Eurasian alliances challenge US clout

by Michael Richardson, New Zealand Herald - July 24, 2007

China and Russia are seeking to cement their strategic partnership and create a multi-polar world in which the United States will find it much more difficult to dominate international affairs.

It is tempting to see the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation as an expanding bulwark against Western influence in Eurasia.

Founded in Shanghai in 2001, the regional group has six full members: China, Russia and four former Soviet republics in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The organisation will hold its annual summit next month.

Neighbouring states are flocking to associate themselves with the group at the highest possible level. Among them is Iran, seeking protection and allies in its battle to fend off pressure from the US, Europe and other countries that suspect it is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons in the guise of a peaceful nuclear programme.

Iran is already an observer member of the SCO and its hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is scheduled to attend the August 16 summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, as a distinguished guest, intensifying speculation Tehran may join the group as a full member.

When the US asked several years ago to send observers to SCO summits, its request was refused. Then Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia, were admitted as observer members.

At their 2005 summit, the SCO leaders called on the US and its Nato partners, which had been given military facilities in Central Asia after al Qaeda's attacks on America in September 2001, to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Around the same time, Uzbekistan expelled US forces stationed in its territory.

It seemed that a co-ordinated attempt was under way to exclude the US and its Western partners from Central Asia. But since then, there have been other developments suggesting that the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation should not be seen as an anti-Western alliance.

For a start, if it does expand to include new full members, they could include - in addition to Iran - Mongolia, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. All of which have close ties with the US.

The US-led invasion of Iraq has exposed the limits of American power while providing a rallying point for Muslim extremists. The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating sharply.

Taleban guerrillas and their al Qaeda allies are making a comeback in the porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border zone, using revenue from opium poppy cultivation and the drug trade to buy weapons, explosives and influence.

This threatens stability not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but in the Central Asian republics that belong to the SCO.

The latter have recently expressed fears about an upsurge of Muslim radicalism, although critics say this is due more to domestic repression of dissent than to external jihadist influence. Significantly, Kyrgyzstan, host of next month's SCO summit, agreed a year ago to allow the US and its Nato partners to continue using a key airbase to support operations in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Russia's relations with Iran have gone downhill over the nuclear issue and the related problem of Iran's potential ballistic missile threat to Europe and the US.

China has joined Russia, the US, Britain and France - the other four permanent members of the United Security Council - to ratchet up sanctions against Iran.

The Chinese and Russian defence ministers insisted last month that the SCO was a counter-terrorism group, not one directed against any third countries. The SCO defence ministers said in a joint statement that the group must increase regional and international security co-operation, paying special attention to the problems of separatism, terrorism, extremism, drug and arms trafficking, illegal migration and other forms of transnational crime.

Underlying this common interest in crushing Muslim and other challenges to state authority, is a struggle between China and Russia for influence in the Central Asian region.

Moscow wants to re-establish its dominance in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Indeed, there is a competing Russian-led counterpart to the SCO, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation for the region. Beijing, meanwhile, aims to draw the Central Asian republics into China's orbit.

The competition is most evident as China and Russia compete for control over Central Asia's rich energy resources, particularly its oil and gas. The president of non-member Turkmenistan - the second-biggest natural gas producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia - will attend the SCO summit in Bishkek next month as a distinguished guest.

Until now, all its gas has been piped to Russia, often at relatively low prices.

However, this month Turkmenistan signed a deal with China to produce and export gas to China for the next 30 years. According to official Chinese reports, the gas will be funnelled into China, the world's second largest energy user after the US, via a planned Central Asian pipeline funded by China.

China already gets substantial amounts of oil from Kazakhstan by pipeline. By providing an alternative energy outlet to Russia for Central Asian energy producers, Beijing is aiming to play a trump card in the new Great Game for EurAsia.

* Michael Richardson is an energy and security specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.