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Senator Brownback, members of the Senate, House, and the Commission, I’d like to thank you for inviting me to testify before you today concerning China’s relationship to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This relationship raises many significant issues relating to both Chinese policy in Central Asia and towards the United States as it seeks to maintain its position in that increasingly critical region. It also highlights some of the dilemmas that now confront both China and the SCO as they move forward in Central Asia.
Undoubtedly, and to the unforeseen chagrin of American officials as well as the delight of both the Russian and Chinese governments, the SCO has become a force to be reckoned with in Central Asia. Today American officials well know that Chinese policy in Central Asia is openly anti-American and that the SCO is China’s main policy instrument for operating there on a multilateral basis. This realization of the SCO’s stature is a somewhat recent development even if it was always clear that China intended the SCO to be used, among other things, for purposes of anti-Americanism in Central Asia. In early 2005 some State Department officials stated that they had never had occasion to deal with it in their work on Central Asia. After the SCO’s summit in 2005 that was quickly shown to be a misguided approach and one that Washington is still paying for.
For example, as the most recent and fifth annual summit of the SCO in 2006 showed that one of the few things its members are united about is that Washington should not interfere in their domestic arrangements. The pervasive fear that earlier American calls for democratization, or alleged outside American agitators, e.g. NGOs like the Open Society Institute or the CIA might somehow stimulate hardy souls to demand reforms or launch uprisings in Central Asia that threaten the existing leaders remains widespread throughout the media and political elites of Central Asia. Such arguments are regularly disseminated by both the Chinese and Russian media which, in the absence of a countervailing American public information strategy, have the field to themselves. On the other hand, this continuing argument by both local leaders and the Chinese and Russian governments that all the dissent comes from outside underscores the continuing fragility and pervasive illegitimacy of local regimes in Central Asia. And that fragility and sense of illegitimacy are among the factors that drive the leaders of those regimes to seek support for their domestic structures of power from Moscow and Beijing.
Thus whatever else Moscow, Beijing, and the other members might say, the SCO functions as a kind of holy alliance against democratization and even liberalization. Indeed, those liberalizing and democratizing trends are regarded by the leaders of the members and observers of the SCO except for India and possibly Mongolia with unfeigned alarm. Consequently the so called new great game in Central Asia in which the SCO plays an important part is not just about energy access or military bases, it is also very much a political and ideological struggle over the proper organization of the domestic politics of local regimes and their approaches to international organization at the regional if not global level.
For their part, Beijing and Moscow too also know how unstable the Central Asian states as well as their own regimes are and fear the same kind of democratizing forces that have unseated earlier post-Communist regimes in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. Therefore they too see the SCO as a primary instrument by which to advance their ideological, political, economic, and possibly military objectives in Central Asia. Anti-Americanism and anti-democracy objectives are both prominent among those objectives and are linked together by China and Russia because they regard the U.S. threat as being both ideological as well as political and military in nature.
Certainly the SCO’s summit communiqué in 2006 made clear its continuing opposition to the influence of American calls for democratization in Central Asia and implicitly reflected the belief that Washington is behind all opposition or revolutionary trends in Central Asia. But in this respect that communiqué only followed in the wake of the SCO’s 2005 communiqué and the earlier Russo-Chinese declaration of June 1, 2005 that formally stated the identity of their approaches to contemporary issues in world politics against American objectives and ideas. This notion of an American ideological as well as military-political threat plays well in China as well as in the other members’ capitals, including Moscow, not least because it corresponds to the Chinese (and Russian) leadership’s assessment that America and its ideology of exporting democracy (which is how it is perceived by the Chinese leadership) represent the number one threat to the domestic stability and possibly integrity of the state. But this threat assessment hardly provides an accurate basis for dealing with locally generated challenges to security either in Central Asia or in China, or in Russia.
At the same time, China’s antagonism to the U.S. presence in Central Asia is also strategic. China views U.S. bases in Central Asia as constituting a potential source of its strategic encirclement. So while President Hu Jintao proclaims that the SCO is a non-aligned organization not directed against anyone else, he is not only dissembling but he is also hinting at one of its key purposes from China’s standpoint. Not only is this organization intended to provide a platform for China’s comprehensive engagement with Central Asia, it also is a mechanism for ousting any American presence there and thus neutralizing America’s perceived effort to line up alliances in some form of an anti-Chinese bloc. At the same time there is no doubt that China wishes to project its military power beyond its borders into Central Asia in order to defend against threats like terrorism and Islamic insurgency to its own government -- most notably in Xinjiang -- and to defend its growing and ever more important interests -- among them energy access -- in Central Asia. Indeed, during 2005 Russian sources candidly revealed that China sought to replace Washington’s military bases in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, something not to Russia's taste.
