The “25th Anniversary Bishkek Declaration” adopted in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, on the occasion of the quarter-century of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), certifies that the organization has transformed from a simple border security forum into a global political, military, and economic center of attraction alternative to Western hegemony. In this context, the predictions in my analysis titled “Post-Hegemonic Axis and Eurasian Shield: The Geopolitical Future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its 25th Year”, published by ANKASAM, have been fully confirmed by the organization achieving military-logistical flexibility, producing global counterparts through CPEC, integrating the Middle Corridor into its security architecture, and constructing an institutional asymmetric shield.
Since the “Shanghai Five” process in 1996, this new era, which is based on a 30-year historical founding will, has turned the organization into a revisionist pole in the global balance of power. In this context, the Bishkek decisions challenge the structural limits of the organization while also attempting to balance its internal fault lines with multifaceted global claims.
This comprehensive analysis addresses the summit’s geopolitical codes, internal vulnerabilities, the China-Russia balance, the institutional reactions of the Western world and NATO, and the reflections on the “New Great Game” with a thorough and in-depth vision.
The Codes of the Bishkek Declaration: Deepening and the “Institutional Shield”
The most fundamental difference that sets the Bishkek Summit apart from its predecessors is that the organization has suspended its uncontrolled geographical expansion policy and has entered a phase of deepening and reform based on internal institutional rules. The 28 strategic documents signed by leaders at the summit and the unanimously adopted “Protocol on Amendments to the SCO Charter” aim to transform the cumbersome structure into a more flexible, quick-decision-making, and operationally reactive corporate identity during crises.
The concrete institutional innovations brought by the summit clarify the organization’s security-focused deepening trend. The “Transnational Organized Crime Control Center” established in Bishkek, the “Universal Center for Combating Security Threats” restructured in Tashkent, and the “Narcotics Control Center” that will operate with full authority in Dushanbe, provide the organization with a collective asymmetric shield function.
This tripartite institutional structure, while uniting the intelligence sharing of member countries under a single roof, erects a legal protective wall against the spiral of regional radicalism, separatism, and terrorism. These integration moves align perfectly with my analysis titled “Post-Hegemonic Axis and Eurasian Shield: The Geopolitical Future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its 25th Year”, which identifies that the organization is shedding its structural disarray and building an operational and military-political “Eurasian Shield” in the post-hegemonic order. In this context, the SCO is no longer just a leaders’ summit that issues declarations; it is becoming a multidimensional defense and intelligence bloc that fortifies its own security with legal and operational institutional mechanisms and aims to assimilate cross-border threats within its own geography.
The Balance of Giants: The Overlapping and Diverging Interests of China, Russia, and India
China and Russia, the founding and leading actors of the SCO, appear to be in strategic cooperation regarding the organization’s global mission, expansion strategy, and ultimate goals, yet they experience deep tactical and visionary divergences behind the scenes. Undoubtedly, both global powers are in complete agreement on the goals of challenging the US-led unipolar world order, defying unilateral sanctions, and positioning the Global South behind them. However, the geopolitical tools they use to achieve these goals and the structural roles they assign to the SCO fundamentally differ.
Russia, due to Western sanctions and the prolonged war of attrition it is conducting in Ukraine, wants to position the SCO as a direct military-political front, a collective defense pact, and an anti-Western alliance against the Western bloc and NATO. Moscow aims to break diplomatic isolation by sending a message of military alliance through the organization, but the Bishkek Declaration has avoided giving open military or political support to Russia in the Ukraine war, limiting the conflict as a “regional crisis.”
In contrast, China is meticulously avoiding turning the SCO into an open military conflict zone with the West, conceptualizing the organization as a tool for securing its global Belt and Road Initiative through an economic corridor, market integration, and energy security. Beijing has managed to fully integrate its financial and technological agenda into the organization with moves such as artificial intelligence, digital solutions, customs exemptions, and the planned establishment of the SCO Development Bank in Bishkek. China’s economic weight is economically dominating Russia’s traditional military backyard in Central Asia. China’s economic clout means it is economically dominating Russia’s traditional military backyard in Central Asia, fueling a covert struggle for influence between the two giants.
