China’s and Russia’s plans for a new world order and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

This article looks at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) from a structural-realist perspective, trying to understand how the organization’s current major actors China and Russia as well as India manage their relationship within this organization and how they go about relating to the minor states of Central Asia and beyond as members, dialogue partners, or observers. The article argues that the deficiencies often attributed to the SCO cannot be overcome as long as its major actors do not yet agree on how to distribute power among themselves. It tests the hypothesis that the SCO as a multilateral organization – whose rules of the game are not defined by the United States and its allies – gives us an indication as to how its major actors envisage the future world order. Three main characteristics – triangularity, hierarchy, and consensus – regulate the distribution of power in the SCO and also guide the imagination of China, Russia, and India in the making of a new world order.