s Republic of China, who saw that entering into a military alliance with the other members of the SCO would create a situation where they would be permanently obligated to a region and be called to support and defend the interests of other countries with which it otherwise would have no reason to. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, being primarily composed of countries that want to see a change to the status quo of the global balance of military power, is what many nations in the region consider to be the best option to band together and create a force to change how the world works and deals with issues of international security. Currently, NATO is the largest and most powerful military alliance comprised of primarily western nations that sometimes comes under criticism for making decisions that are not in the interest of countries that are not a part of the alliance. Creating a military alliance based around SCO and its member states would not only create a more equally distributed balance of military power throughout the globe, but bring new states’ interests to the table when discussing international conflicts. Roadblocks to an Alliance
However, by doing so also creates an extremely controversial situation both domestically for many of the countries involved as well as on the international stage. The founding of an organization SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
meant to directly compete with NATO would have a ripple effect affecting every aspect of international relations and economics. Not only would tensions between SCO alliance states and NATO states increase, but it may also result in the entrance of new countries in existing conflicts due to the new alliances. Other critics worry that superpowers in the eastern region, namely Russia and China, would only use smaller states for gain of their own country’s interests, which may not be agreed upon by the region as a whole. Many NATO members are similarly concerned that a formal military alliance in the region would be too great of a shift of international power, and that the alliance would overpower NATO and begin to dictate the current system of international security. Although the members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) consist of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the organization is dominated by China and Russia. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan are also members of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), an intergovernmental military alliance. Uzbekistan was originally a member, however, it has suspended its membership in 2012. China is not part of the CSTO, however, it would be able to make the biggest military contributions if it joins the alliance.
SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
BLOC POSITIONS
China/Overview
The SCO is divided into two blocs, led by China and the Russian Federation respectively. China, the dominant power in the SCO, has used the organization mainly as a tool for economic cooperation and historically, is not interested in military alliances in general. China aims at maintaining the SCO’s status as a political-­‐economical organization, and preventing the organization’s transition into a political-­‐military organization. Due to the fact that China would like to keep all trade doors open, it does not want the intensified relationship between the SCO and CSTO to create the image that the SCO intend to become a “NATO of the East”. CSTO-­‐SCO cooperation is suspected to strengthen Russia’s position in the SCO by bringing in two of its satellites, Armenia and Belarus which may be another reason behind China’s objections towards the CSTO-­‐SCO cooperation (Haas 22). Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan shares the same position as China on the issue of strengthening military ties between the CSTO and the SCO, and threatened to leave the SCO as a result of its unwillingness to cooperate with the CSTO. A reason for Uzbekistan’s resistance towards stronger ties between the two organizations was its power struggle with Kazakhstan on hegemony over Central Asia. In addition, Uzbekistan indicated that it rather conducted military exercises in cooperation with NATO. Russia
On the other hand, Russia intended to bring the two organizations closer together in as early as 2003, aiming to increase the fight against terrorism, drug trading and probably also to create an “Eastern bloc” around Afghanistan, against Western military involvement (Haas 21). Countries like Tajikistan share a common ground with Russia in standing jointly against illegal drug trafficking across the SCO member-­‐states. Other Countries
In recent years, the blocs within the SCO appear to be less rigid, and signs indicate that in addition to economic and law enforcement cooperation in Central Asia, the organization may be beginning to emphasize its military aspect (Kucera 2014). Although China’s major security interests do not always coincide with that of Russia, Central Asia may be an exception as both countries are concerned with the instability in Afghanistan and are interested in handling regional security, therefore eliminating the need for extra-­‐regional actors such as the United States (Tiezzi 2014). In addition, energy security is an issue where China’s economic interest and Russia’s military interest converge within the SCO. SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
As a result, large-­‐scale SCO military exercises have been revived which indicate an increase in military cooperation. Although China’s new leader, Xi Jinping emphasized on the need for SCO members to safeguard regional security and stability, he has also highlighted the fact that the SCO is a “partnership instead of alliance.” (Tiezzi). Although China may be interested to engage in military operations with other SCO members in the form of military exercises, the fundamental difference between China and Russia’s positions is the fact that China respects the sovereignty of the other member states, whereas Russia does not (Scheineson 2009). QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
1. What does your respective country have to gain with a military alliance between other states? 2. What are your country’s strategic interests? 3. What could your country provide to a military alliance? 4. How much does national sovereignty play into this issue? 5. How will your relation with other countries (namely the United States of America) be affected by a military alliance? HELPFUL RESOURCES
•
Shanghai Cooperation Organization Official Website http://www.sectsco.org/EN123/ •
Website of the Russian Presidency of the SCO http://en.sco-­‐russia.ru/ •
Website of the Regional Anti-­‐Terrorism Structure of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization http://ecrats.org/en/ •
BBC Country Profiles http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX
WORKS CITED
"After BRICS, Putin Hosts Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit In Ufa." RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. July 10, 2015. Accessed July 23, 2015. De Haas, Marcel. "The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Momentum Towards A Mature Security." Accessed July 23, 2015. Kucera, Joshua. "Russia and the SCO Military Exercises." The Diplomat. August 28, 2014. Accessed July 23, 2015. Lin, Christina. "NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: New Energy Geopolitics for the Transatlantic Alliance." Worldsecuritynetwork. August 12, 2009. Accessed July 23, 2015. Scheineson, Andrew. "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization." Council on Foreign Relations. March
24, 2009. Accessed July 23, 2015.
Tiezzi, Shannon. "The New, Improved Shanghai Cooperation Organization." The Diplomat. September 13, 2014. Accessed July 23, 2015. SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION • GWCIA XX