India, which later joined this bilateral equation, is the most nascent and complex actor in the organization. New Delhi uses the SCO, which it does not want to turn into a radical anti-Western bloc, as a tool to access Central Asian energy markets and balance the “China-Pak Pact” in Eurasian diplomacy. While maintaining historical defense ties with Russia, it pursues a balancing strategy by keeping a distance from the organization against China’s Belt and Road hegemony. Moreover, India’s membership in the US-led QUAD, which aims to encircle China, creates a clear structural contradiction with the collective security principles of the SCO. Moscow, on the other hand, is using New Delhi as a multilateral diplomatic lever to balance Beijing’s overwhelming economic and political hegemony within the organization, thereby trying to prevent the SCO from completely evolving into a China-centric structure.
Iran, which is in an open conflict dynamic with the US and Israel in the region, has obtained an economic and logistical lifeline from the SCO against Western sanctions. However, the organization has preserved China’s rational and economically-based global balance strategy by preventing Tehran from forming a radical and anti-Western military pact against Washington.
Internal Fault Lines: Regional Conflicts, “China-India” and “Pakistan-India” Fragility
The chronic disputes between the two nuclear-armed rival nations, Pakistan and India, within the organization continue to be the biggest soft underbelly and structural obstacle to the SCO becoming a global actor. At the Bishkek Summit, a radical, binding new institutional mechanism aimed at preventing direct military conflict, border violations, or the Kashmir crisis between the two countries could not be officially included in the declaration.
The internal fault lines within the organization are not limited to the Islamabad-New Delhi axis; the sovereignty and border conflicts between China and India in the Ladakh region of the Himalayas (Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh crises) lead to New Delhi’s reservations about decisions within the organization or undermine China’s economic hegemony. India openly opposes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, arguing that it violates its sovereignty rights, and maintains a distance from China-centered economic integration projects within the SCO.
Although the SCO provides a covert diplomatic ground that prevents member states from warring with each other, it lacks an institutional conflict resolution mechanism. The symbolic steps of transferring the presidency from Kyrgyzstan to Pakistan and declaring Lahore as the new tourism capital of the organization, while creating a covert diplomatic flexibility between Indian Prime Minister Modi and the Pakistani side, have not resolved the structural issues. Therefore, these internal crises have the potential to lead to a deep diplomatic paralysis within the organization, veto wars, and strategic interest conflicts in the future.
The Western World, NATO, and Allies’ Response: From “Axis Shift” to Geopolitical Threat
The decisions made in Bishkek and the challenges outlined in the published statement have created a wave of serious vigilance, strategic concern, and reaction within the Western alliance system, which includes the United States, the European Union (EU), Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Western capitals now interpret the SCO, which has been further fortified by the full membership of Belarus and the inclusion of radical actors from the anti-Western axis like Iran, not merely as a “regional cooperation platform” but as an explicit geopolitical bloc aimed at dismantling and revising the liberal global order based on international rules.
In this context, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has closely monitored the Bishkek Summit and developed an institutional threat perception. NATO assesses that the SCO, through the China-Russia partnership, has created an asymmetric challenge to transatlantic security, particularly by attempting to legitimize the military integration of Belarus and Russia in Eastern Europe under the SCO umbrella. NATO will develop a strategy to further fortify its Eastern Flank, increase its military presence along the Black Sea and Baltic lines, and activate global partnership mechanisms with Indo-Pacific allies (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) against the SCO’s expansionist military diplomacy.
Although the Bishkek decisions do not directly mention names, they directly target NATO’s global expansion strategy, the unilateral economic sanctions of the United States, and Western-centric financial blockage mechanisms like SWIFT. Seoul and Tokyo are concerned about the SCO establishing asymmetric logistical ties with the North Korea axis under the leadership of China and Russia; Australia perceives the organization’s intention to expand into the Asia-Pacific hinterland as a direct threat to its continental security.
This expansion trend directly shakes the US-led Indo-Pacific architecture. The Bishkek decisions mean a counter-terrestrial front for the QUAD (USA, Japan, India, Australia) and AUKUS (Australia, UK, USA) structures, which aim to fortify maritime security in the region. The institutional shield of the SCO, while stretching the QUAD component India from within, also produces an asymmetric response based on logistics and nuclear deterrence from the depths of Eurasia to the encirclement strategy of AUKUS in the Asia-Pacific.
Pakistan’s Strategic Moves: Kashmir and CPEC
The potential for Pakistan, which has assumed the presidency, to bring the Kashmir crisis to the SCO agenda has been raised by some circles. However, the rule in the organization’s charter that “bilateral disputes should not be brought to the organization’s agenda” and the distant stance of China and Russia to avoid upsetting India are the biggest barriers to Pakistan’s potential move. Additionally, it should not be overlooked that New Delhi would block even the slightest institutional move by Islamabad in this direction using veto mechanisms.
