“Global alternatives, regional stability and common causes”: the international politics of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and its relationship to the West

Two scholars of the international relations (IR) of Eurasia consider the “geopolitical identity” of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). They first outline that most of the existing analysis and comment on the SCO assumes its raison d’etre to be countering the “West” in Eurasia and beyond and suggest that this narrow perspective does not afford the SCO enough agency, which leads to a distorted picture of the variety of SCO discourse and behavior. Second, they outline a framework based on a combination of the literatures on Critical Geopolitics and identity-focused IR for examining the “geopolitical identity” of the SCO. The article then traces the SCO’s geopolitical discourse on its own collective identity, its relationship to the West in wider international affairs, Eurasia, and in areas in which it seeks active collaboration with the West. It is argued that while in many contexts the SCO’s geopolitical discourse is indeed built upon a Self/Other dynamic that contrasts their common positions on certain international issues against those of the West, in others it identifies similarity to the West and suggests a larger in-group between itself and the West.