The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Balancing Power

This article analyses the emergence of the Russo-Chinese cooperation within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the security implications for the Eurasian security landscape. By conducting a systematic and theoretically informed analysis the article contributes to the sofa sparse body of literature on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. By employing a balance of power model we investigate to what extent the Russo-Chinese Shanghai Cooperation Organization has elements of so-called soft balancing against the United States in the post-cold War period. By doing so, we generate insights into the contemporary and intertwined academic debates on the durability of the American soft balancing. We reach the tentative conclusion that the Russo-Chinese dominated organization seems to be a reaction to advances in American power and influence generally, and on the Eurasian land-mass in particular but that soft balancing activities as such are so far modest. If the organization progresses further to form a genuine counter-American block, the implications of the SCO-cooperation for European security could be profound. On the one hand the European major powers could benefit from the flexibility of having an alternative alignment option at its disposal. However, a new Russo-Chinese alliance could also produce a new hostile block on Europe’s Eastern flank detrimental to its security.