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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chas. who wrote (39369)	8/29/2008 6:07:50 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217977

just in in-tray, per stratfor, about shanghai and cooperation or some such thing, and imo, stratfor fails to understand the purpose of sco for china even as it errs by still believing the usa navy can and can afford to blockade china Russia, China: Competing Visions of the SCO Stratfor Today » August 28, 2008 \| 2251 GMT MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images Russian President Dmitri Medvedev (L) in Tajikistan on Aug. 27 before the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summitSummary For Russia and China, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) — which is holding its annual summit Aug. 28-29 in Tajikistan — serves different purposes. The SCO focus for Russia is outward, as a security alliance that might someday counter NATO, while China views the SCO as a security guarantor in Central Asia. As the summit concludes in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, Russia is in no position to push its vision of the SCO on China. Analysis The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit Aug. 28-29 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, brought the leaders of China and Russia together for the first time since the Georgian war ended. Speaking at the summit in the Tajik capital on Aug. 28, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev said the SCO is “an authoritative organization that commands respect … and will consider adding new members.” Highlighted by the Russian resurgence and the Georgian war is an inherent tension between two competing visions of the SCO: Moscow’s and Beijing’s. Since the organization’s inception in 2001, Moscow has seen the SCO as a political and security alliance that could one day rival NATO in terms of organization and capability. With its competition with the West coming to a head in recent weeks, Russia would prefer that the SCO evolve into a true military alliance as soon as possible. This, however, does not correlate with the Chinese vision of the organization. Beijing’s involvement in the SCO is rooted in geography and economics. China — or rather its economic and political core that runs along its coast — is essentially an island. Surrounded by the East and South China seas to the east, harsh desert to the north and west and impassible mountains to the south, the Chinese core is isolated and dependent on maritime trade for its existence. This wasn’t always so. Prior to the 1980s, the Chinese economy was not dependent on maritime trade. All the resources that agricultural China needed were to be found in its territory and immediate periphery. Chinese dependency on maritime trade is relatively new; it was only with Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, begun in 1978, that a modernized and industrialized China became dependent on far-flung sources of energy and raw materials to fuel its manufacturing- and exports-focused economy. Today, over 90 percent of China’s trade is dependent on sea-lane transport. By depending so much on maritime trade — particularly for energy and raw materials from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia — China has left itself extremely vulnerable to the U.S. Navy, which could destroy the Chinese economy with a sustained blockade. Therefore, the land route to and from Central Asia is crucial for China’s national and economic security. It would tap Central Asian resources as well as bring Chinese goods to Europe faster. This is why China’s cooperation with Russia in Central Asia is so important. For China, the main point of the SCO is to manage its competition with Russia over Central Asia so that its alternative land route is protected and developed. China is investing heavily in the region’s railroads and energy infrastructure. The main imperative is to tap Central Asian resources; a land bridge to European markets would be a secondary but lucrative sweetener if it could be realized. The role of the SCO as conceived by China is to allow Russia and China to be open and communicative about their intentions in Central Asia and maintain security in the region. The idea is to prevent any conflict with Russia over the Chinese economic and infrastructural push into Central Asia while allowing for security cooperation to ensure that radical Islamist groups do not make matters worse in China’s restive Xianjing province. China has been very involved in military and law-enforcement training in Central Asian countries and in sharing information on suspected terrorist organizations. The last thing the Chinese want is for the SCO’s security focus to be turned outward, against NATO or some other external force. China obviously has no intention of provoking the United States by signing on to some sort of anti-NATO alliance. Related Links The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed China’s Maritime Dilemma China, Russia: Wrangling Over the Future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Geopolitical Diary: The Limits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization For Russia, however, security within the region — while important — has never been the defining imperative for the SCO. Russia prefers security alliances over mere political/economic ones (one of the many reasons the Warsaw Pact flourished while the Comecon did not). For all intents and purposes, Russia controls Central Asia militarily and does not face the same security threats emanating from the region that China does. Moreover, all of the region’s relevant infrastructure dates to Soviet times and already conforms to Moscow’s economic and political template — although Russia certainly appreciates being able to negotiate with China over how much oil and gas these links could divert to Beijing under the auspices of the SCO. Expanding membership in the SCO exemplifies Russia’s desire to orient the organization outward. At the moment, Central Asia is obviously the focus. But by attempting to lure India, Pakistan, Iran and even Afghanistan into the SCO fold, Russia would shift the organization’s focus to the greater Euroasian landmass as a possible counter to NATO. China is opposed to this because it would shift the focus from Central Asia and because it would give Moscow more partners with whom to leverage against China. Stratfor sources indicate that China is particularly opposed to Indian membership and is fairly adamant that Iran is off-limits as long as it has outstanding issues with the United States. At the moment, China and Russia can balance each other over the fulcrum of Central Asia. If India were to come in, it would bring its notoriously confrontational attitude toward China and upset the balance. There is no simple way to resolve the competing visions of the SCO. China obviously does not want to reject Russia in an overt manner; its replies to the idea of SCO expansion are polite but curt and inconclusive, just as its “support” of Russia was during the intervention in Georgia. China needs Russia to acquiesce to its presence in Central Asia and certainly does not want to see Russia start funneling various Islamic organizations into Xianjing from the Central Asian states it controls. Russia, on the other hand, does not want to make Beijing choose between its economic relations with the United States and a security arrangement with Moscow — at least not yet. This is wise, considering that the choice would probably be unsatisfactory for the Kremlin. Nonetheless, Russia cannot afford to have the SCO summit be seen as a disaster — its isolation following the Georgian war is considerable as it is. With China wary of directly challenging the United States or of recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia because of its own secessionist regions, it would behoove Moscow not to push its vision of the SCO on Beijing.