How Potent is the SCO Bloc?

This week I begin with scenes from Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi, then look at the possibility, slight or not, of the world admitting the reality of Gaza, and finally share a disturbing word about elections in India. 

Our world appears to be, depending on one’s outlook, in free flight or in free fall. It is not being piloted by any alliance. Or under any clear set of norms. There used to be a time when the “democratic” or “free” world, as it was called with partial accuracy, had recognized leaders. That was a while ago. 

Today the world is doubtless familiar with a Donald Trump who emerges every other day from Air Force One’s presidential cabin to speak to a reporter. However, while Trump undoubtedly speaks for the world’s most powerful government, and at times for a majority of the American people, he does not speak for a bloc of countries. Or for Europe, or for Canada, not to mention a country like Mexico or Brazil, or like Japan, Australia, or India, or for a continent like Africa. Or for a broad principle. 

He may possess instruments to influence or coerce other governments, but he is not seen as the leader of a multinational, norm-enforcing coalition. Moreover, in the first six months of his second term he has changed his stand so often on major questions (e.g. on the war in Ukraine and on international tariffs) that governments elsewhere that wished to “follow” Trump’s lead have given up that effort. 

EURASIAN GROUPING 

Hence the increased global interest in the world’s second most powerful government. As I type these lines, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an innocuous name for a Eurasian grouping that apparently could become a powerful bloc for rivaling or even challenging American hegemony on our planet, is meeting in Beijing. Representing a major country that at least on paper maintains a strategic partnership with the U.S., India’s foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, has had a formal meeting with President Xi Jinping and talks with other Chinese leaders. Leaders of other delegations too have had exclusive conversations with China’s president. 

Headquartered in Beijing, SCO has ten members at present: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Belarus. Fourteen other nations are SCO’s dialogue partners, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal and Sri Lanka. At least in theory, the resources of these 24 countries add up to a formidable pile of power. 

Intriguingly enough, after a meeting with Han Zheng, China’s vice-president, Jaishankar posted on X that “India supported China's leadership in SCO,” adding that India-China relations had recently improved and were likely to continue to improve. 

There is talk of a visit by Prime Minister Modi to China to meet Xi. Given India’s continuing presence in the so-called Quad grouping, where the US, Japan and Australia are the other three, and which is usually set against Beijing’s perceived ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region, such remarks confirm our world’s uncertainties. 

MOVE TOWARD BEIJING? 

Some in India are bound to be asking if this apparent “move” by New Delhi toward Beijing is connected to the White House lunch in June where Trump cordially hosted Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and to Trump’s continuing insistence, to the dislike of India’s government, that last May’s India-Pakistan ceasefire was his achievement. 

Did Foreign Minister Jaishankar receive clear instructions from Prime Minister Narendra Modi before he left for the SCO event in Beijing? Or did Modi arm his minister and himself with vagueness? The question arises from the mysterious final sentence in Jaishankar’s tweet following his meeting with Xi. After reporting that he had conveyed greetings from India’s president, Ms. Droupadi Murmu, and from Modi, the foreign minister added: 

“Apprised President Xi of the recent development of our bilateral ties. Value the guidance of our leaders in that regard.” Is he asking for guidance or expressing thanks for it? 

Do interesting possibilities radiate from the reports I have summarized? I have my doubts. Despite its scope on paper, I don’t see SCO becoming a world-dominating force. For many in the world, and these include people living in the countries that constitute SCO, the freedom to think, believe, speak, write, associate, meet, or travel as one wants remains precious. They will recognize the achievements of Chinese men and women as also the value of trade with China without wanting to emulate China’s party-run parliament and media, and without becoming Beijing’s allies in global power games. 

Huge questions remain for individuals and societies in the democracies. Who are we with? What are we against? In countries threatened by the far right, why aren’t lovers of democracy doing more to find common ground, shelving differences on less fundamental questions, and forming clear majorities? 

