escobar
Brigadier
SCO can't counter QUAD
India needs to be expelled from its observer status at SCO. It does not respect other SCO's countries sovereignty.
Yes Russia did the China dirty here. Against the wishes of everyone else, Russia alone pushed for India entrance to the SCO. Xi should go to Putin and demand damages for this
India joined in a time when it was not completely in the quad camp, with Pakistan joining India would be surrounded by SCO members Pakistan region has been the high way by which invaders go into India if I'm not mistaken. Now that India is a quad puppet and under US management.
I think if SCO can let Iran be full member and can convince turkey to join and aboned NATO the bri project land bridges as good as secured.
Is that still application in today's world ?
Turkey is doing similar things as the Indians did and doing, playing the east card against the west to bargain. Turkey will not abandon NATO in the foreseeable future unless US and Europe push Turkey out which I don't see it happen. Therefor, Turkey may act just like India is doing after joining SCO. There has to be "not going back" proof of loyalty before Turkey joining SCO. In Chinese it is called "投名状".
The Indians joined SCO without such proof because the Russians wanted to use India to balance China within SCO. In doing so Russia essentially decreased the importance of SCO in China's mind. That is also probably why China does not want to further SCO to be a military alliance among other considerations. I think Russia knows this too, so in their mind SCO is not going any further.
Iran has conflict with the gulf countries. China has good relation with both. Letting Iran in SCO will upset the gulf countries. China is not going to let that happen because gulf countries have never upset China since the establishment of relationships. Gulf countries and Iran are like India and Pakistan. China's idea was probably not let in any of them into SCO to take in disputes therefor cripple what SCO can do. It was the Russian's idea to bring in India, so China in turn brought in Pakistan, a balancing act against another balancing act. In case of Iran, China does not need SCO, bilateral relationship works well just like Sino-Pakistan relationship without SCO.
My conclusion is that SCO will remain what it is today, a regional coordination system to deal with separatists and terrorists. It will not go further to become a strategic alliance. Therefor, there is no reason to bring in new members.
I didn't really see it like that, thanks for sharing your view. So the SCO will be more like UN peace keeping then a NATO light light?
SCO could have been developed into a military alliance or similar IF India was not brought in as a full member by Russia. I think China was open to that possibility (without India in SCO). Apparently Russia was thinking of Russia, China and India alliance against NATO ignoring the impossibility of mending disputes between India and China, also ignoring the much higher ambition of India (surpassing and suppressing China).
I would say that either Russia was not serious of SCO from the beginning, or Russia miscalculated and ruined SCO's military potential by trying to calculate on China using India as a partner.
India is stupidly paranoid with China. They have the tallest mountains in the world separating both countries. What is relatively flat is a wasteland that is easy to patrol from above. Any conventional land invasion by either side is basically condemned to failure.
I mean Modi is a mini-trump but IMO India took the correct choice to side with the West.
The US has gotten desperate after losing the trade war and lost a lot of face. With India now siding with the West, it has tremendous leverage.
One of the positives is thhat Modi can finally solve his internal political problems by capitalising to nationalism. He can push through major reforms, become dictator like without fearing any sanctions from the West. That's a major win for india