The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a subject of significant international attention, is an organization that often sparks debate among observers. Opinions range from seeing it as a “pointless club” to a “NATO-like military alliance” or even a “new United Nations.” While the SCO will turn 30 next year—it was founded as the Shanghai Five in 1996 and became the SCO in 2001—it has yet to clearly define its goals and objectives.

The recent summit held by the organization in China’s Tianjin did not add any clarity to the SCO’s fundamental issue, the disconnect between its declared purpose and actual identity.

Declared Purpose

According to the SCO charter, its main goals include strengthening mutual trust and good neighborliness, promoting cooperation in political, economic, and cultural spheres, and jointly maintaining peace and security in the region. These official documents don’t offer much clarity on the organization’s purpose.

The SCO also mentions the “Shanghai Spirit” as a guiding principle for its member states. However, what this means in practice is unclear: even official Chinese media admitting that “everyone has their own understanding of the ‘Shanghai Spirit’.”

The only specific achievements the SCO can point to are impressive statistics, such as its member states covering one-third of the world’s land, containing nearly half the Earth’s population, and accounting for a quarter of the global GDP. However, these figures don’t prove the SCO’s effectiveness any more than the size of any country, for instance, proves its economic development speed.

Despite this apparent lack of real function, the SCO continues to expand. In the last decade, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Belarus have joined, and 14 other countries are “dialogue partners.” This raises a question: why would countries want to join an organization that seems to have little to offer?

Actual Purpose

It would be inaccurate to call the SCO completely dysfunctional. It was highly successful when it was created as the Shanghai Five in 1996, resolving border disputes between China and former Soviet states.

Instead of dissolving afterward, it evolved into a regional platform for cooperation between China and Russia in the post-Soviet space. However, the two countries couldn’t agree on a shared vision, and the SCO has been searching for its purpose ever since.

While SCO summits generate numerous statements and proposals, these rarely turn into real changes or initiatives. The organization has established various institutions, such as the SCO Business Council and the Interbank Consortium, but even their official websites show little evidence of concrete projects or changes in member countries’ laws. In essence, the main activity of the SCO and its institutions is hosting events. The SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) is the only body that shows real activity through joint military exercises.

The SCO’s value lies in its role as a “safe space,” or a place where countries can hold regular meetings without pointing out each other’s domestic policy issues. This “event management” helps build bridges between government agencies of different countries that might not otherwise interact.

Hidden Purpose

Like many large international organizations, the SCO doesn’t have its own agenda but rather reflects the positions of its members. Given its diverse membership, which often disagrees on key issues, the organization must be extremely careful in its public statements. This caution essentially paralyzes the SCO as a diplomatic agent.

However, this doesn’t stop countries from trying to use the organization for their own benefit.

For example, Russia repeatedly hoped to secure SCO support for its foreign policy ventures. In 2008, then-president Dmitry Medvedev raised the issue of South Ossetia’s independence, in 2014 the Russian agenda included recognition of Crimea and in 2022 Moscow wanted to achieve a unified SCO position on UN votes concerning the war in Ukraine. Moscow also periodically tries to promote its ideological vision of a new SCO mission, but its current ideology does not align with the foreign policy priorities of other member states. Before the 2022 SCO summit in Samarkand, official Tashkent specifically refuted Russian journalists’ claims that “the SCO is Russia’s answer to NATO”.

China uses the SCO to promote its discursive power, which can be seen in the joint documents adopted by the organization. They contain terms rooted in Chinese Communist Party documents, such as “community of common destiny”. While Beijing once tried to turn the SCO into a functional body to advance its ambitions in Central Asia, Russia consistently blocked key initiatives like the creation of a development bank and a free trade zone. As a result, China lost interest in developing the SCO and began to act on its own by developing bilateral relations with each of Central Asian states, creating an institutional umbrella of C5 + China to be present in the region, as well as including the region into global projects like the Belt and Road Initiative or other global initiatives (Development, Security, Civilization).

Iran, Belarus, and Afghanistan (the latter as an observer) use their participation in the SCO as a way to show they are involved in global politics and not internationally isolated. India sees the SCO as an alternative platform that can strengthen its negotiating position with Western countries.

Central Asian countries value the SCO for several reasons. First, they were among its founders, and there aren’t many other major international bodies they helped create. Second, the SCO is a valuable geopolitical platform because it covers the Eurasian region, with Central Asia at its core. Third, it provides a unique opportunity to build relationships with leaders from various countries at different government levels.

Future Purpose

The SCO’s future appears to be one of constant expansion and strengthening its role as a platform for multilateral negotiations, not as a rigid military or economic bloc. Countries continue to join because membership doesn’t impose serious obligations and allows them to pursue their own specific goals.

The SCO’s vagueness isn’t a flaw; contrary, it’s a key feature that reflects a broader trend in modern international relations. More countries are moving away from rigid alliances to avoid taking on extra responsibility for the behavior of other states, even if their bilateral relationships are close. New US initiatives like the QUAD (between Australia, India, the US, and Japan) and AUKUS (between Australia, the UK, and the US) no longer contain strict commitments like NATO’s Article 5, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

This same flexibility is what makes the SCO a strategic asset. China, as a key driving force, doesn’t want to over-specify the organization’s activities because that could become a limitation in a constantly changing geopolitical landscape. The SCO can be seen as a template for a future alliance, where its purpose will be defined by changing needs. Its flexibility allows it to remain relevant and attract new members, making it a somewhat unique organization in the modern international relations.