Can Washington Trust Modi's India As Key Ally in Asia?

[Riaz Haq]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the summit meeting of the China-Russia sponsored Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan this week. India is a full member of this alliance which has been created to counter the US dominance in Asia. At the same time, New Delhi has also joined QUAD, a group of 4 nations (Australia, India, Japan and US) formed by the United States  to counter China's rise. Simultaneous membership of these two competing alliances is raising serious questions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's real intentions and trustworthiness. Is this Indian policy shift from "non-alignment" to "all-alignment" sustainable? 

2022 SCO Summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Source: Xinhua

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): 

Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a political, economic and security organization designed to counter US dominance. It was founded by Beijing and Moscow in 2001. Currently, it has 8 members: China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has signed a memorandum of commitment this week signaling its intention to join the SCO, underscoring the growing alignment between the U.S.'s top adversaries. India's participation in this alliance seems strange given its simultaneous membership of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. 

Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD): 

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) is a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that was initiated in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to counter growing Chinese influence in Asia. India upset Japan recently when it joined the Russia-led Vostok-2022 military exercises held around a group of islands known as the southern Kurils in Russia and the Northern Territories in Japan -- a territorial dispute that dates back to the end of World War II, according to Bloomberg. India scaled back its participation in the war games -- especially staying out of the naval exercises -- in response to the Japanese objections but it left a bad taste. 

Non-Alignment to All-Alignment: 

The contradictions inherent in the membership of both of these competing alliances are already being exposed by Mr. Modi's large and rapidly growing purchases of Russian energy and weapons despite western sanctions.  “India’s neutral public positioning on the invasion has raised difficult questions in Washington DC about our alignment of values and interests,” said Richard Rossow, a senior adviser on India policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Bloomberg News. “Such engagements -- especially if they trigger new or expanded areas of cooperation that benefit Russia -- will further erode interest among Washington policy makers for providing India a ‘pass’ on tough sanctions decision.”

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[Riaz Haq]

If China Invaded Taiwan, What Would India Do?
The New Delhi government fears its expansionist neighbor but is deeply wary about getting in the middle of a brawl with Beijing.

By Hal Brands


https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/features/2022-11-14/if-china-inva...


So how might India react if China attacked Taiwan? Although India can’t project much military power east of the Malacca Strait, it could still, in theory, do a lot. US officials quietly hope that India might grant access to its Andaman and Nicobar Islands, in the eastern Bay of Bengal, to facilitate a blockade of China’s oil supplies. The Indian Navy could help keep Chinese ships out of the Indian Ocean; perhaps the Indian Army could distract China by turning up the heat in the Himalayas.

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New Delhi has a real stake in the survival of a free Taiwan. China has a punishing strategic geography, in that it faces security challenges on land and at sea. If taking Taiwan gave China preeminence in maritime Asia, though, Beijing could then pivot to settle affairs with India on land.

Expect a “turn toward the South” once China’s Taiwan problem is resolved, one Indian defense official told me. And in general, a world in which China is emboldened — and the US and its democratic allies are badly bloodied — by a Taiwan conflict would be very nasty for India.

But none of this ensures that India will cast its lot, militarily or diplomatically, with a pro-Taiwan coalition. Appeals to common democratic values or norms of nonaggression won’t persuade India to aid Taiwan any more than they have induced it to help Ukraine.

Armchair strategists might dream of opening a second front in the Himalayas, but India might be paralyzed by fear that openly aiding the US anywhere would simply give China a pretext to batter overmatched, unprepared Indian forces on their shared frontier.

The Modi government has been happy to have America’s help in dealing with India’s China problem but is far more reluctant to return the favor by courting trouble in the Western Pacific.

What India would do in a Taiwan conflict is really anyone’s guess. The most nuanced assessment I heard came from a longtime Indian diplomat. A decade ago, he said, India would definitely have sat on the sidelines. Today, support for Taiwan and the democratic coalition is conceivable, but not likely. After another five years of tension with China and cooperation with the Quad, though, who knows?

Optimists in Washington might take this assessment as evidence that India is moving in the right direction. Pessimists might point out that there is still a long way to go, and not much time to get there.