SIGNIFICANT NYT OP-ED 

Crystallizing the courageous opposition to the Gaza devastations steadfastly mounted by many Jews in the U.S. and in Israel is the New York Times article “Never Again” by Omer Bartov (July 15). Dr. Bartov is a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I take the liberty to quote a few sentences from his article: 

“By May 2024, the Israel Defense Forces had ordered about one million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah — the southernmost and last remaining relatively undamaged city of the Gaza Strip — to move to the beach area of the Mawasi, where there was little to no shelter. The army then proceeded to destroy much of Rafah, a feat mostly accomplished by August (of 2024). 

“At that point it appeared no longer possible to deny the pattern of I.D.F. operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders in the days after the Hamas attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu... had urged his citizens to remember ‘what Amalek did to you,’ a quote many interpreted as a reference to the demand in a biblical passage calling for the Israelites to kill [men, women and children] of their ancient enemy... Nissim Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Parliament, said on X that Israel’s task must be ‘erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.’ ... 

“I believe the goal was — and remains today — to force the population to leave the Strip altogether or, considering that it has nowhere to go, to debilitate the enclave through bombings and severe deprivation of food, clean water, sanitation and medical aid to such an extent that it is impossible for Palestinians in Gaza to maintain or reconstitute their existence as a group.” 

Bartov quotes numbers from the brave Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “[A]n estimated 174,000 buildings have been destroyed or damaged, accounting for up to 70 percent of all structures in the Strip. So far, more than 58,000 people have been killed, according to Gazan health authorities, including more than 17,000 children, who make up nearly a third of the total fatality count. More than 870 of those children were less than a year old. More than 2,000 families have been wiped out, the health authorities said. In addition, 5,600 families now count only one survivor. At least 10,000 people are believed to still be buried under the ruins of their homes. More than 138,000 have been wounded and maimed.” Our country, yours or mine, may be religious or secular, it may be Islamic or Jewish, Buddhist or Christian, Hindu or Marxist, or it may display another label, yet the following remark by Bartov surely applies to it. We must “never,” he writes, “let inhumanity take over the hearts of people and steer the actions of nations in the name of security, national interest and sheer vengeance.” 

London’s Financial Times describes another horror from tortured Gaza. The new “system” of distributing food to the starving multitudes “pits people against each other in a free for all to grab food.” “The ‘distribution centres’ are ‘death traps’, " said Hassan Abdallah, a barber displaced with his family to Al-Mawasi on the southern coast. ‘If you secure any food and avoid being shot by the Israelis, you may not escape the gangs waiting outside,’ said Abdallah, who has brought back supplies from only one of his seven trips.” 

From India, the opposition party, the Indian National Congress, also notes that voices within Israel are speaking out against the genocide. Jairam Ramesh, the party’s general secretary, points out that “the latest to express grave concern is a former PM of Israel himself.”  In a post on X, Ramesh adds, “But the Government of India is supremely indifferent, not wanting to say or do anything that would affect the friendship of Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Modi. The PM’s silence is disgraceful and goes against all that India has stood for.”

The current government in India, and the supposedly but not really independent Election Commission of India, have decided to alter rules for the right to vote. As eminent scholar-activist Yogendra Yadav puts it, “The presumption of citizenship has been overturned. Now you need to prove that you are not an illegal resident.”

PROVE YOUR INDIANNESS 

Everyone must provide this proof. Not a simple or inexpensive thing to do. The requirement places a high hurdle before the poor and the disadvantaged, whose ranks are dominated by Dalits and Muslims. “For the first time, everyone carries the burden of offering documents (either a copy of the 2003 voters’ list or proof of birth and residence) that have never been provided to them, and that a majority has no reason to possess. Finally, [the requirement] seeks to legalize arbitrariness through the absurd provision of an ‘indicative (though not exhaustive)’ list of documents, which can be changed at the discretion of any local official.” 

“Prove your Indianness” is the harsh and, for many, impossible demand that the Indian government is making on people whose sweat and at times blood has irrigated the Indian soil. They wait to see what if anything India’s Supreme Court does about these exclusionary requirements.