Geopolitics Magazine November - December 2014 | Page 67

Geopolitics & Daily News Magazine
On the same time, many also, bring to attention that NATO should not be a “support army hand”
enforcement tool of UNSC, especially since that brings more problems into the alliance and its
members. Organization’s limited budget is suffering from expenses spend on missions at Africa and
other continents where interests of major “players” are served.[3] This is causing a lot of frictions
between members but also causes major damage to organization’s image in the eyes of possible
candidates or/and affiliates of the Treaty.
SCO Evolution
Shanghai Cooperation Organization as it was founded
in 2001, has a more modernized form but it has also
several issues to solve in order to be considered as an
“all-around treaty” that will be serving its member
needs and also be attractive to more candidates.
Russia and China as leading members are following
through a plan designed to reform army and security
while focusing on terrorism and asymmetric threats.

video 2. SCO Drill 2014(vid)

Its weak point though still remains. SCO although a
cooperation of many strong countries, is not yet
defined by alliance characteristics compared to NATO.
It has some joined performed military exercises by
China, Russia and India, [4] but it still lacks coherence
and is not presenting a homogenous front if there is a
threat present against one of its members.

On top of that, public image of SCO is severely damaged by both China and Russia aggressiveness
against their neighbors which by default create a “push factor” for countries like India (Dispute with
China [5] ) and former Soviet Union democracies ( Russia relations with Georgia, Estonia [6] ) .
CASE:
In recent years, especially after the armed intervention of Russia at Georgia in 2008[7] and in 2014 at
Ukraine[8] along with China's attempts to challenge USA's influence over the Pacific[9] , many
experts consider that there is a growing rivalry between the two alliances which seems to be heating
up.[10] Two alliances of rivalry powers competing, with USA being the most powerful one in NATO and
China along with Russia being the ones of the opposite side, could be matched in roles of a war game
for prevailing and challenging powers.
THEORY:
Although today, there is no armed conflict taking place between those two organizations, there are
many hot issues occurring between members of them like the one with Ukraine - Russia and China
with a lot of claims in Asia region (Senkaku islands for example)[11]
So far war has been avoided due to existing power balance, although most members of those alliances
have openly doubted and even challenged the ability of their opponents to control (or at least
influence) political and trade agreements at their nearby regions by using either force (Ukraine Russia)
or by using threat of force (China's attempt to establish an expansion on its borders in many cases).
Threats of war have been made in case of Russia for example where there was a united front of NATO
against Kremlin.[12] Russia has not used so far its alliance membership rights to confront such a
threat [13] but no one is able to be sure of that being the standing case for a long time. China also is
not showing any direct sign of strong alliance with Russia and upholding terms of dedication in SCO
against NATO, though they did use their "state of absence voting right" in UNSC when rest of the
members there voted against Russia and Crimean annexation.[14]
However, Russia's and China's did complete a joint effort within SCO on a collective defense
framework, as it was expressed by a joined drill last summer [15]under the official approval of the
Geopolitics.com.gr all rights reserved 2014

Page 65