Description: Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted defense ministers from several allied countries such as Russia, Iran, Belarus, India and Pakistan while launching the Shanghai Cooperation Summit in the midst of the Middle East crisis and the NATO Summit in Hague. Leaders reaffirmed their close ties and strategic partnerships, with India refusing to sign the comprehensive joint statement over the organization’s definition of terrorism, referring to the Pahalgam attacks. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a 10 – member Eurasian political and security alliance, aiming at reaffirming partnerships between European countries and the ones pertaining to the so – called Global South. Defense ministers rebuked the new role the US has adopted on the global stage and called for multilateral development and cooperation on several fronts of prosperity.
Impact: China’s Shanghai Cooperation Summit much alike the NATO Summit highlighted deeply rooted divisions between countries seemingly adversarial to the Global West. The Summit was a political response to the NATO gathering but failed to deliver a cohesive message of allegiance despite the public portrayal of deeply imbedded strategic ties. The war between Iran and Israel emphasized that national interests would always prevail over regional or global alliances, as both Russia and China refrained themselves from directly supporting Iran. The Summit reaffirmed China’s position in unequivocally supporting Russia in their war in Ukraine and also raised concerns over the consistently strained relations between India and Pakistan.