How Wall Street Journal columnist too easily dismisses an Eastern-led world order

By David C Speedie
Mead’s core message seems to be twofold: first, “the Eurasian power balance is shifting,” he argues -- that is to say, China’s support for its friend and fellow charter SCO member, Russia is waning. To illustrate this he draws a head-scratching comparison between Presidents XI and Putin on the one hand and Hitler and Mussolini on the other.

Second, he damns the SCO with faint praise, noting that with the addition of India and Pakistan “the organization has become more significant”; but proceeding then to suggest why the opposite is the case: “Russia, China and Iran seek a new global system but propose no positive agenda.”

There follows a checklist of current crises across the extended SCO region that, for Mead, illustrate the SCO’s relevance vacuum: the “humanitarian nightmare” of Afghanistan (and at whose feet do we lay that?); the disastrous floods in Pakistan; food and energy deprivation “from Turkey to Kazakhstan,” collateral victims of US and EU-imposed sanctions on Russia.

In his broadside in the “Wall Street Journal”, Walter Russell Meade takes aim at a body that most Americans have never heard of – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] — and its annual summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

This incongruous balance of natural disaster and Russian culpability as somehow the fault of SCO is followed by a swipe at China, whose “saber rattling over Taiwan has galvanized a stronger alliance against it.” Does he mean NATO? On a recent trip to northern Europe I heard rumblings of intra-alliance discord over future conflict with China.

Mead’s central argument is that SCO’s agenda is clumsy and insubstantial: in a rather weak final paragraph he sums up the Samarkand summit thus: “If SCO nations seriously want a new international system, they will have to do better than this.” This makes one wonder if Mead actually read, for instance, President Xi’s keynote address to the summit. In addition to some broad general principles: “consultation and cooperation for shared benefit”; “consensus-based decision making”; “commitment to the purposes and principles of the UN charter” and the like, the Chinese leader outlined specific SCO measures, ongoing or planned: joint anti-terrorism exercises; China’s commitment to train 2000 law-enforcement personnel in fellow SCO countries on counter-terrorism, drug and human trafficking; an SCO-Afghan contact group to address humanitarian needs, and pledging 1.5 billion remnimbi ($215 million) in emergency assistance; a regional development initiative and a five-year Treaty of Cooperation on trade and investment, infrastructure building and scientific/technical innovation; and a series of SCO forums on poverty reduction and sustainable development.

Finally, he proposed a series of “people to people and cultural exchanges on education, health, and science and technology.”

Lest all this be dismissed as cavalierly as Mead intends, let us remember that: SCO is the world’s largest regional organization, whose eight permanent members, including Russia, China and India, with Iran and Turkey in the wings, represent 40% of the world’s population over an area 60% of global geography and with 30% of global GDP. While there are intra-group tensions, it is a forum for historic rival members such as Armenia and Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia. To quote Churchill: better to jaw-jaw than war-war.

In February 2010 I wrote an article on the SCO. I cautioned against dismissing the organization: “The conclusion is that the SCO, far from an empty vessel, is a regional force to be reckoned with … a neighborhood watch over some of the world’s most insecure places.” Twelve years and several influential new members on, this seems all the more obvious. One wonders if the reference in Walter Russell Mead’s title to “disrupting the world order” stems from an indignation over an institution that reflects a new world order and operates independently of the West?

---

*Board member of ACURA, was the former chair on International Peace and Security at Carnegie Corporation. This article was produced by Globetrotter in partnership with the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. Source: Globetrotter

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

The war on junk food: Why India must adopt global warning labels

By Jag Jivan The global health landscape is witnessing a decisive shift toward aggressive regulation of the food industry, a movement highlighted by two significant policy developments shared by Dr. Arun Gupta of the Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi).

The illusion of nuclear abundance: Why NTPC’s expansion demands public scrutiny

By Shankar Sharma* The recent news that NTPC is scouting 30 potential sites across India for a massive nuclear power expansion should be a wake-up call for every citizen. While the state-owned utility frames this as a bold stride toward a 100,000 MW nuclear capacity by 2047, a cold look at India’s nuclear saga over the last few decades suggests this ambition may be more illusory than achievable. More importantly, it carries implications that could fundamentally alter the safety, environment, and economic health of our communities.

Epic war against caste system is constitutional responsibility of elected government

Edited by well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan, the book, “Bhed-Bharat: An Account of Injustice and Atrocities on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-18)” (available in English and Gujarati*) is a selection of news articles on Dalits and Adivasis (2014-2018) published by Dalit Shakti Prakashan, Ahmedabad. Preface to the book, in which Macwan seeks to answer key questions on why the book is needed today: *** The thought of compiling a book on atrocities on Dalits and thus present an overall Indian picture had occurred to me a long time ago. Absence of such a comprehensive picture is a major reason for a weak social and political consciousness among Dalits as well as non-Dalits. But gradually the idea took a different form. I found that lay readers don’t understand numbers and don’t like to read well-researched articles. The best way to reach out to them was storytelling. As I started writing in Gujarati and sharing the idea of the book with my friends, it occurred to me that while...

Search This Blog