[Riaz Haq]

U.S. Seeks Closer Ties With India as Tension With China and Russia Builds
Treasury Secretary Yellen wants India to be part of the Biden administration’s “friend-shoring” agenda, but trade tensions linger.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/us-india-relations.html


The United States is placing India at the center of its ambition to detach global supply chains from the clutches of American adversaries, seeking to cement ties with one of the world’s fastest-growing economies as tensions with China remain high and as Russia’s war in Ukraine upends international commerce.

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, the Biden administration’s top economic diplomat, delivered that message in person on Friday during a visit to the Indian capital at a moment of intense global economic uncertainty. Soaring food and energy prices stemming from Russia’s war and heightened concerns about America’s reliance on Chinese products have pushed the United States to try to reshape the global economic order so that allies depend on one another for the goods and services that power their economies.

India is often in the middle of geopolitical jostling between the United States, China and Russia. But as the Biden administration promotes what it calls “friend-shoring,” it is making clear that it wants India to be in America’s orbit of economic allies.



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India emerged as a significant obstacle when members of the World Trade Organization tried to reach a suite of agreements at a meeting this year. It has also declined to join negotiations over the trade pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, an Asia-Pacific economic pact proposed by the Biden administration.

In the last few months, India’s long economic relationship with Russia has become increasingly problematic for the United States. India is the world’s largest buyer of Russian munitions — a relationship that is difficult to sever, particularly given India’s tensions with neighboring China and Pakistan. India has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And since the war began, it has become a major buyer of Russian oil, which it is able to purchase on international markets at a discount.

India’s imports from Russia have risen 430 percent since the war in Ukraine began in February, as tankers of Russian crude oil flock to Indian ports. India, which imports a significant amount of energy and is the world’s second-most-populous country, has said it is merely focused on buying oil at the lowest price.

Eswar Prasad, a trade policy at Cornell University who speaks to both American and Indian officials, said that while India wanted to forge a stronger economic relationship with the United States, it was unlikely to distance itself from Russia.

“India has very deep-seated economic interests in maintaining a reliable and relatively cheap supply of oil from Russia,” said Mr. Prasad, a former official with the International Monetary Fund.

The American embrace of India comes as the United States and its European allies are racing to complete the terms of a plan to cap the price of Russian oil. The initiative must be in place by Dec. 5, when a European embargo and maritime insurance ban goes into effect, potentially disrupting the flow of Russian oil around the world.

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“In a world where supply chain vulnerabilities can impose heavy costs, we believe it’s important to strengthen our trade ties with India and the large number of countries that share our approach to economic relations,” she said.

[Riaz Haq]

U.S. Seeks Closer Ties With India as Tension With China and Russia Builds

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/us-india-relations.html


Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said India faced several challenges in becoming a hub for international manufacturing, including government reforms that had not yet “appreciably” made it a more attractive destination for companies. And compared with China, India’s domestic consumer market is smaller and therefore less attractive for companies that manufacture there.

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The price cap would essentially create an exception to Western sanctions, allowing Russian oil to be sold and shipped as long as it remained below a certain price, a level that has yet to be determined.

India has been circumspect about the proposal, but Treasury Department officials say the United States is not trying to push it to formally join its coalition. Instead, they are hopeful that India will use the price cap as leverage to negotiate lower prices with Russia, depriving Mr. Putin of revenue but keeping the nation’s oil flowing.

However, Ms. Yellen emphasized in her speech that relying on Russian oil came with risks.

“Russia has long presented itself as a reliable energy partner,” Ms. Yellen said. “But for the better part of this year, Putin has weaponized Russia’s natural gas supply against the people of Europe.

The Treasury secretary added: “It’s an example of how malicious actors can use their market positions to try to gain geopolitical leverage or disrupt trade for their own gain.”

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Atul Keshap, the president of the U.S.-India Business Council, said there were many opportunities for economic partnership between the United States and India, especially in setting up secure supply chains for strategic technologies like semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and drones.


“You look at the headlines, you look at the risks to the supply chain,” Mr. Keshap said. “You look at the uncertainties of the last two or three years, and countries like India have an opportunity.”

But business leaders and trade experts say the U.S. and Indian governments have thus far failed to realize those opportunities. Talks for a trade deal with India briefly flourished during the Trump administration, but a series of persistent economic issues — ranging from India’s barriers for U.S. agricultural goods and medical devices to its lack of protection for U.S. intellectual property — have made any agreement difficult to reach.

