SCO a threat to US-led world order? Decoding optics behind India, China, Russia bromance

As the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) was underway, a widely circulated video showed Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Russian President Vladimir Putin chatting and having a laugh on the second day of the event.

Of course, everyone would agree that this is all optics, but in geopolitics, optics do matter, and optics from the "largest-ever SCO summit in history” certainly are watched by the global powers, particularly the US.

The three leaders were photographed sharing conversations, walking together and posing as if to suggest that a new world order is in the making.

The carpool moment

Equally telling was the carpool between Modi and Putin. The two leaders held over 40-minute-long informal conversations while travelling together in the same car to the venue of the meeting after concluding their engagements at the SCO summit.

The ties between India and the US are on a decline after Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods to a whopping 50 per cent, including a 25 per cent additional duty for India's purchase of Russian crude oil. The decision of Modi to share a ride with Putin and the prime minister's tweet that "conversations with him are always insightful" suggest India's stance that while there may be backchannel conversations happening on the tariffs, New Delhi is not willing to bend over backwards to accommodate Trump.

The two leaders also discussed bilateral cooperation, including in the economic, financial, and energy sectors and expressed satisfaction with the sustained growth in bilateral ties in these areas. They also discussed regional and global issues, including the latest developments concerning Ukraine.

Xi and his vision for a new world order

Xi Jinping took a dig at the US, calling out its “bullying practices,” saying house rules of a few countries should not be imposed on others, even as he urged the SCO member nations to oppose the cold war mentality, bloc confrontation, and bullying.

“We should leverage the strength of our mega-sized markets and economic complementarity between member states and improve trade and investment facilitation,” he said.

In an apparent attempt to project China as primus inter pares or leader among equals, Xi said he looks forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system.

“We should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar of the world, and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation and make the global governance system more just and equitable," he said.

China has also been pushing the grouping to set up a development bank on the lines of the New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS and the Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), in which India is the second largest shareholder.

The SCO has grown into the world's largest regional organisation, with the participation of 26 countries, cooperation covering more than 50 areas, and a combined economic output of nearly USD 30 trillion, Xi observed.

Putin backs Xi

Supporting the economic proposals of Xi, Putin proposed that members of the 10-nation SCO should sell joint bonds—a move that may deepen the economic cooperation between the countries.

He further said he supported the creation of our own payment, settlement and depository infrastructure and the formation of a bank of joint investment projects. These, he said, would increase the effectiveness of the economic exchanges and protect the countries from fluctuations in the external environment.

Pointing out that SCO had revived "genuine multilateralism", with national currencies increasingly used in mutual settlements, Putin said this lays the political and socio-economic groundwork for the formation of a new system of stability and security in Eurasia. According to him, this security system, unlike Eurocentric and Euro-Atlantic models, would genuinely consider the interests of a broad range of countries, be truly balanced, and would not allow one country to ensure its own security at the expense of others.

Beyond optics

The India, China, and Russia camaraderie sends a clear message of an alternative global alignment, particularly for the Global South, that challenges the US-led world order. While China uses the SCO to assert its leadership in Asia and Eurasia, positioning itself as a champion of developing countries and multipolarity, Russia aligns closely with China against Western sanctions and global order. India, meanwhile, navigates a careful path, asserting its autonomy and growing influence. 

The optics seem to have irked Trump as he claimed on Monday that India has now "offered" to cut its tariffs to nothing and added that the US does "very little business" with India and called the ties between the two countries "one-sided disaster."

"What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us, Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India, he said.

"It has been a totally one-sided disaster! Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US. They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it's getting late. They should have done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people to ponder!!!" Trump said.