The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) has completed 25 years at a moment when the international system is undergoing profound transformation. The 26th SCO Summit in Bishkek on September 1 brought together the leaders of its 10 member states and concluded with the Bishkek Declaration and 28 documents covering security, economic cooperation, connectivity, energy, technology and institutional development. The significance of the summit, however, extends beyond the documents adopted. It lies in what the SCO has become and what its evolution reveals about the changing balance of power across Eurasia.
Established in 2001 from the Shanghai Five, the organisation initially focused on border security, terrorism, separatism and extremism. Its expansion has since transformed it into a broader Eurasian institution. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023 and Belarus in 2024, bringing together countries with enormous geographical, demographic and economic weight, but very different political systems and strategic interests. The SCO is neither a military alliance like NATO nor an integrated economic bloc, and describing it simply as an anti-Western grouping fails to capture its complexity.
Its importance lies in providing an institutional space where major powers, middle powers and smaller states can engage despite their differences. Its evolution also reflects the emergence of a more multipolar international system. SCO members increasingly call for greater representation of the Global South and reform of global governance while reaffirming the importance of the United Nations. Yet multipolarity does not automatically produce harmony; several centres of power can create new competition alongside greater representation.
The SCO itself embodies this tension. China seeks a greater role for emerging economies, Russia advocates a more autonomous international system, India emphasises strategic autonomy, while Central Asian states seek sovereignty, stability and room for manoeuvre. There is no single SCO worldview, and perhaps there does not need to be. Its durability has depended on managing diversity rather than eliminating it. China and Russia remain the two most influential powers within the organisation, but the SCO cannot be reduced to a Sino-Russian project. Their strategic partnership has deepened, yet their interests are not identical. China’s influence across Eurasia increasingly rests on trade, investment, infrastructure and connectivity, while Russia retains substantial influence through security, energy and longstanding relationships.
Central Asian states engage with both while seeking to diversify their external partnerships. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are therefore not merely the geographical backdrop to competition between larger powers. They have their own priorities and the SCO gives them a platform to engage several major powers simultaneously. India’s position makes this diversity even more significant. New Delhi has strategic differences with China, expanding partnerships with the US, Europe, Japan and Australia, and an enduring relationship with Russia. Its participation in the SCO consequently reflects strategic autonomy rather than alignment with any particular camp.
For India, Central Asia matters not only because of its strategic location but also because of historical, intellectual and civilisational connections with the Indian subcontinent. For centuries, people, ideas, scholarship, languages, art and commerce travelled between South and Central Asia. These connections remain an important foundation for contemporary engagement through education, scholarships, cultural exchanges, tourism and knowledge networks. Geography, however, remains a challenge. India’s direct overland access to Central Asia is constrained, making Iran particularly important. Chabahar Port provides India with a gateway towards Afghanistan and Central Asia, while the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) offers a broader route connecting India through Iran with Central Asia, Russia and Europe.
The SCO’s greatest strength is simultaneously its greatest limitation: strategic diversity. India and China remain competitors; India and Pakistan have longstanding tensions; China and Russia cooperate closely while retaining distinct interests; Central Asian states seek autonomy while engaging larger powers; and Iran brings its own regional priorities. Expecting these countries to develop a unified geopolitical vision would therefore be unrealistic. The more useful question is whether they can cooperate where their interests overlap. The SCO’s value lies in institutionalising dialogue among countries that may disagree on major geopolitical questions but still have reasons to cooperate.
This also makes the description of the SCO as an “anti-Western bloc” too simplistic. Its members maintain different relationships with Western countries and institutions and participate simultaneously in multiple regional and global frameworks. India can engage deeply with the SCO while strengthening its relationships with other countries. Central Asian states likewise seek partnerships across different geopolitical centres. The emerging international system is consequently less likely to be organised around two rigid camps and more likely to consist of multiple centres of influence and overlapping partnerships.
The SCO is both a product of this transformation and an arena in which it is being negotiated. The 25-year milestone raises a practical question about the organisation’s next phase: can its geographical reach be converted into better connectivity, its economic potential into greater trade and investment, and its political diversity into sustained dialogue? For India, the answer will depend in part on whether the SCO can contribute to a more connected Eurasia, in which Central Asia is not separated from South Asia by political and geographical barriers. Chabahar, the INSTC, educational exchanges and civilisational links can all become components of that wider engagement.
For Central Asia, the organisation can provide space to preserve strategic autonomy while benefiting from relationships with several major powers. For the wider international system, the SCO represents an experiment in cooperation without political uniformity. The next 25 years will determine whether the SCO can move from declarations to delivery and from geographical potential to tangible regional cooperation. Eurasia is becoming increasingly important to the global balance of power, and the SCO will be one of the institutions through which that transformation is shaped. Its real test is not whether its members can agree on everything, but whether countries that disagree on much can continue to find enough common ground to work together.
(Akhilesh Kumar is a PhD Research Scholar at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and an Independent Writer)