In addition, the Chinese campaign against the American presence in Central Asia suggests that statements to the effect of a common Sino-American opposition to Islamic terrorism must be greatly qualified. At best such cooperation is quite limited and co-exists alongside of an unconcealed rivalry for influence throughout Asia, not just Central Asia. Attempting to oust Washington from its bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan at a time of heightened insurgency by the Taliban hardly squares with such a common interest in fighting terrorism. Indeed, Chinese spokesman Li Jianchao said that antiterrorism should not become a basis for “double standards”, i.e. American leadership in the war. Instead, it was only the unforeseen and from Moscow and Beijing’s standpoint somewhat “inconvenient” resurgence of the Taliban and its decision to attack the allies in Afghanistan in force in 2006 that probably held Kyrgyzstan back from submitting to Sino-Russian pressure to force Washington out of its base at Manas. The statements made then by prominent Russian leaders like Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, and by those present at the SCO’s 2005 summit that the violence in Afghanistan had subsided, bringing into question the continuing need for U.S. bases are no longer heard.
And indeed, under conditions of the Taliban’s resurgence and the earlier ouster of U.S. forces from Kyrgyzstan, the alleged threat posed by those bases to either Beijing and/or Moscow no longer seems quite so important either to them or to frightened regimes in Central Asia. Given the Taliban’s resurgence and the continuing fear of these regimes about the purported growth of terrorist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan, that U.S. presence may be reassuring for local governments and even lucrative for the Kyrgyz regime. Therefore the 2006 summit of the SCO had to seek other positions on which it could agree and act. Although more attacks on Washington were widely expected at the 2006 summit of the SCO they did not take place. In other words, the SCO needs to find new missions beyond anti-Americanism and opposition to so called “color revolutions” in Central Asia.
So while the SCO’s fifth anniversary summit in Shanghai in June, 2006 certainly displayed its inherent anti-American proclivities, it also revealed other interesting aspects of this organization and the policy dilemmas facing China in Central Asia. One policy dilemma for the SCO is the question of its future profile. China and Russia both say they want the SCO to evolve into a regional provider of security through intelligence and economic cooperation. And indeed recent ministerial conferences suggest a consensus emphasis on economics, transportation and infrastructure projects, and trade might become the key day to day activities of the SCO which has launched 127 economic projects as of September, 2006.
Yet this commonality belies certain visible and potentially significant differences with Moscow. Russia and China are energy rivals in Central Asia with Russia striving to monopolize Central Asian exports, a stance that by definition constrains China’s ability to deal directly with these states. Russia‘s political and economic system could not survive unaltered without monopolizing Central Asian energy while China’s government believes that it must have independent access to energy according to its own lights and not be excessively dependent on any one power. This principle applies as much to Russia as it does to America. And despite the existence of the possible use of the SCO as an “energy club” as advocated by President Putin, Russian and Chinese behavior still shows a preference for bilateral energy deals with Central Asian states where they can monopolize their power vis-à-vis those governments. This continuing bilateralism cannot but erode the foundations of the regional cooperation which are and have always been weak and introduce more competitiveness into regional diplomacy.
Meanwhile Russian President Putin has called for the transformation of the SCO into an energy club which represents a continuation of Russian efforts to establish a gas, and if possible, oil cartel in Central Asia where it determines the destination of Central Asian energy flows. It is difficult to see how the Central Asian members could voluntarily accept such limitations on their most important economic asset and sovereignty with respect to international trade. And it is equally difficult to see how such an energy club benefits China which, as a consumer, has interests opposed to those of producers like Russia who are addicted to monopolistic schemes of energy organization. Efforts to turn Central Asia into a Russian-dominated energy cartel also contradict China’s basic and vital interest in diversifying its sources of reliable energy supply as well as Central Asian regimes’ equally compelling interest in diversifying their customer list and in getting their goods out to world markets.
