On the basis of mutual trust

Shanghai Cooperation Organization is playing an important role in ensuring regional security and stability

Editor's note: The world has undergone many changes and shocks in recent years. Enhanced dialogue between scholars from China and overseas is needed to build mutual understanding on many problems the world faces. For this purpose, the China Watch Institute of China Daily and the National Institute for Global Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, jointly present this special column: The Global Strategy Dialogue, in which experts from China and abroad will offer insightful views, analysis and fresh perspectives on long-term strategic issues of global importance.

The modern system of international cooperation based on universal principles and norms is beginning to fail. One of the main reasons for this is a deep crisis of confidence and the lack of mutual trust at the global level, which, in turn, provokes geopolitical confrontation and regional conflicts, which destabilize trade and investment flows and exacerbate the challenges of ensuring food and energy security.

This fundamental process is accompanied by the trend toward multipolarity, the increasing interdependence of economies and the accelerating pace of digitalization. International threats and challenges are becoming more complex, disruptive and dangerous. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, established in 2001, is a classic example of an international organization that has successfully established itself as a model for maintaining and strengthening regional security, as well as a multilateral structure that can flexibly and effectively respond to changes at the regional and global levels. In fact, it is a unique interstate structure that has managed to unite countries with different cultures and civilizational inheritances, their own foreign policy guidelines and models of national development.

Regional security is an area in which a high level of mutual trust is required. The fact that a high level of mutual trust has developed over the course of more than two decades within the framework of the SCO's work is evidenced by its upholding of the "Shanghai Spirit "of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity and the pursuit of common development.

In a short historical period, the SCO has come a long way, becoming an integral part of the modern global political and economic world order. Over the years of its existence, the SCO has gained considerable political weight and authority on the world stage. One of the main goals of the SCO is to support stability and security in the region.

Since its establishment in Tashkent, in 2004, the SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) has become the organization's main coordination center in the fight against terrorism, separatism and religious extremism. RATS conducts joint exercises and trainings, exchanges information and develops strategies to counter terrorist and extremist groups, as well as combating drug trafficking in the region. Ensuring information security and responding to challenges and threats on the internet was officially designated as a separate area of the work of RATS in 2023.

RATS actively cooperates with many international organizations such as the United Nations and Interpol, the International Drug Control Agency, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and the Center for Internet Security, and it develops partnerships with other countries and regions to jointly address security problems and threats in the region.

The SCO members consider Central Asia to be the organization's core region and the SCO supports the efforts of the Central Asian countries to promote prosperity, peace, sustainable development, and uphold good-neighborliness, trust and friendship. Thanks to effective cooperation within the SCO, the situation in Central Asia is under control, despite some potential security risks. This is the SCO's biggest security achievement in the last 20 years.

The national interests and security of the SCO member states are directly linked to the situation in Afghanistan. That is why the Afghan issue has always been high on the organization's agenda. The SCO members are neighbors of Afghanistan, and therefore the SCO is an ideal platform for dialogue in order to resolve the Afghan issue. All the SCO members support the solution of the Afghan problem through political and diplomatic means and emphasize the need to form an inclusive government.

The SCO-Afghanistan contact group can play an important role in this regard. The revival of the contact group can contribute to dialogue and significantly help the Afghan authorities in overcoming economic problems and building up their anti-terrorist potential. Afghanistan, which for centuries has played the role of a buffer between global powers and regional centers of power, should pursue a new peace mission as a link between Central and South Asia.

The construction of the trans-Afghan corridor can become a symbol of such mutually beneficial interregional cooperation. It is also important to understand that implementing common infrastructure projects such as the Uzbekistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan Railway will not just solve socioeconomic, transport and communication problems, but also make significant contributions to regional security.

Without the largest SCO countries, it is impossible to imagine global military and nuclear security, as well as the security of outer space and information space. It is important to note that the SCO countries have all the capabilities to ensure the security of global technological progress. It not only has raw materials, such as rare earth metals, that are critical for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but also a rapidly developing educational and scientific-technical base.

At a time when access to innovation is becoming a focus of geopolitical competition and increasing technological inequality, the SCO can become one of the drivers of technological growth in the developing world.

Today, the SCO is a thriving, developing structure that is gradually becoming a pole of attraction for a growing number of regional states, which will stimulate the process of its development, since each of them will bring with it new ideas and proposals, while embracing the "Shanghai Spirit".

The key to the SCO's international attractiveness is its non-aligned status, openness, equality and consensus-based decision-making, non-targeting of third countries or international organizations, respect for the sovereignty of all participants and non-interference in their internal affairs.

It is obvious that all this creates a qualitatively new regional reality, while excluding bloc and confrontational approaches to solving international problems, and this will directly affect the entire system of continental and global security.

The author is former director of the International Institute of Central Asia and former secretary-general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.