West Contained And In Decline
Yet the 2005 SCO summit has not been without effects. Since that time the cycle of wars waged by the US and its NATO allies from 1999-2003 has been halted. There have been no more successful "color" coups in the former Soviet Union, notwithstanding apparent attempts in that direction in Belarus, Armenia and most recently Moldova.
The current president of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, attended the 2007 heads of state summit as did Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the second for two years in a row.
In early October of 2007 the SCO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization signed a memorandum of mutual understanding to integrate regional and international security cooperation and the following month agreed on a collaborative approach to Afghanistan.
This May 15th Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov informed the news media that the SCO had recommended what is described as dialogue partner status to Belarus and Sri Lanka, which would extend the geographical range of the SCO to a nation entirely in Europe and to another not part of the Eurasian landmass.
And not only has the post-World War II global domination of the West, given an extended and virtually unbridled license after the end of the Cold War, been curtailed by the new assertiveness of a revived Russia, a democratized and progressively more integrated Latin America and new formations like the SCO, but its power to dictate economic, financial, trade, copyright, political and energy terms to the rest of the world - and its ability to reserve the exclusive prerogative of using military force outside its own borders - has begun to collapse under its own weight.
Not that the military, including strategic, threats have abated. A Turkish analyst reminded readers last September that "the SCO has seen the unipolar mentality of the US as a source of conflict rather than a cure for the world’s common challenges.
"Stressing the necessity of a multipolar world for the sake of international security, the SCO has supported the maintenance of a strategic balance of power.
"The SCO has thus warned that the US endeavor to create a global missile defense system, as in Poland and the Czech Republic, is a futile attempt, as such efforts will neither help uphold the strategic balance nor prevent the spread of weapons of every kind, including nuclear." [33]
In the same month the head of Russia's Center for Contemporary Studies on Iran, Rajab Safarev, indicated the outlines of an alternative: "If Iran would become a SCO member, the SCO would become the third most influential, most powerful international body after the United Nations and the European Union."
"I even believe the SCO would rank second, next to the UN, from the competence point of the view, after Iran's membership."
"The SCO would also get stronger following Iran's membership, because its member states would be the owners of two thirds of the world's energy sources which gives them a great financial power." [34]
Caucasus War As Turning Point
On August 1st of last year Georgian armed forces launched artillery barrages against the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali, killing several people including a Russian peacekeeper. Only the preceding day a US-led NATO military exercise had been completed in Georgia and American troops and hardware remained in the country. Six days later Georgia, hours after its US-educated leader Mikheil Saakashvili announced a unilateral ceasefire, unleashed a full scale invasion of South Ossetia.
Russian forces beat back the Georgian offensive and decisively defeated an army that for years had been armed and trained by the Pentagon and NATO.
The Caucasus war was a double precedent. It marked the first time that a US and NATO proxy army had come into direct armed conflict with Russia and its defeat put the first dent in the West's post-Cold War image of invincibility.
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