The induction of India and Pakistan as full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO] constitutes a severe setback to the United States’ regional strategies. The western analysts have regarded the SCO as the “NATO of the East”. That the SCO territory is expanding and will include South Asia upsets the US interests profoundly.

Arguably, it is possible to co-relate it with the unseemly hurry with which the US is pressuring the GCC states to allow the deployment of a unified missile defence system in the Persian Gulf region. Ideally, the US would have deployed the ABM system in Afghanistan. The US-Afghan pact of 2014 provided the necessary legal framework, but the ground reality today is that any Afghan settlement involving the Taliban would involve the termination of long-term western occupation of the country.

The US still seems pinning hopes that the induction of India and Pakistan as SCO members could be stalled. A commentary by the US government-funded Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty last week noted,

• The inclusion of India and Pakistan into the SCO does boost the group’s international profile, but it could come at expense of the Central Asian members.

Believe it or not, the RFERL actually sponsored a “panel discussion” to discuss “Are The Central Asians The Losers in SCO Expansion?”

The American participants claimed that Uzbek president Islam Karimov was manifestly unhappy about the SCO decision to induct India and Pakistan as members and conveyed his misgivings openly, and “other Central Asian presidents avoided making such comments, but that must have been on their minds also.”

An American pundit pontificated, “”now with the addition of India and Pakistan I think there’s a fear among some of the Central Asian countries that some of their voice and some of their decision-making will also be lost.”

Whereupon, another pundit promptly chipped in, “With India and Pakistan, now there’s four huge countries, nuclear powers, and four relatively poor and small and not-so-powerful Central Asian countries, so I think that there’s legitimate concern that [Central Asian members] would be outweighed in SCO decision-making.”

The RFERL adds, “It is easy to see why the Central Asians could be worried.” It estimated that it is the Kremlin which is getting India and Pakistan on board as fellow members in the SCO and “the timing was good for Russia.” Indeed, it saw a congruence of interests between Moscow and Beijing on this issue, too.

Listen to the fascinating RFERL podcast in full, if time permits. What a masterly propaganda ploy!

Even more fascinating is the commentary in the website of Eurasianet, a “sister publication” of the RFERL. It says Karimov actually sounded a word of caution on the SCO’s expansion, saying it “would not only change the political map, but would change the balance of power. This is not a simple issue, and it needs to be discussed.” It speculated wistfully that considering that SCO chairmanship has now passed to Tashkent, there might still be a miss between the cup and the lip for India:

• And one official think tank scholar in Astana suggested that the planned expansion could be blocked. “De jure, the process has yet to be fully clarified. It is quite possible that an existing SCO member could block their entry,” said Sanat Kushkumbayev, deputy director of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, an an interview with the website Russia Direct. “Karimov noted with good reason that the entry of nuclear India and Pakistan to the SCO could change the balance of power inside the organization and internationally. There are many unresolved issues between Delhi and Islamabad, and how this will square with the SCO’s declared spirit of cooperation is unclear.”

Of course, the paranoia in the American mind is understandable. The heart of the matter is that the SCO’s expansion is happening against the regional backdrop of sharp decline in the US influence in the Eurasian region.

Defying all western propaganda, Russia and China are accelerating their cooperation and coordination of regional policies in Central Asia. Prestigious US think tanks have produced dozens of reports in the recent years, analyzing that there are serious contradictions and conflict of interests between Russia and China that put them at loggerheads in Central Asia. The US analysts often tried to play on Russia’s sensitivities by arguing that China is systematically replacing Russia as the dominant player in Central Asia.

Therefore, the decision to integrate the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union project and China’s Belt and Road initiative becomes a defining moment in Eurasian politics. Quite obviously, Moscow and Beijing have a shared interest in rolling back the US-NATO presence in the Eurasian region.

Does it all hark back to Halford Mackinder’s so-called Heartland Theory, which has been a geo-strategic theory that greatly influenced the US’ regional policies toward Eurasia for a century?

Yes, an understanding of the Heartland Theory may help grasp these developments in big-power politics in contemporary Central Asia. Let me retrieve from my Central Asia archives an excellent paper I read years ago, titled “Revisiting the Pivot: The Influence of Heartland Theory in Great Power Politics”, written with great prescience by two scholars at Macalester College, Minnesota. Read it here.