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Analysis: Russia's Security Ties in Asia

Council on Foreign Relations

August 27, 2008
Author: Jayshree Bajoria

Russia's new assertiveness in protecting its "near abroad" interests may find it moving closer to an emerging regional alliance that has been vying with the West for influence in Central Asia. The summit this week of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, will provide fresh signals of how Russia's neighbors regard its war with Georgia. At the August 28 summit in the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, the six members, along with observers Iran, Mongolia, India and Pakistan, are expected to focus on security, economics, and cultural cooperation (Xinhua). But looming over the meeting will be the fallout with the West over the Russia-Georgia conflict, including Moscow's recognition of the independence of two Georgian breakaway regions.

Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the SCO is not a mutual defense pact. But political and military coordination is becoming a hallmark of the organization, writes J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University. The SCO has held a number of joint military exercises, most recently in 2007 near Russia's Ural Mountains. In October last year, it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance of several former Soviet states.

To date, the SCO's Afghan policy has been of special concern to Western strategists. The SCO formally seeks to promote Afghan political stability and economic development through its Afghanistan contact group. But under the aegis of SCO, China and Russia, suspicious of U.S. and NATO presence in the region, asked countries in the U.S.-led coalition to withdraw their forces from Central Asia in 2005. The Uzbek government moved to eject U.S. forces from Karshi-Khanabad base the same year.

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Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.