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CIAO DATE: 3/5/2007
East of the Middle East: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and U.S. security implications
Tim Murphy
December 2006
Abstract
The war in Afghanistan represented an eastward shift in the United States' international focus. Previously concentrated on the Middle East, the United States has reconfigured its foreign policy directives to include interests east of the Middle East. The shift was long overdue. Central Asia is a rising regional security concern, and Chinese and Russian actions therein have cultivated robust political ties. Resulting cooperatives and agreements promote Chinese and Russian regional objectives. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) originally consisted of five Central Asian and Asian countries (the Shanghai Five), ostensibly to unify signatories on economic, social and political platforms.1 However, the SCO is often a proxy to advance Chinese and Russian interests.
Although the SCO is not nominally directed against any specific power, the organization presents several causes for international anxiety. Inclusion requests by countries like Iran, Pakistan and India elevate the SCO beyond a simple economic and political partnership to a regional power that bears watching. SCO policies and agendas frequently clash with those of the United States, creating an adversarial and potentially hostile U.S.-SCO relationship.
The SCO challenges U.S. policy goals regarding its alliance with Taiwan, missile defense policy, and ongoing war in Afghanistan. While these three considerations are hardly exhaustive, they do demonstrate some of the key U.S. concerns regarding the SCO.
