Saleem Qamar Butt
\nThe SCO Tianjin Summit 2025 was the 25th Heads of State Council meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was held from August 31 to September 1, 2025, in China. It was the largest summit in SCO\u2019s history, and was the fifth time that China hosted the meeting. The SCO is a Eurasian political, economic and international security organization of ten member states. It was established in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Several countries are engaged as observers or dialogue partners. I had the honour to make maiden representation in the SCO Security Forum held at Beijing in 2005; which led to follow up by the political and diplomatic outreach in the subsequent years as observer state, and finally Pakistan was granted membership of SCO during the 17th SCO Summit of Heads of State, held on 8-9 June 2017 in Astana Kazakhstan, where I had served as Pakistan\u2019s Defence Adviser from 20007 to 2010. Iran joined the group in July 2023, and Belarus in July 2024. The 25th Summit was attended by 26 Heads of state\/ government, besides representation from ten regional and international organisations.
\nIn my number of columns published in the last 7 years, a consistent effort had been made to underscore the undeniable reemergence of Russia and unprecedented rise of China as the Global Leader by 2025; just refer to \u201c SCO: The Greatest Regional Alliance\u201d(published 2019 and then in 2021), \u201cPuzzling Geopolitics\u201d(published August 2024) and \u201cStrategic Partnership\u201d(published Sep 2024). SCO is the world\u2019s largest regional organisation in terms of geographic scope and population, covering approximately 24% of the world\u2019s total area (65% of Eurasia) and 42% of the world\u2019s population. As of 2024, its combined nominal GDP accounts for around 23%, while its GDP based on PPP comprises approximately 36% of the world\u2019s total. The SCO is governed by the Heads of State Council (HSC), which meets once a year. The organization also contains the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS); a permanent organ of the SCO, which serves to promote cooperation of member states against the three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism.
\nIt has a lot in common with Russian led Collective Treaty Security Organisation (CSTO), which is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six former Soviet States: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan. Similar to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty(NATO), Article 4 of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) establishes that an aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all. The CSTO maintains a peacekeeping force that has been deployed to areas of conflict, including Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. In January 2022, the CSTO deployed 2,000 of its peacekeepers to Kazakhstan to quell the local unrest. Had Pakistan been a member of CSTO, wouldn\u2019t it have served to overcome the scourge of terrorism in Pakistan (KPK and Balochistan in particular), where the operating terrorists have their bases and links in neighbouring Afghanistan and some human resources coming from the Central Asian Republics?
\nCoupled with the Summit, the 2025 China Victory Day Parade was a Big Bang military parade held on Chang\u2019an Avenue, Beijing, on 3 September 2025 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the \u2018end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II\u2019; indeed, a proclamation of Global Leadership role henceforth. Over 12,000 troops of the People\u2019s Liberation Army participated in the stunning parade. A total of 26 world leaders attended the parade, noticeably the Indian PM was not invited. Among the attendees of the foreign guests was Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea President Kim-Jong-Un, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Iranian President, which certainly alarmed the USA, as validated by POTUS Trump\u2019s sarcastic remarks about the Chinese Military Parade and about Russian President Putin and Kim-Jong-Un. The President of China Xi Jinping, stated in his speech on the occasion, \u201cToday, humanity is again faced with the choice of peace or war, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum\u201d and that the Chinese people \u201cfirmly stand on the right side of history\u201d.
\nIn the 2005 SCO Security Forum, I was told in person by a Chinese Minister sitting next to me on the dining table that by 2025, China would open her wings and by 2030, China would be an unrivalled Global Power. Twenty years down the road, China has followed the strategic timelines as per Sun Tzu\u2019s philosophy for her most enviable and peaceful rise. India\u2019s military misadventure of 7-10 May 2025 and Pakistan\u2019s jaw-breaking counter-stroke with the help of China as a credible & trustworthy strategic partner had set the stage for China\u2019s impressive Victory Day Parade, displaying highly potent military potential to send shivers down the spine of her global and regional rivals. Hence, instead of proverbial \u2018sailing in two boats\u2019, Pakistan\u2019s National Interest (security and economic) can best be served and balanced by standing firmly with the right strategic partners in formidable economic and security blocs like SCO, CSTO and BRICS. The extended strategic arms by Russia and China need to be grabbed rather than sinking into the quagmire, which we chose to walk into 7 decades ago.
\nThe writer is a retired senior army officer with experience in international relations, military diplomacy and analysis of geo-political and strategic security issues.
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Saleem Qamar Butt The SCO Tianjin Summit 2025 was the 25th Heads of State Council meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which was held from August 31 to September 1, 2025, in China. It was the largest summit in SCO\u2019s history, and was the fifth time that China hosted the meeting. The SCO is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-501895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-article"],"yoast_head":"\n