{"id":75782,"date":"2016-07-04T12:01:01","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T11:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75782"},"modified":"2016-07-12T14:21:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:21:32","slug":"india-and-pakistan-join-the-shanghai-cooperation-organisation-sco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/07\/india-and-pakistan-join-the-shanghai-cooperation-organisation-sco\/","title":{"rendered":"India and Pakistan Join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)"},"content":{"rendered":"

India and Pakistan join Chinese and Russian led security organisation whilst maintaining close relations with the West.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"india-pakistan-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

27 Jun 2016 – <\/em>Away from the distractions caused by the British Brexit vote the process of Eurasian construction has just taken another big step forward with the agreement of India and Pakistan to join the Chinese and Russian led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as full members.<\/p>\n

Iran is expected to follow shortly, leaving the whole of Eurasia united under the umbrella of this organisation apart from a few small countries and the states of Europe which are part of the Western alliance.\u00a0 Even countries like Turkey and Azerbaijan, which are aligned with the West, now have have relations with it.<\/p>\n

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not an \u201ceastern NATO\u201d \u2013 a sort of Warsaw Pact of eastern and central Eurasia \u2013 but neither is it the empty talking-shop Western commentators sometimes pretend it is.<\/p>\n

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation has a constitution and structure, and it most definitely does have a security dimension even if it is one which in theory is focused on anti-terrorism in Central Asia rather than in meeting any conventional security threat from the West.<\/p>\n

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is closely linked to the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (\u201cCSTO\u201d), which most definitely is a military alliance bringing together Russia and its closest partners with the former USSR.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, at the core of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is the military-strategic relationship between China and Russia.\u00a0 These two countries, despite attempts in the West to deny the fact, most definitely are military allies.\u00a0 Putin recently actually admitted as much.\u00a0 Moreover he also disclosed something which was already obvious to anyone who follows their respective actions on the world stage closely, which is that the two countries\u2019 leaderships are in constant communication with each other.\u00a0 As reported<\/a> Putin\u2019s precise words were as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in constant contact<\/strong>\u00a0and we consult on global and regional issues. Since we consider each other close allies<\/strong>, naturally, we always listen to our partners and take into account each other\u2019s interests\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

To get a sense of how close military cooperation between China and Russia has become, consider that the two countries recently\u00a0conducted a joint command exercise in Moscow<\/a> involving joint planned use of their anti-ballistic missile defences.\u00a0 The US would never do such a thing with any of its allies and if it did it would certainly not make the fact public.<\/p>\n

When military relations between two countries are so close as to conduct exercises like this, it is a certainty that a web of security, intelligence and defence related agreements exist between them.\u00a0 The fact that we do not know about them does not mean that they do not exist.\u00a0 It means that the leaderships of the two countries \u2013 Russia\u2019s Security Council and China\u2019s Politburo \u2013 have decided not to make them public.\u00a0 The reason for that is because disclosing their existence would reveal the extent of their countries\u2019 military alliance, something which neither country for the moment wants to do.<\/p>\n

The fact that at the core of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is the alliance of China and Russia means that it cannot be just a talking shop.\u00a0 Rather it is part of a web of organisations \u2013 the Eurasian Economic Union, the Silk Road, the BRICS group and the CSTO \u2013 that the two allies are weaving around themselves in order to extend the regional and global influence of their alliance.<\/p>\n

The Pakistanis and Indians understand this very well.\u00a0\u00a0By joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation the Pakistanis and the Indians are not allying themselves with the Chinese and the Russians against the US and the West. \u00a0The reason the Chinese and the Russians prefer to keep the fact of their alliance secret is precisely so that they do not have to present countries like Pakistan and India with such a binary choice.\u00a0 Rather it enables the Pakistanis and the Indians \u2013 two countries traditionally at odds with each other \u2013 to maintain their traditional links with their old allies \u2013 China in the case of Pakistan, Russia in the case of India \u2013 whilst enhancing their formal links with one of the two major alliances of today\u2019s world, which is gradually reshaping the world around it.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theduran.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

27 Jun 2016 – Away from the distractions caused by the Brexit vote the process of Eurasian construction has just taken another big step with the agreement of India and Pakistan to join the Chinese and Russian-led Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as full members. Iran is expected to follow shortly, leaving the whole of Eurasia united under this umbrella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,56,180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-asia-pacific","category-brics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}