Iran, China, & The Shanghai Cooperation Organization

The new secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Muratbek Sansyzbayevich Imanaliev, said at a news conference in Beijing earlier this week that the conflict in Afghanistan and expanding the SCO’s members to include Iran and Pakistan were the top issues on
the SCO’s agenda in 2010  <http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9DLFMLG2.htm>.
Certainly, these issues are likely to dominate preparation for the SCO’s  annual summit, which will take place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan sometime  this coming summer.
The SCO was founded in 2001 by six original members: Russia and China
along with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Formally, the SCO was created to institutionalize the founding members’
ongoing cooperation on border security, counterterrorism, and fighting
extremist and separatist activism, as well as for economic cooperation.
More broadly, the SCO has established itself as an increasingly
important factor in Central Asian affairs, Sino-Russian relations, and
the formation of an international “coalition”—loosely organized around
Beijing and Moscow—opposed to what its members see as excessive U.S.
unilateralism.

In 2004, Mongolia became the first state to receive observer status in
the SCO; in 2005, Iran, India, and Pakistan were also granted observer
status in the SCO. If one includes the populations and territorial
extent of the four observer states along with those of the six core
members, the SCO has become the world’s largest regional security
organization, in terms of the number of people and the amount of
territory it covers. Among other things, the inclusion of Iran, India,
and Pakistan as observers significantly expands the SCO’s already
considerable latent potential to exert influence over the development
and marketing of Central Asia’s oil and gas resources.

Over the past three years, Russia has pushed for Iran to be accorded
full membership in the SCO. China has quietly resisted this push. In
public, Chinese officials say only that the issue needs to be studied,
as a formal mechanism through which the SCO can bring in new members
does not currently exist. In private, Chinese officials say that
including Iran would change the character and function of the SCO in
important ways. In particular, Iranian membership would make it harder
for Beijing to insist, as it regularly does, that the SCO is not an
alliance directed against any specific country—e.g., the United States.

It is not clear that Beijing is ready to endorse full membership for
Iran in the SCO. But, as Andrei Ibanov, a Russian analyst, wrote this
week in China’s /Global Times/
<http://opinion.globaltimes.cn/commentary/2010-01/498637.html>,
Beijing’s heightened strategic standing “allows it a more direct role in
advancing its national interests faster than ever”. And, as we have
pointed out repeatedly on this blog and elsewhere, since 2007, China has
become more assertive in advancing its perceived interests /vis-?-vis/
Iran, even as U.S. pressure on Beijing to take a tougher line against
Tehran intensifies. We certainly expect that trend to continue.

In this context, Ibanov argues that

“China’s best move, particularly as the leader of the SCO, would be
to encourage and facilitate the acceptance of Iran’s membership into
the pact quickly before a new round of sanctions are imposed. Doing
so would not only add strength to China’s ability to access Iran’s
energy sources, it would also very seriously dampen any unilateral
moves, whether sanctions or missiles aimed at Iran and its nuclear
facilities.”

Two years ago, a general in the People’s Liberation Army intelligence
branch told us in Beijing that China would agree to full Iranian
membership in the SCO “only if the United States forced its hand”.
Given the Obama Administration’s gratuitous antagonism of China, over
Iran and other issues, it will be interesting to see whether Beijing is
more open to the prospect of full SCO membership for the Islamic Republic.

On the Obama Administration’s approach to China, we were surprised to
find ourselves in rather strong agreement with a recent Op Ed on this
subject in /The Wall Street Journal/ by George Gilder
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704041504575045573110641044.html?mod=googlenews_wsj>,
an intellectual darling of conservative and neoconservative Republicans
for many years. We disagree with Gilder on many subjects, particularly
with regard to the Middle East. But his Op Ed, entitled “Why Antagonize
China?”, contains passages of real insight:

It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa, who recoiled like a
man cornered by a crank at a cocktail party. Mr. Geithner was
haranguing the Chinese on…the need for a Chinese dollar devaluation,
on which one can scarcely imagine that he can persuade Chinese
holders of a trillion dollars of reserves. This week in a meeting
with Senate Democrats, President Obama continued to fret about the
dollar being too strong against the yuan at a time when most of the
world’s investors fear that the Chinese will act on his words and
crash the dollar…

Yes, the Chinese are needlessly aggressive in missile deployments
against Taiwan, but there is absolutely no prospect of a successful
U.S. defense of that country. Sending them $6 billion of new
weapons is a needless provocation against China that does nothing
valuable for the defense of the U.S. or Taiwan…

[But] a foreign policy of serious people at a time of crisis will
recognize that the current Chinese regime is the best we can expect
from that country. The Chinese revitalization of Asian capitalism
remains the most important positive event in the world in the last
30 years. Not only did it release a billion people from penury and
oppression but it transformed China from a communist enemy of the
U.S. into a now indispensable capitalist partner. It is ironic that
liberals who once welcomed appeasement of the monstrous regime of
Mao Zedong now become openly bellicose at various murky incidents of
Internet hacking…

The U.S. is as dependent on China for its economic and military
health and economic growth as China is dependent on the U.S. for its
key markets, reserve finance, and global capitalist trading regime.

It is self-destructive folly to sacrifice this core synergy at the
heart of global capitalism in order to gain concessions on global
warming, dollar weakening, or Internet politics.

How many enemies do we need?

How many indeed. This blog is, in many respects, dedicated to the
proposition that the United States does not need the Islamic Republic as
an enemy. It is a disturbing sign of how far off the track the Obama
Administration’s foreign policy has gone that both the Leveretts and
George Gilder feel compelled to point out just how dangerous it could be
for the United States to turn China into an enemy.

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