Source:
https://scmp.com/article/604646/western-response-muted-shanghai-pacts-games

Western response muted to Shanghai pact's games

As the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation's summit and military drills draw to a close, experts say its stance towards the west depends on Moscow and Beijing.

In a week of round-table discussions and joint war games, the SCO - which includes Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan - fuelled media speculation that it was maturing into a threat against western interests in Eurasia.

The presidents of all six member countries gathered in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, on Thursday with leaders from Iran, Pakistan, India and Mongolia to discuss strategic and economic co-operation.

Yesterday they watched the last of the Peace Mission 2007 military exercises in Chelyabinsk, Russia, that included tanks, fighter planes, helicopters and 6,500 troops.

During the Bishkek summit, the group issued a joint statement calling for a collective approach to energy issues that would increase communication between producers, transit countries, and consumers - a move that could threaten US energy interests in the Caspian Sea.

'Russia seeks to strengthen its role in the SCO by proposing to create an energy club,' said Dmitri Trenin, senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

'Moscow hopes to play up its role of principal supplier of oil and gas, as well as Gazprom's position in Central Asia vis-a-vis China's role as the principal energy importer.'

During President Hu Jintao's state visit to Bishkek earlier in the week, Kyrgyz Prime Minister Almazbek Atambayev asked that a gas pipeline to be built from energy-rich Turkmenistan to China through Central Asia also include his country.

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the joint military exercises including SCO members - which some experts have called poorly veiled sabre-rattling against the west - should become a regular occurrence.

But yesterday, mirroring past statements from the US State Department on the SCO threat, the reaction from the US embassy in Bishkek was muted.

'The United States shares common interests with the members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation,' a spokeswoman said.

That included common interests in defeating terrorism, resolving border disputes, countering the spread of narcotics and promoting regional economic and infrastructure development, she said.

Nato had not formed an official response by yesterday afternoon, a spokeswoman said from Brussels.

Political analysts also shied away from dramatic conclusions.

'[The SCO] is anti-US by implication, a bulwark or barrier to the further expansion of US power, with a focus in Central Asia,' Dr Trenin said.

'But it is not actively anti-US. Neither Russia nor China is interested in creating such an alliance.'

One indication of that, said Andrew Kuchins, a Eurasia expert with the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, was that both Mr Putin and Mr Hu had backed down from expanding the organisation's membership to Iran.

In the end, the group's stance on the west was about 'not so much the SCO as China's and Russia's policies', Dr Trenin said.

'And increasingly, their Central Asian policies exclude the United States,' he said.

'This year's SCO exercises, with the Russians and Chinese supplying the bulk of the forces and watching each other closely, suggest that Beijing and Moscow will act together on the region's security issues.'