The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is mainly for show, but its disjointed dynamics warrant more attention from Washington.
Images of gleeful huddles between Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and Chinese president Xi Jinping defined last weekend’s recently concluded Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. The three leaders’ exaggerated demonstration of unity was meant to show that Washington’s punishing trade tariffs against India and China, as well as sanctions against Russia, were not bringing them to heel but were producing a counterbalance of solidarity.
However strong the sense of mutual anger towards the Trump administration, the significance of the SCO leaders’ gathering at the summit and the organization’s overall impact does not extend far beyond photo opportunities. Other than grievances, there are not enough perceived constructive interests to bind members together.
The Russia-China-India Triad: A Relationship of Convenience
China and Russia currently align due to a lack of better alternatives. Since the days of the Romanov and Qing dynasties, Sino-Russian relations have been characterized by mutual antagonism. Even when ties improve, bilateral interactions remain tinged with deep mistrust. Today, Russia is one of the few developed economies that remains unperturbed by China’s mercantilist trade practices, as it cannot source manufactured goods from other major economies while under Western-led sanctions.
China, in turn, is the largest consumer of Russian oil. It happily purchases Urals blend crude with the G7’s $60 per barrel price cap implemented to constrain Russia’s revenues and fund its war against Ukraine. While boasting of their epoch-changing “no limits” partnership, China and Russia join together transactionally and in shared animosity to the West, not with the aim of building an alternative global system.
India, the world’s largest democracy and fastest-growing major economy, is the odd man out in the tripartite clique of convenience. Tariff troubles with the United States notwithstanding, India is increasingly integrating with Western economies. Indian exports to North America and the EU grew by 67 percent over the last ten years. Conversely, exports to China have declined.
Moreover, India is in military competition with China-backed Pakistan. More directly, New Delhi cannot avoid tensions with a China that will continue to cultivate influence with its neighbors and continue to press claims on Indian territory. Regardless of current—likely transitory—frictions with Washington, India’s membership in the US-centered Quad provides it with a pathway to a partnership with militarily reliable powers far more than any security guarantees on offer from Moscow or Beijing. India’s economic expansion—evidenced in surging merchandise exports, booming global IT services, and an internationally roaming skilled workforce—has it moving closer to advanced democratic societies, not the economically declining and regressive systems that power China and Russia.
The SCO: A Disjointed Format
Regardless of how hard their leaders try to show otherwise, the three major players of the SCO are fundamentally disjointed. The same applies to the SCO as a whole.
This is surprising from a historical perspective, as the organization focuses on Eurasia, the region that Halford Mackinder, the father of modern geopolitics, famously proclaimed as the “heartland” of world power. From its initial roster of China, Russia, and the former Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the SCO gained India and Pakistan in 2017, followed by Iran (2023) and Belarus (2024).
History, however, is of little help to countries suffering from present-day mismanagement. SCO members Russia and Iran are led by despotic regimes that rank as the world’s most violent destabilizers. Devastating defeats for Iran and its terror-based “Axis of Resistance” and Russia’s sustained failure to conquer a free and independent Ukraine show that, other than being disruptive, both are constrained in power projection. China’s once-mighty engine for driving global economic growth is decelerating, and—apart from bright spots in high technology—is plagued by systemic inefficiencies.
Although partners under the SCO, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have fought deadly battles over contested territory in recent years. The SCO’s largest economies, China and India, have repeatedly clashed over disputed claims along their 2,000-mile shared border. China’s special ally, Pakistan, is an intractable antagonist for India, something that membership in the SCO has done nothing to ameliorate. Pakistani and Indian air forces clashed in a limited but fierce exchange over Kashmir barely three months before this year’s SCO summit.
Why Washington Should Still Take the SCO Seriously
Yet, just because the SCO is inherently self-limiting, the optics deserve attention. At the start of 2025, most US analysts expected a Trump-Modi “bromance” to herald a US-India “mega partnership.” The relationship capped decades of American efforts to wean New Delhi away from state bureaucratic socialism toward a more open economy with sufficient regional influence to bolster checks on China’s growing economic and military aggression.
At the very moment such efforts have been delivering ever-increasing returns, in late August—only a few days before the SCO summit—the Trump administration elected to impose a massive 50 percent tariff rate on India’s G7-compliant imports of Russian oil. Trump incongruously lambasted India, whose GDP is surging at a growth rate of 7.8 percent, as a “dead” economy.
“Even an elephant may slip,” runs an ancient Tamil proverb. The Trump administration’s blunt, shock-and-awe approach toward India, with all its disorienting inconsistencies, is no doubt aimed at securing an advantageous trade deal. But such an approach warrants a reversal, especially since it risks alienating a strategically valuable and emerging world power.
About the Author: Robert Koepp
Robert Koepp is the founding Director of the Asia-Pacific Geoeconomics and Business Initiative at Chapman University. He previously led the Corporate Network in Beijing and later Hong Kong for The Economist Group. Fluent in Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese, he is currently authoring a book on the importance of a holistic defense for Taiwan and its implications for the United States, China, and the liberal international order.
Image: Shutterstock.com.
