With war still raging around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, the SCO is likely to become an alternative mechanism to find peace where Eurasia’s big three—China’s President Xi Jinping, Indian PM Narendra Modi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin—have a chance to shape talks towards global peace and trade flows.

Modi’s meeting with Putin has already seen India publicly endorse efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Russia may well now use India’s and China’s access to European and American leaders to search for the elusive peace in the West.

India-China Tensions Continue

At last year’s SCO meeting in Tianjin, Xi had told Modi that Beijing and New Delhi should be partners rather than rivals. The message unsettled some observers, who saw a possible easing of tensions between Asia’s two largest powers as part of a broader recalibration of the global balance of power.

However, since then, tension on the McMahon Line and in Ladakh has not really ended, though India-China trade has ratcheted up to $151 billion. Recent talks on the disputed border haven’t really given much of a result, though they have kept the conversation going and have seen China indicating that relations between China and India were no longer merely a bilateral concern but had acquired wider global and strategic significance.

SCO’s Limits And Potential

The problem with the SCO meeting is that the body is neither a NATO-style military alliance nor a cohesive economic union along the lines of the European Union or even Asean. Its members are scattered across Eurasia and have sharply divergent interests. India and Pakistan remain rivals; India and China continue to contest their border; and Russia remains locked in confrontation with the........

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