Finally some new voices and new thinking about the SCO.

Yesterday the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted a discussion by Hokkaido University's Akihiro Iwashita on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). I wasn't able to attend, as I am a few thousand miles away in Kyrgyzstan, but it got me thinking nonetheless. Unfamiliar with Iwashita's work, I took a few minutes to read an article he's written for Brookings, where he is currently a visiting fellow.

Like Alexander Cooley, Iwashita appears to be part of a growing group of scholars who see the SCO in a more nuanced (and in my opinion correct) way than those who have set the conventional wisdom in recent years. A welcome development to be sure. Cooley takes aim at both extreme viewpoints of the conventional wisdom: those who see the SCO as just another nonfunctioning post-Soviet organization like the CIS and those who fear the SCO becoming a NATO of the East serving Russian and Chinese imperial ambitions. Iwashita takes aim at the latter group.

I'll let you read the piece for yourself and I'll post information about his discussion when its available, but I want to highlight one nugget from Iwashita's article. On the topic of U.S. expulsion from K2, which was announced at the 2005 SCO summit, Iwashita writes, "the SCO decision on limiting the U.S. presence in Central Asia was unexpectedly demanded by Uzbek President Islam Karimov, while Russia and China both sought to tone down the terms of the declaration."

This point cannot be repeated enough, in my mind. Uzbekistan wanted the U.S. out regardless of the positions of Russia and China. Remember, Uzbekistan left GUAM (then GUUAM) and kicked out U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in the month before Andijon. Uzbekistan had made the decision to orient away from the U.S. following the March 2005 "Tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan. Andijon was either a convenient excuse or the straw that broke the camel's back and the SCO was the vehicle, not the cause, of the U.S. expulsion.