From left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin, China, Sept. 1. Xi and Putin claim their alliances are a “multipolar” alternative to Washington’s “hegemonism” and “economic bullying.” But even as they try to display a solid front against the Donald Trump administration’s efforts to drive a wedge between them, they couldn’t hide their competing national interests.
Putin used the conference to repeat his claims Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine was caused, not by his lust to conquer the Ukrainian people, but by NATO threats, and he denounced the militarization of imperialist Japan and Germany. Accelerated by Moscow’s aggression, every capitalist power is driving to rearm on the road to new wars on the horizon.
On his first visit to China in seven years, Modi is trying to tamp down New Delhi’s rivalry with Beijing, including over a deadly 2020 border clash. Defying 50% tariffs levied on India days earlier by Washington — a response to his government being the largest buyer of discounted Russian oil — Modi spoke of India’s historic economic and military ties with Russia back in the days before the Soviet Union collapsed. This cuts across Washington’s efforts for a closer alignment with New Delhi as part of a wider Indo-Pacific alliance to counter Beijing.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a loose security grouping of mostly symbolic relations founded by China’s rulers in the 1990s after the end of the Soviet Union. It began with Russia and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, but has expanded since.