| Summary/Abstract |
For the past 15 years, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) has preserved its non-Western (and sometimes anti-Western) identity and its policy toward the West has been based on a “soft-balancing” strategy. This paper aims to examine the SCO`s identity positioning and understand the implications of its strategy and policy toward the West in terms of three recent global events relating to the SCO. India`s membership effect will be able to soften the SCO`s image of the club of authoritarian states or an anti-Western group as well as to make less-assertive its non-Western identity. China`s economic power projection aiming at the “peaceful rise” is inclined to make the SCO`s identity less anti-Western. Russia`s policy of expanding partners and widening cooperation in greater Eurasia is also likely to weaken not only the rhetoric, but also the substance of the anti-Western narrative. The SCO`s shift of identity positioning, in general, from the non-Western to a less assertive non-Western is likely to soften the SCO`s soft balancing against the West, and the anticipated range and effect of the softer balancing could be greater due to the widened platform and the improved image.
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