Thus both Moscow and Beijing use the SCO as a facade behind which they compete for bilateral deals with member states. Russia seeks to monopolize natural gas, uranium, and other energy assets and achieve military bases while China pursues military bases much more indirectly and quietly and competes with Russia for access to energy holdings and pipelines. Simultaneously China also is undertaking massive infrastructural projects of rail and road transportation with these states, making it a potential trade rival to Russia. China has enjoyed considerable recent success in consummating these deals with Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, as well as with neutral Turkmenistan. In these deals Beijing offered credits to Tajikistan, loans to Uzbekistan, is conducting feasibility studies for pipelines with both Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and is discussing funding a highway through Tajikistan. Beijing is also financing construction of cement factory in Kyrgyzstan that will provide many jobs there and has begun discussion of a gas pipeline connecting Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to China, and to a projected Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline to go along with the existing oil pipeline between those two states. And finally it is steadily enhancing its penetration of local consumer goods markets. So, if the SCO is to be a trading, economic security, and cooperation forum, then the competing energy policies if Russia and China will have to be adjusted.
Moscow is also pushing a new scheme to unify its nuclear energy resources and hydropower systems with those of Central Asia to checkmate American and Indian projects for tying Central Asian electricity and hydropower sources to South Asia. Russian success in al these schemes not only means subordinating Central Asia to Russian economic and political dominance. Uzbekistan, perhaps with Russia’s covert support, has also raised the prospect of unifying Russia’s economic and military organizations in Central Asia, the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization. (CSTO) As Richard Weitz of the Hudson Institute recently observed, the merger of these two organizations would create an institution whose functional responsibilities and mandates would then dwarf those of the SCO. That would certainly give Russia a superior position vis-à-vis China in Central Asia.
But Russia’s plans for energy cartels in gas, nuclear energy and hydropower not only lead to situations enhancing its own superiority, reducing Chinese influence, and excluding Western influence in the energy and defense sectors. Those policies also entail perpetuating and extending an inherently undemocratic, unstable, corrupt, repressive, and often vicious status quo that is at the root of the potential for instability in all these countries. To the extent that China might choose to support such schemes –- and it certainly supports continuation of the political status quo in Central Asia -- it also would then be complicit in that extension and perpetuation of what is an inherently unstable status quo in Central Asia.
On the other hand, if the SCO becomes primarily an organization whose purpose is the promotion of trade and energy deals its role in providing security will then become open to question. And then the hidden rivalry between Moscow and Beijing over its future trajectory will also possibly come out into the open. And we may also then see more overt signs of Central Asian governments’ anxiety that their aspirations for the SCO are being disregarded and marginalized, fears that have already been expressed in Kazakhstan.
Since the SCO charter portrays it as a classic example of a collective security organization where all members are obliged to come to the aid of any member menaced by terrorism, separatism, or extremism, we must ponder the issue of security here. Both Russia and China claim that the SCO will not be a new NATO or clone of it. In other words it is not to be a military alliance. This represents a victory for China which has long claimed that the SCO would not be a military bloc whereas Russia visibly flirted with that idea. This posture could also represent the views of local regimes who do not wish to be swallowed up in a military bloc with such major powers as Russia and China.
Yet if we consider the evidence to date it points in an ambivalent direction. As I stated above, the original charter of the SCO is a classic document of collective security, mandating that each member come to the aid of any other member who requests help from an attack by terrorists, separatists, or extremists. China, like Russia, has also sought military bases in Central Asia and we can safely assume that should new opportunities arise it will do so again. Since 2001 China and Russia have also conducted a growing number of exercises either with Central Asian states or together that are allegedly under the auspices of the SCO. And these exercises are growing in scope and size and continuing as we speak. If the SCO is not a military organization than why should there be a need for such exercises and what is their ultimate purpose?
In this connection it is noteworthy that every commentary on the Sino-Russian exercises of 2005 commented that they were intended as anti-American in nature, whether the message be directed at U.S. policy in Central Asia, Taiwan, or even Korea. Indeed, the size and scale, as well as the scope of those exercises clearly went beyond anti-terrorist operations in Central Asia and fostered considerable speculation as to the larger purposes behind them.
