When a diverse group of nations such as the 10 members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization gets together, it”s difficult to reach a consensus on sensitive issues like international security.
This challenge was formidable even 25 years ago when the group was much smaller and much more homogeneous.
While all agreed on combating the three evils — terrorism, separatism and extremism — each nation had different notions of each of the evils. Today, with an expanded membership, achieving consensus is even more challenging and almost impossible.
Yet, the SCO has consistently demonstrated a remarkable ability to overcome these challenges, enhancing multilateral cooperation across security domains.
The Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure stands as a testament to the SCO’s achievements. Since its inception in 2002, it has played an important role in helping SCO member states foil terrorist attacks and combat extremism.
While this success often overshadows other achievements, the SCO’s accomplishments in “soft security” also deserve equal attention.
Consider the SCO’s fight against illicit drug trafficking. Recent statistics are quite impressive: in 2025 alone, the collaborative anti-drug operation “The Web” helped intercept 10 metric tons of narcotics and 21 tons of precursors.
This cooperation led to the shutdown of numerous online drug trade platforms and poses a serious challenge to transnational criminal groups involved in the production and sale of drugs.
Another priority on the “soft security” agenda is combating illegal cross-border migration.
Though each SCO member state has unique migration management policies, their cooperation has yielded practical results, particularly in apprehending criminals trying to escape justice by fleeing abroad. Though specific figures have not been released, these efforts lead to thousands of arrests every year.
A growing dimension of the SCO’s “soft security” cooperation is the fight against cybercrime. With critical infrastructure and national financial systems more vulnerable to malicious interference than ever before, the SCO’s partnership with Interpol on cybersecurity was a very timely step.
Joint training programs for experts and public officials, launched in Tashkent in 2023, are rapidly expanding now and hold tremendous potential for growth.
To be sure, these three “soft security” challenges are not unique to SCO member states but are universal problems that affect all nations and regions of the world. No country can credibly claim to have found an “ultimate” solution to any of them.
For example, the European Union has been fighting against cross-border drug trafficking, illegal migration and cybercrime for a very long time, and the outcomes have been mixed at best.
It would be unfair to suggest that all EU efforts have failed, but the reality is that all three “soft security” challenges remain high on the European agenda. The use of many drugs — from traditional cocaine to the most novel synthetic cathinones — is on the rise.
When a major conflict occurs or a state collapses in the Middle East or Africa, a flood of refugees is forced to migrate to Europe, similar to the migration crisis of 2015. EU countries lose hundreds of billions of euros every year to cybercrime, including ransomware, phishing, identity theft and hacktivism. The preferred targets are digital infrastructure and services, manufacturing, transport and public administration that demonstrate persistent vulnerabilities to transnational cyber-criminal groups operating from both within the EU and outside.
Given these shared challenges, it would be only natural for the SCO and the EU to collaborate on this critical agenda.
This is particularly necessary because the problems that Europe faces from these challenges cannot be separated from the rest of Eurasia.
Problems arising anywhere between Lisbon and Singapore will inevitably ripple across the region.
Of course, under the current deplorable geopolitical circumstances, leaders of the SCO and the EU member states will need a lot of political will, strategic vision and personal courage to begin this interaction. It makes sense to start with relatively simple things such as information sharing, best practices exchange and informal meetings of experts.
While the SCO can learn a lot from the EU experience, Europe also stands to benefit from exploring the Eurasian practices. When sufficient trust has been built between the SCO and the EU, they can consider parallel or even joint projects in areas that are not controversial or politically sensitive.
Such a collaboration is not a favor granted by the EU or vice versa. It is a natural step in restoring global cooperation. The sooner this step is taken, the better it will be for both sides, and for the rest of the world.
The author is a former director-general and academic director of the Russian International Affairs Council.
The views don’t necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
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