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Sino-Russian Alliance Comes of Age: Geopolitics and Energy Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

M K Bhadrakumar
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By the yardstick of Jacques, the melancholy philosopher-clown in William Shakespeare's play As You Like It, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has indisputably passed the stage of “Mewing and pucking in the nurse's arms.”

Nor is SCO anymore the “whining schoolboy, with his satchel/And shining morning face, creeping like snail/Unwillingly to school”. The SCO more and more resembles Jacques' lover, “Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad/Made to his mistress' eyebrow.” Indeed, if all the world's a stage and the regional organizations are players who make their exits and entrances, the SCO is doing remarkably well playing many parts. That it has finally reached adulthood is beyond dispute.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 7 , Issue 25 , June 2009 , e4
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2009

References

Notes

1. Marina Zavada and Yuriy Kulikov, “Yevgeniy Primakov”, Autopilot Does Not Work in a Crisis, Izvestia, May, 8, 2009.

2. According to the data from the US Energy Information Administration, the three “Stans” of Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan - have more than 7 trillion cbm of proven gas reserves, or around 4% of the global share, and much of the has hasn't yet been harvested. The “Stans” have committed much of their harvestable gas to Russia and China through the next decade. 3. S Adam Cardais, “Central Asian Gas Not a Panacea for Europe”, Business Week, February 3, 2009.

4. Dr Martha Brill Olcott, “The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Changing the Playing Field in Central Asia”, testimony before the Helsinki Commission, September 26, 2006.

5. “NATO invites Kazakhstan to join Afghan peacekeeping operation”, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, May, 14, 2009.

6. Significantly, the next round of the SCO joint military exercises will be held in 2010 in southern Kazakhstan.

7. “Interview with Stephen F Cohen on US-Russia Relations”, Washington Profile, April 2009.

8. “Afghanistan: Russia's chance to influence global politics again”, Izvestia, May 13, 2009. 9. Ilya Kramnik, “CSTO: joining forces in a crisis”, RIA Novosti, February 5, 2009.