A U.S. program that lowered tariffs on imports from poorer countries, including India, lapsed in 2020, and there has not been enough support in Congress to reinstate it. At a 2021 trade meeting in New Delhi, the sides made some headway on opening trade for American pork, cherries and alfalfa hay, and Indian mangoes and pomegranates.

A U.S.-India trade policy forum eyed for Nov. 8 in Washington was pushed back to give officials more time to achieve more substantive outcomes, a representative from the Office of the United States Trade Representative said.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of her meetings on Friday, Ms. Yellen said that reducing tariffs was not currently part of the discussions with India, but that the two sides had been talking about other “trade facilitation” measures to reduce non-tariff barriers.

According to Mr. Prasad, who is also a former I.M.F. official, there is lingering skepticism in India about the durability of America’s good intentions in the aftermath of the tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump enacted.

“There is a layer of apprehension if not outright mistrust in Delhi,” Mr. Prasad said.

Ms. Yellen came to India to show that, despite their differences, the United States can be a trusted partner. On Friday, she also met with India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman.

[Riaz Haq]

US-India Relations Aren’t Playing Out Like a Bollywood Movie
Analysis by Bobby Ghosh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/us-india-relations-arent-pl...

In American foreign policy circles, where lazy hegemonic assumptions still abound, there is a widespread conviction that the US-India relationship will play out like a Bollywood film: There may be some resistance at the beginning, some friction in the middle and plenty of song and dance along the way, but in the end the protagonists will overcome all hurdles and live happily ever after.

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This failure to communicate is in large part to blame for a growing suspicion among Indians of US foreign-policy objectives. A new survey shows that Indians view the US as the biggest military threat to their country after China — and, even more shocking, put it ahead of Pakistan. Conducted by Morning Consult, a US-based global business intelligence company, the poll also shows Indians are more likely to blame America and NATO than Russia for the war in Ukraine.


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But Washington has long since switched sides from Islamabad to New Delhi, and the US Navy now routinely conducts joint exercises with its Indian counterpart. India is a key member of the US-led Quad, a security grouping that includes Japan and Australia and is designed to check Chinese ambitions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Surely no Indian in their right mind perceives a real military threat from the US?

Rick Rossow, an India expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, reckons the fear is rooted in the consequences of American military adventures elsewhere: “The concern is that our actions threaten Indian interests.”

Rossow, who holds the Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at CSIS, points out that as one of the world’s largest importers of hydrocarbons, India suffers collateral damage from American policies that lead to a spike in oil and gas prices. “You can make a strong case that the war in Iraq and the sanctions against Iran have hurt the Indian economy,” he says.

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Why hasn’t it? For one thing, it has not cared to. But perhaps more worrisome, it lacks the minimum means to communicate with the Indians. The State Department faces a chronic shortage of speakers in any of the Indian languages. It is also lacking an ambassador in New Delhi. The position has been unfilled since Biden became president.

This is hardly an exception: Republicans in the Senate have blocked a number of Biden appointees for ambassadorships. But even Democrats have questioned his choice of Eric Garcetti for the Delhi job. The former mayor of Los Angeles has faced allegations of ignoring a former top aide’s sexual harassment and bullying; he denies this.

That Biden has persisted with Garcetti’s candidacy for the last year and a half is baffling: The mayor has no special expertise on India. Worse, the State Department has been unable even to maintain a semblance of stability at the embassy, which has been run by five charges d’affaires over the past two years. The longest-serving of these had no India experience whatsoever. (In contrast, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, India’s ambassador to Washington, is on his fourth US stint.)

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There is no prominent India hand at the Biden White House, and although much was made of Harris’s ancestry during the election campaign, the administration has not capitalized on the enthusiasm she generated among Indians. Putting the vice president front and center of India policy would be a good place to start undoing the damage of long American neglect.

[Riaz Haq]

Why is democratic India helping Russia avoid Western sanctions?


https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2023/0207/Why-is-democratic-...

Though India does not produce some of the items Russia desperately needs due to Western sanctions, such as microchips, it does make plenty of others.

