This study examines continuity and change in Eurasian multilateralism from COMECON and the Warsaw Pact to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Unlike its Soviet-era predecessors, the SCO adopts a flexible and pragmatic model linking security and economic development. However, this flexibility also limits the organization’s ability to manage internal disputes such as Kashmir and Afghanistan. The SCO is best understood not as a fully formed alternative order, but as an evolving experiment in Eurasian multilateralism.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization represents a post–Cold War evolution of earlier Soviet-led multilateral institutions, retaining their strategic purpose while avoiding their rigid ideological and institutional structures, but in the process presenting new and different challenges.
COMECON/Warsaw Pact
COMECON (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) was founded in 1949 as a Soviet-led economic organization to coordinate trade among Communist states, formed in direct response to the U.S. Marshall Plan. Its members were primarily Marxist-Leninist states in Eastern Europe, with exceptions such as Mongolia, Cuba, and Vietnam; several Soviet-aligned non-Communist states held observer status, while China withdrew in 1961 following the Sino-Soviet split.
From the outset, COMECON was structurally imbalanced, with the Soviet Union accounting for roughly 90 percent of total GDP and controlling most key energy and mineral resources. Although decisions formally required unanimity (later allowing abstentions), the USSR’s role as primary energy supplier and regional military hegemon gave it overwhelming informal influence.
COMECON also struggled because its members operated highly centralized, largely autarkic economies with little market-based trade. Exchange functioned mostly through barter, with Soviet oil and raw materials traded for manufactured goods or agricultural exports such as Cuban sugar. Efforts by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to establish a supranational planning authority were resisted by Eastern European states wary of further Soviet control.
Ultimately, COMECON failed to achieve meaningful economic integration. Mutual distrust of Soviet dominance limited cooperation, and shared ideology proved a weak substitute for genuine economic interdependence; once that unity collapsed, the organization dissolved.
The Warsaw Pact, established in 1955, was the military counterpart to COMECON. Formed in response to NATO, it bound the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies into a mutual defense alliance that conducted joint planning and large-scale military exercises/drills, in preparation for a confrontation with NATO. While it functioned as a deterrent to NATO, its most significant operation, the 1968 intervention in Czechoslovakia, underscored that its primary role was enforcing internal cohesion rather than resisting external attack.
Origins of the SCO
With the collapse of the Soviet Union/Eastern Bloc, a power vacuum in Eastern Europe and Central Asia facilitated expanded Western political and military influence. NATO quickly expanded eastward, with former Soviet bloc states Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joining in 1999. Russia’s traditional ally, Serbia, was bombed by NATO while a weakened Russia had little capacity to respond. Beijing also objected to the Yugoslav intervention because of the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade(Washington claimed it was an accident but China maintained it was deliberate). It was this merging of shared interests that led to the warming of Russian-Chinese relations, after many decades of frosty relations since the Sino Soviet split of the 1960’s-70’s.
The crumbling of the Soviet Union also led to an outburst of ethnic violence in the Caucasus region and Central Asia in the 1990’s-early 2000’s, most notably the Chechen wars as well as the Nagorno Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Dire economic conditions following the USSR’s collapse, weak governments and the breakdown of law and order provided fertile ground for the rise of religious and ethnic extremism, a major source of national security concerns for Russia as well as China.
It is in this context that the nucleus of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formed. It began with the so-called ‘Shanghai Five’, consisting of the heads of state of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Their initial meeting was held in Shanghai on April 26, 1996, where the respective heads of state signed a Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions. Four years later, the Five produced the pivotal Dushanbe Declaration on July 11, 2000. Notable in the text of the declaration was point 6, which said that the Five were “opposed to interference in the internal affairs of other States, including interference under the pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and ‘protection of human rights’”, a direct reference to recent Western intervention in the Balkans. On June 11, 2001, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formally established(with Uzbekistan joining the original five), and in 2002 its charter was drawn up in St. Petersburg.
In subsequent years, the SCO bloc grew, with Pakistan and India joining in 2017, Iran joining in 2023 and Belarus joining in 2024. This makes the SCO the largest regional bloc on Earth, accounting for 42% of the world’s population(3.4 billion people), covering 24% of the world’s total land area, and five of the ten largest armies in the world.
Structure and Function of SCO
The main organs and functions of the SCO are as follows-
The Council of Heads of State, consisting of the government leaders of SCO member states, which is the supreme decision making body, operating on a consensus model. Subordinate councils of prime ministers, foreign and defense ministers of the respective countries operate on a similar basis. Under the direction of the heads of state, the Secretariat, headquartered in Beijing, carries out the administrative functions of the SCO. The Secretariat has authority over the SCO Business Council, which coordinates economic activity and major infrastructure projects related to the Belt and Road Initiative. It also oversees the SCO Forum, which hosts significant cultural exchanges between member states as well as gatherings of specialists on topics ranging from boosting digital infrastructure to strategies for reducing poverty alleviation.
Parallel to these organizations but with its own command structure is the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure(RATS). This function is most analogous to the Warsaw Pact and distinguishes the SCO from organizations such as BRICS. RATS organizes joint military exercises of SCO states militaries, joint drills, intelligence sharing and counterterrorism training. RATS is pledged to combating ‘the three evils’ of terrorism, ethnic separatism and religious extremism. Most of these exercises are hosted by Russia and China, although in recent years Pakistan has hosted such drills in 2021, and Iran in 2025. Some of the drills involve all member states, while others are bilateral between two states. Dozens of such large-scale exercises, dubbed ‘Peace Missions’ by Moscow and Beijing, have occurred since the mid-2000’s.
