Excited Delirium Book: Chapter 33 (China News – SCO Grows Stronger)

By liam

Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 33 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index .

HEADLINE: CHINA MAKES MOVES TO EXPAND SCO

DATE: April 2008

SOURCE: World Social Reporter

NEWS STORY – Is the West Ready for a Larger Version of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has received a recent boost from the government of China. The leaders of SCO, lead by Chinese leaders, pledged on Thursday to keep foreign players out of Central Asia and moved to boost their security cooperation and defense ‘procedures’.

The SCO is an inter-governmental mutual security organization founded in 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Observers – and potential members – include Pakistan, India, Iran and Mongolia. Western observers believe that the organization was formed as a response to increasing militarization and expansion of NATO, the western military alliance.

Chinese officials, however, disagree. They describe that there is great potential in creating a sense of ‘partnership’ with its neighbours and facilitating a program of information sharing and emergency cooperation is the best way to ensure that Central Asia remains stable for decades to come. They have stated that the idea of the SCO is to protect member states.

In a joint communiqué of the summit the leaders of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan promised to upgrade their cooperation in security and defence. They resolved to “speed up the creation of a mechanism for joint response to situations posing a threat to peace, stability and security in the region.”

Observers in the West show concern about the expansion of the SCO and have asked to be observers. The members of the SCO, however, have declined all requests, effectively blocking out the Americans, Europeans and other countries. "We see no need for this type of organization," Ray Fitzgerald, acting Secretary of US Defense, said when asked about the organization at a NATO meeting in Brussels. "These countries have the UN. They have other international bodies that they can throw their support behind. Acting in this manner and reinforcing Cold War mentalities does the world no good."

"We have every intention of watching these meetings very closely, mainly because China and Russia are actively soliciting known terrorist countries, including Iran," Fitzgerald continued. "Any efforts to bring Iran into their security network would have extremely serious repurcussions with respect to American ability to implement foreign policy measures."

Burt Jarvis, our expert on Sino-Russian affairs had this to say: "The SCO is already a very private Asian ‘club’ that has the US and other countries in a bit of a head spin. The world seems to be in a race to decide the fate of a few key Middle Eastern players, particularly Iran. If or when they expand and they include Iran, it’ll make it very difficult for the US and others to make a ‘first strike’ on this country, because they may, in effect, be declaring war on China and other SCO members. There’s no doubt that the stakes are very, very high."

(Note: "Excited Delirium" is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)

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