By Simon Tisdall (THE GUARDIAN, 06/06/06):
Tony Blair's promotion of shared global values and inclusive institutions in his Georgetown speech last month took little account of the rise and rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Few may yet have heard of it. But out of the east comes a radically different paradigm for 21st-century international organisation, short on idealism and long on hard-headed self-interest. The "universal" principles of "liberty, democracy and justice" lauded by Mr Blair are hardly its driving force.
Founded by China, the five-year-old SCO groups together like-minded authoritarian leaderships in Russia and four central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Pakistan, Mongolia and India are observer members. So too is Iran.
In terms of total population, area and resources, the SCO is far bigger than Nato or the EU. It dwarfs older regional organisations. It is not yet a mutual defence pact but it is heading that way as Sino-Russian military ties deepen. Its charter pledges "non-interference and non-alignment" while seeking to create "a new international political and economic order". David Wall of Chatham House's Asia programme calls it "a club for autocrats and dictators".
The SCO's next summit meeting, in Shanghai on June 15, will pursue joint security, energy and development goals, including enhanced cooperation against terrorism, Islamist extremism and separatism. For China, this means a common front on Taiwan and Muslim "splittists". For Russia, it means solidarity over Chechnya. For the likes of Uzbekistan, a year after the Andijan massacre, it means no awkward questions about human rights abuses.
China's president, Hu Jintao, says the SCO represents "a new security concept" based on mutual trust and benefit. "Experience has shown that the SCO is an important force in safeguarding regional and world peace," he said last week. Sino-Russian relations, increasingly the group's cornerstone, had never been better, he said. It was not exclusive and did not target third parties.
It looks different from Washington, whose applications for SCO observer status have been refused, and Japan, the western ally with potentially the most to lose. "The SCO is becoming a rival bloc to the US alliance. It does not share our values. We are watching it very closely," a Japanese official said.
Russia and China are suspected of using the SCO to shut the US and its allies out of fast-developing central Asian energy markets, thereby monopolising supply. Beijing, for example, is offering $900m (£480m) in soft loans to central Asian partners. At a deeper level, US strategists see a threat that might one day produce renewed, cold war-style confrontation between opposing east-west poles. In some analyses, the SCO is a born-again Warsaw pact; Russia has already been "lost"; India and Pakistan are swing voters; and Iran is the wild card.
Vice-President Dick Cheney's trip to Kazakhstan, his criticism of Russian energy "blackmail", and an administration debate over repairing relations with Uzbekistan are all signs of a US counter-offensive. The US was evicted from its military base in Uzbekistan last year after an SCO demarche. With an eye on Iran, its desire to regain the facility may trump its regional human rights and democracy concerns. It has also settled a dispute with Kyrgyzstan over use of its Manas airbase.
For its part, Japan hosted central Asian SCO member states in Tokyo yesterday, discussing energy and security ties. Both Japan and the US are keen to remind central Asian states that, as in the past, China's and Russia's embrace can prove crushing.
This contest could be one of the new century's defining struggles. Viewed from this rough-and-tumble frontier world of realpolitik, real estate, and repressive governance, Mr Blair's trumpeting of "universal" values may look naive or unhelpful - or simply irrelevant.