In December 2025, the ‘Sahand 2025’ military exercises marked the first time Iran had hosted a SCO joint military exercise. Hosted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the drills involved elite units of the Chinese, Russian, Indian, Kazakh, Pakistani, Uzbek, and Tajik militaries. Iran’s concerns with Baloch separatism and ISIS terrorism were the official reason, but the exercises also could be interpreted as an act of deterrence towards Israel in the aftermath of the 12-day war, demonstrating Iran’s deepening military cooperation with major powers. In the same week, China and Pakistan conducted a ‘Warrior 9’ drill in northeastern Pakistan, to improve interoperability between the two militaries and test their commando strike abilities. This is in the context of increased attacks by ISIS K against the China Pakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC), a vital artery of the Belt and Road and the showpiece of China’s economic partnership with Pakistan.
Similarities/Differences
The SCO is thus, in some ways, a semi-Warsaw Pact as well as a semi-COMECON. The similarities are thus:
Like these previous organizations, all member states are technically equal but in the SCO Russia and China carry the most weight, Russia because of its vast natural resources, China because of its status as the second greatest economic power on Earth. Like COMECON and the Warsaw Pact, the members are united by common geography and key geo strategic region, the former primarily Eastern Europe, the latter the far greater expanse of the Eurasian landmass. There is less of a single official center of power as COMECON or the Warsaw Pact. While the top decision body the Secretariat is in Beijing, RATS is headquartered in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, emphasizing that the former Soviet Central Asian republics are not mere bit players in the organization but major stakeholders in the security dimension.
Like COMECON and the Warsaw Pact, SCO members are(mostly) united by several common core interests- opposition to US unipolar military and economic hegemony, a desire for economic integration and mutually beneficial development across a shared Eurasian landmass, and shared security concerns.
The SCO combines the functions of the Warsaw Pact and COMECON because the organization recognizes that its two primary goals- regional economic integration and development of Central Asia, and also its security function of fighting terror/extremism threats, are not separate but interconnected concerns. The SCO’s rationale is that in regions lacking economic development, terror groups can easily recruit the poor, the desperate, and those lacking prospects. At the same time, terrorist activity keeps those very regions from attracting sustained, long term economic investment. Therefore, these two spheres cannot be kept separate but part of an interconnected grand strategy.
Major differences are manifold. First, SCO does not have a mutual defense pact between member states like the Warsaw Pact did, although members are required to not be part of any formal military alliance hostile to other member states(such as NATO).
Second, while the COMECON/Warsaw Pact was very ideologically uniform, SCO is ideologically diverse. While its single largest economy, China, is Communist, the rest of its member states are not(although many share a common post Soviet heritage). Many of these states, to differing degrees, reject free market economies in favor of state managed and directed protectionism, while allowing for controlled markets.
Challenges of SCO
The SCO’s flexibility, absent in its predecessors, creates certain limitations as well. This is illustrated in two outstanding political problems facing the organization.
The first is Kashmir, a flash point between SCO members Pakistan and India. In May 2025, the two countries engaged in their first direct war in 26 years over the disputed territory. In an April 2025 SCO meeting, India lobbied to include language in an official SCO communique condemning Kashmiri separatism as terrorism, but failed to get such language into the statement. By contrast, Pakistan succeeded in SCO including references to Balochi separatist activity in its territory as terrorism, showing that Pakistan’s status as a key Beijing ally gives it more weight in a China- led organization. Despite symbolic diplomatic gestures like Modi visiting the SCO summit in China in protest of the Trump administration’s tariff policy on India, India continues to have divided loyalties at best, as indicated by the 10 year mutual defense agreement that Delhi signed with the United States in October 2025.
The second is Afghanistan. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 has proven to be a mixed bag for the SCO. On one hand, Russia, China and Iran all welcomed the removal of US military bases so close to their own borders and close to the vital arteries of the all important Belt and Road. On the other hand, the return to power of the Taliban in Kabul has created a volatile and uncertain security situation, with Afghanistan becoming a safe haven for terror groups like ISIS-K and the Pakistani Taliban, which have conducted an escalating wave of terror attacks in Pakistan, Central Asia and Russia itself.
Russia’s step of normalizing relations with the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan can be seen as a way of using diplomatic and economic engagement to sideline the more radical elements of the Afghan Taliban. It remains to be seen how Afghanistan will fit into the SCO’s grand strategy in the coming years and decades, but the success of the multiple economic corridors that the SCO is invested in across Central Asia will depend on it.
Summation
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization represents a clear departure from the rigid ideological and institutional structures of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. By emphasizing pragmatic cooperation on security and economic development rather than formal alliance commitments, the SCO has avoided some of the structural weaknesses that undermined its Cold War era predecessors and enabled expansion across a far broader and more diverse geographic space.
At the same time, this flexibility constrains the organization’s capacity to manage internal disputes and respond decisively to regional crises involving its own members. As the SCO continues to grow, tensions between its leading powers and its increasingly diverse membership are likely to persist. In this sense, the SCO is best understood not as a carbon copy of Soviet-era bloc politics nor as a fully formed alternative order, but as an adaptive and still-unsettled experiment in Eurasian multilateralism.
Author: Samuel Dreessen
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