Therefore the destiny and purposes of the SCO remain undefined. It simply is unclear if it will be just a political and economic association or a true provider of hard security and under what form of organization. This point pertains as well to the question of its future membership. India, Iran, and Pakistan have applied for membership here. Iranian membership was a bridge too far because of the current delicate stage of the six-power talks over Iranian nuclearization. Russia and China held back on support for Iran out of a desire not to confront Washington directly on this subject at a particularly delicate time in the negotiations over a proposed package to bring Iran back to nuclear negotiations. But beyond that, it is clear that members like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan publicly opposed such membership and Iran’s nuclear program. They fully realize that either the success of that program or an American attack on Iran entails new threats to regional security and potential disturbances that they prefer not to confront. Furthermore, under the SCO charter, members might be asked to defend Iran if it is attacked by Washington even though such attacks hardly are due to terrorism, separatism, or extremism, the three casus belli in that charter. Since nobody wants to face these possibilities the issue was temporarily shelved despite Iran’s hopes for membership and clear signs of Moscow’s and Beijing’s inclination to favor this if it could be done at no cost.
Similarly Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf emphasized Pakistan's location as the bridge to the Indian Ocean as a justification for membership. But its continuing tolerance of Taliban and al-Qaeda incitement precludes its being too trusted in Central Asia or Moscow, not to mention New Delhi. Moreover, Pakistan's membership without Indian membership immediately would prejudice the organization in dangerous ways.
Since either Iranian or Pakistani membership would then formally oblige all the other members to protect it against the three kinds of attack cited above even though it is hardly clear that any of them wishes to be locked into such a commitment vis-à-vis Iran or Pakistan such membership remain unlikely for now. Moreover, giving Pakistan and probably Iran membership forces the existing members to also consider giving India membership and vice versa. Clearly nobody here wishes to be tied to one country in South Asia or to Iran should a war break out in those areas. Indeed Russia championed India’s observer status and China Pakistan's status, thereby indicating their own divergent approaches to South Asia and neither of them is prepared to actually go to war on for Iran if it is attacked due to its nuclear program. So the differences between them are visible.
And for all the talk of a strategic triangle including Russia, China, and India, Beijing, despite its détente with New Delhi, is not eager to see India play a major role in Central Asia. After all, it is busy trying to expand its ties to Iran and Pakistan as well as Central Asia in both energy and strategic affairs, e.g. help for constructing the Pakistani port at Gwadar. Its strategic aims are still tied to supporting Pakistan in order to confine India and Indian power to the subcontinent.
Indeed, Indian President Manmohan Singh did not even show up at the June summit, suggesting Indian wariness about the SCO’s military potential. And the Indian Energy Minister who did represent New Delhi used this occasion to advocate the primacy of an economic and energy agenda for the SCO. India obviously cannot be a party to a direct attack on Washington which is what Russia and China wants the SCO to be and which this summit was. India also cannot afford to be seen in public with Iran even though it could usefully emphasize to the Iranian government the risks that Tehran is running by its program of nuclearization.
So while it is prepared to cooperate with Russia and China on energy and direct security issues affecting the three of them, India will not and cannot be part of the grand design for the SCO now being hatched in Moscow and Beijing. The presence of its energy minister and his speech suggests that its principal interest in the SCO is access to energy and broader trade with Central Asia, not anti-American gestures. Indeed, India is clearly involved in Washington’s new grand design to help reorient Central Asian economies to South Asia through the provision of common links in trade, transport, and power generation. That is too big an opportunity for Delhi to risk at the present moment.
The diverging Russo-Chinese answers to the question of the future role and direction of the SCO also obliges Russia to rethink its goals for the SCO. The aforementioned divergences between Russia and China obliged Moscow to accept that the SCO could not be a provider of hard security. So it has had to embrace the Chinese idea of the SCO being primarily an organization for the coordination of anti-terrorist activities (of which an alleged 250 were intercepted last year) and trade. Russia, until 2005, largely saw the SCO as a Chinese initiative which it did not have to take quite so seriously. But as China pursued bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 2005 and the SCO failed to ward off either the Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan or the Andijon uprising in Uzbekistan, it and China both rethought the value of the SCO and determined to breathe new life into it and advance their own agenda where feasible and wherever possible also a common agenda as well for the SCO. Russia, as stated by President Putin in a June 14, 2006 article, sees it as a part of a network of Asian security organizations, but following a much narrower agenda than does China. This network would supposedly provide a basis for Russia's enhanced standing in Asia as well as for its becoming a major economic actor in the region. After all a Russia left alone in Asia with China almost automatically would become a junior partner to Beijing, hardly an appealing alternative for Moscow’s elites. But Putin refrained from dealing with specific issues. Still, Russia’s vision of Asia does not entail a complete U.S. withdrawal from it but rather an American withdrawal from Central Asia which is vital to the continuation of the present Russian political system.
