A Line in the Steppes: NATO Meets an Expanded SCO

While NATO leaders were congratulating themselves on the accession of petite Montenegro into the military pact, NATO’s counter-balancing force to the east was welcoming as full members India and Pakistan. While Montenegro’s flag was being raised at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the flags of the world’s most populous democracy and the third-most populous Muslim nation – India and Pakistan, respectively – were being raised at the Beijing headquarters of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The enlargement of SCO effectively neuters NATO’s long-sought march to the east where it intended to gobble up as members, the former Soviet Central Asian states...

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