Shanghai Cooperation Organization & NATO

Regional Polarity And Global Governance

Abstract

Regional blocs and organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and NATO have started to assume a more significant role in establishing a clear political, economic and military agenda of their member states and can become the main instrument in solving transnational and global problems. Researching the characteristics of each of the aforementioned organizations and putting their agendas into antithesis is vital to understanding some of the future developments on a global scale. Analyzing the apparition of certain regional structures as instruments of limitation for the classic actors in global governance, the ways in which these structures clash and interact and the limitations to their power is a relatable example to the proposed general theme, worthy of discussion and debate. While the Shanghai Cooperation Organization cannot yet pride itself with the same achievements and initiatives on a global scale as NATO, the leaders of the member states and observing states are representatives of half of humanity and pose a serious question to the dynamic of global governance and regional polarity. The subject at hand, of a comparative and structural analysis of the SCO and NATO is all the more intriguing as we observe that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization can be perceived as one of the tentative limitations to US influence in Asia through NATO, acting as an instrument of global governance. Furthermore, the dynamic that can develop between the two organizations can offer interesting power plays in the not-so-distant future.