The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s Astana summit this year produced 27 joint declarations, three new member protocols, and a working group on artificial intelligence governance. It also produced, in private bilateral meetings on the sidelines, evidence of three active border disputes between member states, two unresolved transit subsidies, and one quiet security incident at the Tajik-Uzbek frontier.
This is the SCO paradox in distilled form. As a multilateral framework, the organization is more institutionalized than ever. As a security community, it remains a zone where the operative logic is still bilateral, transactional, and frequently zero-sum.
Analysts in Beijing and Moscow continue to publish optimistic assessments. Analysts in Astana, Tashkent, and Bishkek tend toward skepticism. The gap between these two views is itself a useful indicator of which capitals actually drive the agenda and which merely accommodate it.