Freitag, 31. August 2018

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization...



...is - in my opinion - underestimated. In former years there was not too much to be seen inside the club, but nowadays it is developing. Here my brief update:

At the 18th meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on June 9, 2018, the Qingdao Declaration reaffirmed the importance of the SCO's Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RAT) in the fight against the so-called "three evils" terrorism, extremism and separatism. The corresponding document covers the period 2019-2021. The SCO expects an upsurge of "the potential of cooperation between competent agencies". The special role of the defense ministries and intelligence agencies was already highlighted at the SCO Defense and Security Forum in December 2017. In May 2018, participants in the 13th Meeting of Presidents and Chief Justices of the Supreme Courts of the SCO Member States emphasized the importance of big data and artificial intelligence for this collaboration. This development worries NATO intelligence: Iran has an observer status in the SCO and in 2016 it had ratified a 25-year agreement with China, which included defense and intelligence cooperation and an expansion of the Iranian Navy in the Indian Ocean. Since May 2017, the NATO member Turkey is an dialogue partner of the SCO. Full membership is discussed. Western intelligence fears an outflow of sensitive anti-terror information to the SCO and thus Russia or China.