“Right now the focus is on pharmaceuticals, electronics, machinery, chemical products, medical instruments, and agricultural products,” says Dr. Kapoor. “We have already been exporting these goods to Russia, and there is potential for major increases. ... It may be harder to expand the list due to the threat of secondary sanctions. In this environment, the Indian private sector looks at Russia as a risky market. But the immediate potential is very big.”




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Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago, the West has tried to curtail Moscow’s ability to finance the war by restricting its lucrative energy exports.

Over that same time, Asia’s biggest democracy, India, has ramped up its imports of Russian oil by a whopping 33 times.

The future world order may turn on realignments like this.

Much of the Global South – including key countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America – has declined to join the anti-Moscow sanctions regime, and has instead chosen to maintain active political and commercial relations with Russia. This is part of the reason the Russian economy has so far avoided the intended body blows, but it is also reshaping global trading patterns in ways that might outlast the conflict.

In particular, Russian efforts to evade the restrictions that come with using the U.S. dollar in international transactions may be accelerating the process of dethroning the dollar as the world’s established reserve currency, with vast implications for U.S. financial and political leadership down the road.

India, a fast-growing, secular, English-speaking Asian democracy with an increasingly Westward-leaning popular culture, serves as a prime example as to why the West is not getting buy-in for sanctions – and how the world may realign.

“India is not happy with what Russia did,” says Nandan Unnikrishnan, an expert with the independent, Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. “But in the longstanding relationship we have with Russia, they have repeatedly proven to be good partners for India. India does not want to lose a friend. As for the moral argument the Americans often cite, well, we don’t accept that. It hardly bears mentioning that we can think of zillions of examples of Western hypocrisy.”

Early in the war, U.S. diplomats made strenuous efforts to convince Delhi to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine, or at least limit its long-standing political and trading relationship with Russia. While privately making clear its disagreement with Russia’s war – a view shared by much of India’s elite – Indian leaders refused to vote against Moscow in the United Nations or to join in any level of the sanctions campaign. Instead it accepted Russian offers of price discounts, which led to a vast increase in India’s imports of Russian oil.

[Riaz Haq]

Why is democratic India helping Russia avoid Western sanctions?


https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2023/0207/Why-is-democratic-...


Mr. Unnikrishnan says that one way to avoid the long arm of U.S. sanctions – which would hit any attempt to export items with U.S. parts or technology to Russia – is to set up distinct businesses that deal only with the Russian market, as is reportedly already being done in China.

“Some Indian businesses are exploring ways to set up separate production facilities, only for export to Russia. The Indian government is already in the process of certifying Indian generic pharmaceuticals for export to the Russian market,” he says. “There are a lot of ways that joint India-Russia collaboration and trade can be expanded.”

Current Russian policy is to push for abandoning dollar trade in every area, and there has been a lot of talk about creating an alternative currency, perhaps for use among the BRICS trading bloc.

It’s all easier said than done, says Konstantin Sonin, a Russian expatriate professor at the University of Chicago.

“De-dollarization would be very costly to implement,” he says. “People use the U.S. dollar because it’s a more stable, reliable, and liquid currency than any other. There is a premium to be paid for using riskier assets. Nothing Russia can do is likely to dislodge the U.S. dollar from this role. The main threats to the dollar are potential internal instability in the U.S., which might undermine the dollar’s value, or the possibility that some other big country, like China, might develop a viable alternative.”

He says that countries like India are taking advantage of Russia’s current weakness to drive hard bargains, for cheap energy and increased exports to Russia, that benefit their own economies. Russia accepts this because its options have been limited by the global sanctions regime imposed by Western powers.

“This makes sense for Russia only as part of a war-fighting strategy in isolation from the West,” says Dr. Sonin. “Otherwise it’s a costly and inefficient economic strategy for Russia to pursue in the long term.”

Dr. Kapoor argues that there is only one way that the benefits of increased Indo-Russian trade can be permanently locked in.

“The best solution would be for Russia to make an early end to this war,” she says. “We can envisage a situation where Western companies have already exited the Russian market, and burned their bridges, while the Indian private sector no longer regards business with Russia as a risky proposition, carrying the threat of secondary sanctions. All that would go away for us, but we need to see an end to this war.”

[Riaz Haq]

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Wednesday that the U.S. is considering collaborating with India on certain manufacturing jobs in order to boost competition against China.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/us-explores-working-with-india-to-i...