Therefore Russia now views the SCO as an organization in which it must vigorously take part as opposed to its earlier view that it was mainly a Chinese initiative which it need not take too seriously. Accordingly President Putin suggested that it become a basis for networking with other Asian security organizations Beijing’s stance, on the other hand, has always been that the form of multilateral cooperation embodied in the SCO is a template for a new, essentially anti-American, and alternative system of relations in Asia and the world. That is, the SCO is actually the embryonic form of a future anti-American system in Asia as a whole in which China plays a major role and leverages its new pro-multilateralism policy as a means of influencing these organizations in its direction.
Politically too China sees the SCO as a model of its relations with all of Asia as regards questions of global international order. It has always emphasized that while this organization is supposedly non-aligned, it is in fact, something of a template for China’s view of a future world or at least Asiatic order from which American military power and calls for democratization would be either excluded or at least restricted to a minimum. In this respect it is the opposite of the U.S. alliance system in Asia. As Joshua Cooper Ramo demonstrated recently, China's policies toward Central Asia, particularly the development of the SCO exemplify the process by which China hopes first to build a prosperous neighborhood under its auspices and thus shelter its exploding economic development from both internal and foreign threats. But beyond that Beijing also hopes to reshape successfully Asian security agendas to attenuate the U.S. alliance system and replace it with one that is ideologically and politically more congenial to Beijing’s insistence on its unfettered sovereignty and freedom to maneuver in world affairs.
Step one for the SCO was to build the group, the first multilateral group China had started on its own. Step two: expand it to discussions of trade, economics and energy. Step three: begin discussions on more substantive security partnerships. The SCO has gone so far as to conduct its own joint military maneuvers, in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region. This approach of deepening regional multi-level ties will likely be repeated in other forums, such as ASEAN+ 3 grouping (ASEAN plus Japan, Korea, and China).
Although the SCO has built structures of cooperation and achieved a certain level of influence, it is by no means established as a successful security provider. Russia prefers the CSTO as a vehicle for providing military security and EURASEC as a vehicle for economic cooperation with Central Asia. Yet among the members of the SCO economic cooperation is limited and bears the signs of incipient Sino-Russian rivalry. Ultimately the internal and external security of Central Asia cannot be built exclusively or even primarily on the basis of an anti-democratic or anti-American platform. Therefore the SCO will have to confront and adapt to new challenges if it is to continue being both relevant and effective. In other words, the SCO must find new reasons for its existence and justify its continuation. On the other hand, given the SCO’s importance to China as the first international organization headquartered there and as its first membership in a collective security project, we can hardly expect China to simply let it fail to come to grips with its new challenges. Thus the fifth birthday summit of the SCO is not only an occasion for self-congratulation and anti-Americanism, but also an occasion for new assessments concerning China’s program for Central Asia.
Thus behind the facade of agreement on stopping calls for democratization and for pursuing a war on terrorism that is opposed to America’s -- e.g. the attempt to oust Washington from its last base at Manas, a move that hardly signifies any sense of real threat from Afghanistan-based terrorism -- Moscow, Beijing and the other members and observers face serious differences of opinion. These comprise the members’ posture towards Iran, towards Pakistan, and India’s relationship to the other members, these also being issues that divide the observers -- India, Pakistan, and Iran from the members.
And so while NATO has had and still has its problems, the SCO is not going to become an Asian NATO anytime soon. It clearly lacks NATO’s ability to forge a consensus either on interests or on positive values. The SCO’s consensus is a negative one, where the parties agree what it is they don’t like. But unlike NATO which had one leading party, the SCO has two, Russia and China. And since they show every sign of using this organization for their own individual interests and domination of the region at the expense of smaller and external powers, it is quite possible that differences will emerge behind the facade of unity and that those differences will weaken rather than enhance the SCO’s unity. If that be the case, Washington must be alert to exploiting those possibilities and not neglect this organization as it did until 2005. It must also bring home to members and observers alike that they pay a demonstrable price for attacking American and their own anti-terrorist interests and display that price if need be. While the political, ideological, and military dimensions of the great game continue to heat up, it should be clear that this is along game with many twists and turns and one whose outcome is still inconclusive. While the SCO may claim to be riding high, a more serious examination shows that with new stature come new and possibly more difficult challenges whose outcome cannot yet be predicted.
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