The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, though 25 years old, is now a major hub for nations that have grown in influence since the turn of the century. Could it be the NATO of the future, or something entirely different?
When the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit took place in Bishkek in 2019, it caused a traffic catastrophe in Kyrgyzstan's capital city. Hosting again this year, the government had learned its lesson. Residents were encouraged to leave the city, school was postponed, many people were advised to work from home, and even markets and bazaars were closed. Such disruption is understandable given the concentration of power within city limits. The 2026 SCO summit brought together leaders and dialogue partners from Central Asia, Russia, China, India, Iran, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and wider Asia at a moment when the international system is undergoing profound geopolitical realignment.
Russia is increasingly isolated from the West. China is competing with the United States for global influence. The war in Ukraine has disrupted established trade and energy routes. The conflict involving Iran and the wider instability in the Middle East are creating additional uncertainty around global connectivity. At the same time, countries across Central Asia are trying to avoid being pulled into any single geopolitical camp while taking advantage of the new economic and diplomatic opportunities created by this fragmentation. So, what were the key takeaways?
The most important one was the increasingly explicit political role the SCO is claiming in a multipolar world. Vladimir Putin described the organisation as one of the emerging centres of a “multipolar world,” arguing that over its 25-year history the SCO had evolved into “one of the independent and influential centres” of that emerging order. For Moscow, this narrative is strategically useful. The SCO allows Russia to demonstrate that, despite the war in Ukraine and its deteriorating relationship with the West, it remains connected to a network of major powers and regional actors.
But the organisation means something different to China. Xi Jinping called on the SCO to “foster an environment of universal security” and criticised “hegemony, unilateralism, and protectionism.” He described multipolarity as an “irreversible trend” and argued that dominance by one or several countries or bloc politics should not be confused with genuine multilateralism.
This is more than anti-Western rhetoric. China is also trying to shape the rules and principles of the emerging multipolar system: sovereignty, non-interference, multiple centres of power, and opposition to any single country determining the rules for everyone else. China is arguing for a world without hegemony while simultaneously expanding its own economic and geopolitical weight, especially in Central Asia, where the summit took place.
Thus, the elephant-in-the-room in Bishkek was not whether the world is becoming multipolar, but who will have enough power to shape the new multipolar world. The SCO does not provide a clear answer. In fact, its membership illustrates precisely how complicated the answer is.
The SCO is not a traditional trade alliance. Its members have fundamentally different economic models, security interests, and foreign-policy priorities. India and China participate in the same organisation despite their strategic rivalry. Russia and Türkiye cooperate in some areas while competing in others. Central Asian governments maintain close relations with Russia while deepening economic ties with China and simultaneously expanding their relationships with Türkiye, Europe, the Gulf states, and other powers.
The SCO lacks a foundational foreign policy or security determination, unlike NATO. Perhaps this diversity of goals could explain the SCO’s durability. SCO countries come together, identify areas of common interest, negotiate, signal their positions, and pursue bilateral relationships - all without having to agree on everything else. This also explains why expectations that the SCO could evolve into something resembling the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) or another highly institutionalised organisation are increasingly unrealistic.
If there were ambitions in the organisation's earlier years to transform it into a more active and integrated institution, the structural constraints are now much clearer. The SCO has limited mechanisms for enforcing collective decisions. Its members have divergent views on the strategic development of the organisation and on many major international issues.
Moreover, most SCO members are simultaneously members of other regional organisations and integration projects, including the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and, in China's case, the Belt and Road Initiative. These institutions already cover many of the economic, security, infrastructure, and political areas in which the SCO might otherwise become more active. There is therefore little incentive for member states to give the SCO the kind of authority that would allow it to compete with these organisations.
The result is an organisation that is more important as a platform than as an instrument. It can bring major powers into the same room. It can facilitate political signalling and bilateral diplomacy. It can provide a framework for discussing security, trade, transport, energy, and regional connectivity. But it cannot easily impose a common strategy on countries whose interests frequently diverge. And perhaps it does not need to.
However, for Central Asian states, this is where the SCO becomes particularly important. The region is increasingly positioned at the intersection of several geopolitical and economic transformations. The war in Ukraine has altered established trade and logistics routes between Europe and Asia. Instability in the Middle East is creating new risks for maritime transport and global supply chains. At the same time, China continues to expand its economic presence across Eurasia, Türkiye is seeking deeper engagement with Central Asia, and European and Gulf countries are increasingly interested in alternative routes, energy supplies, and critical infrastructure.
Geography suddenly matters in a different way. Central Asia is no longer simply a region situated between Russia and China. It is increasingly being discussed as a potential transit hub connecting China with Europe, Russia with South Asia, and the Caspian region with global markets. That creates opportunities and risks.
This is where organisations such as the SCO become useful. They allow smaller and middle-sized states to sit at the same table with China, Russia, India, Iran, and other major powers while preserving flexibility in their bilateral relationships. For Central Asia, therefore, the value of the SCO may be less about collective action and more about strategic diversification.
Finally, the presence of UN Secretary-General António Guterres added another interesting dimension. Guterres voiced concern over instability in the Middle East and called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. He also raised issues ranging from reform of the international financial system and developing-country debt to climate change and the transition to renewable energy. But perhaps more significant was his meeting on the margins of the summit with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Guterres stressed the need to resolve the crisis through dialogue and negotiations, while emphasising international law and navigational rights around the Strait of Hormuz.
His presence highlighted another feature of the SCO: it is not operating in isolation from the existing international system. The countries gathered in Bishkek may criticise Western dominance and call for a more multipolar order, but they are not creating a completely separate international system. They still rely on the UN. They participate in global financial institutions. They trade with Western economies. They use international markets and international law.
The emerging order is therefore unlikely to be a clean replacement of one system by another. It is more likely to be a process of institutional layering: new organisations and partnerships developing alongside existing ones, with states moving between them according to their interests.
So, what is the SCO actually becoming after the Bishkek summit? The SCO's function is increasingly that of a high-level political forum: a place where regional leaders can negotiate, raise urgent concerns, conduct bilateral diplomacy, and test each other's positions. Its lack of a strong enforcement mechanism that would subjugate strategic autonomy may actually be part of the reason why countries with competing interests are willing to participate. This makes the SCO remarkably compatible with the kind of international system that appears to be emerging. A world in which countries cooperate on trade but compete on security; cooperate with China while maintaining ties with the West; work with Russia on one issue and distance themselves from Moscow on another; and participate simultaneously in multiple regional organisations.
And that may be the real significance of the SCO. The organisation is not creating the multipolar world that its leaders talk about. It is adapting to it. And the Bishkek summit showed that, for countries like those in Central Asia, the question is increasingly not which side they should choose. It is how effectively they can navigate a world in which there are no longer only two sides to choose from.
