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Foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states gathered for a meeting in Tajikistan on July 25 to discuss security in the region, their economic cooperation and possibly expanding the organization to include new members. However, the last issue is something that the SCO’s two largest members have radically different opinions on. This divide dramatically effects the future of the SCO.
The SCO was created by Russia and China in 2001 — out of a prior organization called the Shanghai Five (which was founded in 1996) — and now also now includes Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The SCO began as group tasked with organizing the border demarcation between Russia, China and Central Asia but quickly grew into a venture that organized security in the region. Of course, many in the world —and with Moscow’s goading — said the SCO was created to develop a new world power center designed to challenge the United States, the world’s only superpower. That view gained traction in 2005 when several media organizations dubbed the SCO the “NATO of the East.”
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