https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18940/shanghai-cooperation-organisation
The Russian media, echoing President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the summit, say the SCO is designed to end “the unipolar world “by creating a “multipolar system”.
The Chinese media offer a different version. The SCO is meant to offer a new political system for the whole world as an alternative to the Western democratic model.
To the Islamic media in Tehran, celebrating the Islamic Republic’s admission to the club after 11 years of supplication, the SCO is an extension of the “Resistance Front” created to contain and defeat the American “Great Satan.”
The SCO’s identity as a club of queer fellows has been further emphasized by the admission of a host of new members all of whom have territorial disputes with each other.
Some Western commentators have dubbed the SCO “a new power bloc”. That may be jumping the gun a bit. SCO members are more dependent on trade with the European Union, the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia than with each other.
The Samarkand club represents some 40 percent of the world’s population and over 20 percent of the global GDP, not to mention four of the 9 nations with nuclear arsenals. Yet, it seems unlikely to become an anchor of stability in Eurasia; its members are more interested in petty schemes than grand ideas of peace and cooperation.
But what is it for? This is the question that the media in Russia, China, Iran and half a dozen countries were posing all last week in the wake of a summit in Samarkand that brought their leaders together as members or aspiring members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).
The Russian media, echoing President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the summit, say the SCO is designed to end “the unipolar world “by creating a “multipolar system”.