Additionally, a number of Asian nations, from Vietnam to Israel, have applied to become dialogue partners. Aware of the potential to have a hand in every pie, the US requested observer status in the SCO, but its request was denied.
Source: The Diplomat
The SCO is about to undergo a change with Iran soon becoming a full member and Sri Lanka, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia becoming conversation partners. Due to the Covid epidemic and the Ukraine conflict, it is changing from its original avatar of counterbalancing the US and NATO in Central Asia to a grouping of new economic growth and political power centres in a different geopolitical environment. It has so far agreed on shared strategies to combat terrorism, separatism, and extremism, but significant flaws make it difficult for it to function.
The SCO has been unable to increase regional cooperation due to competing state interests. For instance, India is concerned about cross-border terrorism coming from Pakistan and has a disagreement with China over their shared border. The SCO must fix its institutional flaws as well, as there is no corpus to carry out collaborative projects.
Source: NDTV
The SCO appears to have at least provided its members with a forum to defuse bilateral tensions with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and his Chinese counterpart Qin Gang scheduled to participate in the Goa meeting. However, it must work to facilitate communication effectively in order to guarantee regional security. That impetus might come from the selfishness of the West, which is evident in the war in Ukraine.By adding English as a third official language to Goa’s roster of languages, joining Chinese and Russian, a symbolic openness might be achieved.
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