On the other hand, Pakistan can take additional steps to enhance CPEC security during its presidency. In this context, Islamabad may plan to deepen intelligence sharing with SCO Counter-Terrorism Centers against separatist militants, reinforce special military security battalions to protect Chinese personnel, and deploy digital border security systems along the line. However, the operational boundaries of the potential Pakistan-China joint military command structure seem destined to remain limited due to Pakistan’s sovereignty sensitivities and the constitutional barriers to the direct deployment of Chinese military forces on Pakistani soil. Therefore, this mechanism is structurally more likely to function at the level of intelligence, joint logistical planning, and crisis coordination rather than operational control.
These complex sovereignty boundaries in CPEC also create a critical SCO precedent for China’s overseas military base policy. Instead of establishing full military sovereignty in strategic ports like Gwadar, Beijing may want to demonstrate that using the SCO’s “common security” umbrella, with respect for the host country’s sovereignty, provides a legitimate alternative to Western-style intervention through logistics-based protective base flexibility. Indeed, China is converting this legitimacy foundation of the SCO model into its port strategies in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti) and the Persian Gulf. Beijing can transform commercial ports into covert logistical military hubs by assimilating the sovereignty concerns of regional countries toward Western bases, thanks to its image as a “security-providing rational partner” in line with SCO principles.
“The New Great Game” and Future Scenarios
Completing its institutional fortification with the Bishkek Declaration, the SCO is fundamentally changing the course and pace of the “New Great Game” whose heart lies in the Eurasian geography. In light of the decisions and the positions of the member states, there are three strong geopolitical scenarios that may emerge in the upcoming period.
The first scenario is the full fortification of an alternative global system, namely the “Eurasian Shield Block,” completely immune to Western sanctions through trade in local currencies, joint energy lines, and newly established security centers, by the combination of China’s technological-economic power and Russia’s military-strategic deterrence. In this scenario, the SCO becomes a massive pole that produces its own IMF and defense concept parallel to the Western-centered financial and military system (see Post-Hegemonic Axis and Eurasian Shield: The Geopolitical Future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its 25th Year).
The second scenario is the “Internal Competition and Structural Paralysis” situation; the rekindling of the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, the escalation of the China-India border wars, or the paralysis of the organization’s decision-making mechanisms and the dysfunction of the structure due to China’s aggressive economic hegemony in Central Asia threatening Russia’s historical sphere of influence (its backyard).
The third and most balanced scenario is the “Regional Ownership and Geo-Economic Transition Zone” model. In this model, with the diplomatic weight of Turkey and Central Asian states, the organization is transformed from a rigid anti-Western ideological front into a platform where energy, technology, and logistics corridors between the East and West are managed rationally, creating an integrated yet autonomous partnership within the global capitalist system.
These scenarios demonstrate that the “New Great Game” is shifting and that Eurasia is no longer a passive geography but a global game-changing center.
Conclusion: The Success Accounting of the 25+5 Year Founding Will
While the 25th anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is officially celebrated, the 30-year historical founding will, challenges, and accumulation that have continued uninterrupted since the “Shanghai Five” process in 1996 should never be overlooked. Considering the organization’s actor-based formation and its historical evolution over thirty years, it can be easily said that the SCO has demonstrated an extremely successful, flexible, and resilient performance in global politics. Initially established as a temporary regional platform to resolve border disputes and the security vacuum in Central Asia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it has today transformed into a massive post-hegemonic power center representing more than 40% of the world’s population, one-third of the global geography, and nearly one-quarter of the world’s GDP.
The Bishkek Summit and the declaration adopted at this summit have proclaimed to the world that the theories of the “Post-Hegemonic Axis” and “Eurasian Shield,” formulated and conceptualized in my analysis titled “Post-Hegemonic Axis and Eurasian Shield: The Geopolitical Future of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its 25th Year”, are not mere abstract claims; rather, they have demonstrated that the Eurasian geography is building its own institutional defense shield, financial alternatives, and new global governance rules with great determination. The SCO, despite the contradictions between India and Pakistan, the covert inter-state rivalry, and criticisms of its cumbersome structure, has proven during this 30-year maturation period that it is the most organized, most enduring, and geopolitically the most significant alternative umbrella against the West-centric unipolar world.
