This summer the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will conduct joint military exercises called “Peace Mission–2007”. The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) will closely observe the drills. For the first time, the two organizations will act as partners rather than representing overlapping multilateral structures seeking to fight terrorism, extremism, and separatism in Eurasia. However, the drills also generate discussions whether both organizations are in fact pursuing transnational security or are more concerned with international dominance. The CSTO’s suggestion to practice defense mechanisms against nuclear terrorism suggests the latter.

BACKGROUND: The SCO and CSTO embrace a significant part of Eurasia and their memberships overlap. The SCO members include China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; while India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan hold observer status. The CSTO members are Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan; while Azerbaijan and Georgia are observers. The SCO and CSTO were formed in 2001 and 2002, respectively. Since 2002, each organization has been conducting annual collective military exercises, with Russia and China being the main suppliers of military technologies, aircrafts, submarines, elite battalions, and armaments. The SCO and CSTO collective anti-terrorist drills usually involve heavy armament and thousands of soldiers. Today, the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure (RATS) and CSTO’s Collective Rapid Reaction Forces (CRRF) represent largely overlapping and at the same time competing military subunits.

This summer the SCO will practice defense mechanisms against nuclear terrorism in Russia’s Povolzhsk-Uralsk military district. Such large-scale collective military maneuvers contradict the organization’s initial goals of fighting drug trafficking, organized crime, and ethnic separatism that require smaller scale military and policing operations. The “Peace Mission–2007” exercises will feature exclusively Russian and Chinese military technologies, including China’s “Chengdu J-10” tactical fighter plane and BMP-96 infantry fighting vehicles and tanks. Russia will provide Il-76MF aircraft. New housing facilities will be built to accommodate the participants, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao will attend the drills. Given that no terrorist organization is presently known to possess nuclear weapons, the drills’ objectives obviously aim beyond just anti-terrorism activities. They rather represent an attempt to boast Russian and Chinese military capabilities, as well as the growing ties between the two countries.

In 2006 Russia and China conducted joint military exercises on China’s Shandong peninsula within the SCO framework. These were the first Russian-Chinese joint military maneuvers and signified a closer merger between both states. China provided 7,000 of its military personnel, while Russia provided 1,800. The drills involved trainings on assault ships, submarines, and strategic aviation. Since no other SCO members aside from Russia and China have access to the sea, the drills were largely labeled as window dressing in front of Taiwan. Importantly, the drills also promoted greater arms trade between Russia and China. Today, Russia’s annual arms trade to China amounts to roughly $2 billion. Diplomatic visits between Russian and Chinese military and security officials also became more frequent since the 2006 drills.

At the CSTO’s November 2006 meeting in Moscow, the CSTO expressed its interest to join the SCO’s drills, but Beijing declined the proposal. The CSTO officials agreed upon the fact that since both organizations’ goals and memberships converge, organizing military drills jointly would reduce costs and facilitate exchange of experience between them. However, the SCO claimed that neither organization provides a legal ground for uniting their militaries in joint maneuvers. Initially Moscow planned to field 450 military personnel to the drills, but Beijing insisted that the number should be 2,000. After negotiations, Moscow and China agreed to provide up to 3,000 military personnel each. These numbers are remarkably higher compared to smaller member-states. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan will provide 100 personnel each and Kyrgyzstan only 30. The number of personnel sent by each country suggests that the drills will primarily feature Russian and Chinese military teams. Armenia and Belarus, both members of the CSTO, were invited to the SCO-CSTO exercises as observers.

It is unlikely that SCO’s RATS and CSTO’s CRRF will eventually merge, but potential synchronization of their functioning is indeed an important element in justifying their future coexistence. There is an informal threshold, primarily enforced by Russia, to withhold the expansion of Chinese military presence in the Central Asian states. Although RATS has an office in Tashkent, the SCO does not intend to station a military base anywhere in the region or jointly with the CSTO. The CRRF is stationed in Kant, Kyrgyzstan.

IMPLICATIONS: The “Peace Mission–2007” drills indeed contain more political rather than practical value. Although both SCO and CSTO are concerned with transnational security in Eurasia, neither provides concrete mechanisms for fighting security problems such as non-state insurgency, drug trafficking and organized crime. The experience of previous collective drills shows that the SCO and CSTO primarily sought to master their military capacities as opposed to developing skills in police activities or intelligence exchange. Arguably, Russia and China share a common concern with secessionist movements on their territories. Both also loathe the Central Asian states’ cooperation with the U.S and NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. The SCO and CSTO represent a shield from international intervention into Russian, Chinese and Central Asian domestic affairs. With that, both organizations played a mere symbolic role in addressing terrorist incidents in the Central Asian states, often supporting incumbent regimes in times of instability instead of designing concrete anti-terrorism strategies.

The SCO and CSTO’s programs emphasize that neither organization represents a military bloc, and that neither intends to align against any state or group of states. Despite that, the discourse around both organizations’ functioning often involves discussions of their standoff with NATO and the U.S. military presence in the Central Asian region. Russian mass media regularly condemn Western negative perception of the SCO’s cooperation with the CSTO, especially after Russia and China conducted bilateral military exercises in China in 2006. The SCO, on its part, underlines its peaceful intensions and rebukes the possibility of turning into military bloc. Along with that, the organization’s documents stress the danger of unipolar tendencies in global security. The SCO regards its member and observer states as supporters of international multipolarism.

It is likely that China and Russia will try to involve India into the SCO’s future military exercises. India’s interest in the Central Asian region, as well as military cooperation with Russia and China, has been increasing in the past few years. The SCO also established ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ Secretary, thus placing itself among China’s most important multilateral alliances. At the June 2006 summit in Shanghai dedicated to the SCO’s fifth anniversary, the organization announced a moratorium on further expansion. Instead, the SCO will stage partnership dialogues with individual states. Afghanistan has become the first state to participate in the SCO’s bilateral partnership dialogues.

CONCLUSIONS: Growing ties between Russia and China indeed amplify both the CSTO’s and the SCO’s leadership positions in Eurasia. But there is a limit to the merger between the two organizations. Despite Russian interest in military cooperation with China, the Kremlin will not abandon the expansion of the CSTO. The CSTO is a counter-balance not only to Western influence in the former Soviet space, but also to Chinese presence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. The SCO, for its part, emphasizes differences between itself and the CSTO. Unlike the CSTO’s CRRF stationed at the Russian air base at Kant, the SCO lacks joint military troops. In practice, China will not be able to deploy troops to the Central Asian states, let alone to Russia. The SCO, however, offers a prolific venue for intensification of military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. This does not necessarily contribute primarily to transnational security, fulfilling instead entirely different agendas.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Dr. Erica Marat is a Research Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS/Uppsala University.