Raimondo told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” that she will visit India in March with a handful of U.S. CEOs to discuss an alliance between the two nations on manufacturing semiconductor chips. The Commerce Secretary also revisited some of President Joe Biden’s comments on American manufacturing from his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

“We stopped making things,” Raimondo said. “I think, in 1990, there were like 350,000 people working in the chip industry in America. Now it’s like 160,000.”

Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act, signed into law in August, supplied $52 billion for U.S. companies to invest in chip manufacturing. The U.S. semiconductor industry employed more than 277,000 workers in 2021, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association, but it made 0% of the world’s supply of semiconductors as of September 2022.

In comparison, Taiwan and South Korea comprise 80% of the global foundry market for chips. TSMC, the world’s most advanced chipmaker, is also headquartered in Taiwan. But a collaborative effort between the U.S. and the Indo-Pacific “quad” region could lessen the global reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors. In September 2021, India, Japan and Australia announced plans to establish a semiconductor supply chain initiative to secure access to semiconductors and their components.

Raimondo said that India is “making a lot of the right moves.”

“It’s a large population. (A) lot of workers, skilled workers, English speakers, a democratic country rule of law,” she said.

But the Commerce Secretary said the southeast Asian nation must comply with labor standards as part of any deal, especially in light of India’s consumption of Russian oil. The G-7 countries, Australia and the European Union have issued price caps on the cost of Russian oil products to restrict the Kremlin’s access to a potential funding source for its war on Ukraine while still maintaining an oil supply on the global market.

“I’m running the Indo-Pacific economic framework,” Raimondo said. “So we have 13 countries including India. And we’re saying to them, look, sign up at the government-to-government level to labor standards, environmental standards, anti-corruption standards, rule of law standards. And in return, it’ll unlock U.S. business, U.S. capital jobs in India.”

[Riaz Haq]

What Limits Any U.S. Alliance With India Over China


https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/03/india-rel...

Though sharing concerns about Beijing’s growing aggression, New Delhi has always been wary of aligning too closely with Washington.

By Michael Schuman


The front lines of the widening confrontation between the United States and China stretch from the halls of the United Nations to the island nations of the South Pacific. Yet, as in any great geopolitical game, certain countries carry more significance than others for American interests—foremost among them India.

As Asia’s other emerging power, India could act as a crucial counterweight to Chinese influence, both in the region and outside it. That’s why Washington has been courting New Delhi with gusto. President Joe Biden has grand plans to cement the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific, which encompasses South Asia, East Asia, and the western Pacific, through a range of diplomatic, economic, and security initiatives. India could play a determining part in their success or failure.

Whether India can be counted on to support the U.S. is an open question. Historically, relations between the two countries have been marred by deep distrust and sharp differences.

That legacy weighs on the relationship to this day, but more important is the mercurial nature of Indian foreign policy, which has been a hallmark of the nation’s sense of its place in the world since its formation in 1947. One moment, India’s leaders appear aligned with Washington; the next, they march off in their own direction, sometimes to parley with America’s enemies.

[Riaz Haq]

Is India's Rise Actually Good for the West?

https://globelynews.com/south-asia/is-indias-rise-actually-good-for...

India has also used the moment (G20 summit) to finger-point at Europe, rather than condemn Russian aggression. Last year, India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, said, “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems.”

Jaishankar’s critique of Eurocentrism has merit. It’s also shared by many in the Global South, who bristle as the West has committed well over $100 billion in aid to Ukraine, but falls short in addressing challenges like climate change, the debt crisis, and food insecurity that are hurting poorer countries. Many of these problems have been exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war.

India has rightly put these issues on the G20 agenda this year. But it’s actually doing little more than paying lip service to them. The G20 finance ministers’ meeting last month concludedwithout any tangible commitments to debt-distressed countries like Sri Lanka.

In reality, India is using the G20 presidency and other global platforms to engage in sanctimonious posturing to gain space for the naked pursuit of its self-interest. It’s also leveraging them to project Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s image as a Hindu strongman at home.

India is no ally of the West or the Global South. It is a selective partner only out for itself. It seeks a multipolar world order in which the power of the West is diminished. Paradoxically, the U.S. and its allies are aiding India in reducing their global influence.

Policy elites in Washington and other Western capitals must come to terms with this reality. Naively, they see India’s rise as a world power as an indisputable good in countering China, so much that they ask for little in return. They give India the benefit of the doubt, even when it so brazenly pursues its interest at odds with their own.

If the behavior of India isn’t telling enough, its words are loud and clear. Jaishankar — India’s chief grand strategist — writes in his 2020 book that India should focus on “advancing national interests by identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions.” A top advisor to Modi, Jaishankar promotes a commitment-free foreign policy, arguing that India should leverage “competition to extract as much gains from as many ties as possible.” In other words, India is playing all sides against one another.

To its detriment, the West gives India easy wins without asking it to make real sacrifices or protect human rights. Its indulgence of India’s grandstanding and flaccid responses to taunting by Jaishankar and others also furthers Modi’s domestic Hindu nationalist agenda.

It allows Modi to not only project India as a “vishwa guru” or “world teacher,” but also furthers his own image as a mighty Hindu who is humbling the West and can act with impunity. Indeed, as civic and religious freedoms erode in India, Western governments balk at condemnation let alone punitive action.

The domestic symbolism of India’s global theatrics is lost on Western leaders. This is partly because the U.S. and other Western countries have failed to develop the institutional knowledge of the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) ideology, lexicon, and networks. By contrast, there’s tremendous work on the Chinese Communist Party.

Case in point, when Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong cited India as a “civilizational power” this month, she inadvertently endorsed the BJP’s idea of a Hindu civilization or a “Hindu Rashtra,” in which Muslims are debased and erased.

Sadly, Western officials allow themselves to imagine a world in which the Hindutva ideology does not exist. They continue to proclaim that they are bound with India by “shared values,” as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did last month, ignoring India’s very blatant authoritarian, majoritarian turn.

There is much to worry about when it comes to India’s future course. But the West is simply choosing to look away.

[Riaz Haq]

Arif Rafiq
@ArifCRafiq
Saudi Arabia made two important moves on Tuesday as part of its pivot to Asia. It took a step toward joining the SCO, a multilateral org led by China & Russia. And it approved a counterterrorism cooperation agreement with India’s foreign intel agency RAW.

https://twitter.com/ArifCRafiq/status/1641260371515154433?s=20

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By embracing the SCO, Saudi Arabia is diversifying its economic and security ties, tilting away from the U.S. toward Asia instead.

https://globelynews.com/middle-east/saudi-arabia-sco-china-russia/

by Arif Rafiq


Saudi Arabia announced yesterday that it would become a “dialogue partner” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) — a multilateral security organization led by China and Russia. The move, reported by the official Saudi Press Agency, is several steps away from full membership. But it reflects how Riyadh is diversifying its economic and security ties, departing from a U.S.-centric approach and emphasizing Asia instead.

Indeed, on Tuesday, the Saudi Arabian cabinet — led by King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud — also approved a cooperation agreement on combatting terrorism and terrorism financing with India’s foreign intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

These developments come in the wake of Saudi Arabia’s signing of a China-brokered normalization agreement with Iran. Saudi Arabia’s deep economic ties to energy-hungry Asian powers are taking on a strategic form.


The SCO is a regional political and security bloc founded in 2001. Its original core membership was China and Russia and the four Central Asian former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. India and Pakistan, initially observer states, joined as full members in 2015. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, are among the nine dialogue partners.

Iran too has a foot in the SCO door as an observer state — just one step away from membership. It’s expected to become a full member this year. So Saudi Arabia is dipping its toes in a bloc that is not only led by America’s rivals — China and Russia — but includes one of its own chief adversaries.

Right now, the Saudi move is heavy on symbolism, much like the SCO itself. The SCO has been hyped as a potential Eurasian NATO or EU-like economic bloc. But the diverse composition of the organization negates its coherence as a strategic entity. With archrivals India and Pakistan both full members, the SCO is unlikely to make big moves that would change the regional balance of power.

But down the road, if Iran and Saudi Arabia join as full members, there could be some interesting optics with both countries taking part in joint SCO counterterrorism or military exercises. At the moment, the Saudis have just made a low-cost decision to remind the United States that they are now a country with options.