Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Manudeo Singh, Newton International Fellow at the Department of Geography and Earth Science, Aberystwyth University

On August 5, a cloudburst near the Kheer Ganga river triggered a flash flood that tore through Dharali, a village in the Indian Himalayas. Within minutes, the river swelled with water, mud and debris, sweeping away homes, roads and lives.

Every monsoon season, the Himalayas see similar tragedies – flash floods caused by cloudbursts or glacial lake outbursts. The first explanation we often hear is climate change. Extreme rainfall and melting glaciers are part of our warming world, but that is only half the story. The other half lies in where and how we build.

A cloudburst is an extreme, sudden downpour – often more than 100mm of rain in just an hour, falling over a small area. It’s like the sky suddenly emptying a huge bucket of water over the mountainside.

A glacial lake outburst flood happens when a lake formed by melting glaciers bursts through its natural dam of ice or loose rock, releasing a sudden torrent downstream.

Both cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts send huge volumes of water rushing down steep valleys. On their way, they pick up mud, rocks and trees, turning into debris-laden flash floods that sweep away whatever lies in their path.

These are natural events in higher mountainous regions, such as the Himalayas. They cannot be stopped. What makes them disasters is when towns, hotels and roads are built directly where these floods predictably flow.

Where we build matters

To understand why the damage is so severe, we need to look at the land itself. Geomorphology is the study of how Earth’s surface is shaped. It shows us how rivers, slopes and valleys have been formed and modified over time by floods, landslides and debris flows.

In the Himalayas, many safe-looking places are anything but. Take the alluvial fan, which is a cone-shaped pile of sand, gravel and silt that forms where a steep stream slows and drops the debris it carries. Over time, repeated floods build up this fan. It looks flat and inviting – perfect for a settlement, hotel, or car park – but when the next flash flood happens, the water and debris flow straight back down, burying whatever is built there.

This is not theory but history repeating itself. Dharali, which is built around the ancient Kalp Kedar Hindu temple, has faced flash floods before. Records show the temple has been buried multiple times, most recently in 2013. This also highlights our short memory span.

Climate change and poor planning

Rising temperatures can lead to more intense and erratic rainfall, and this does raise the likelihood of cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts. But focusing only on climate change makes disasters sound unavoidable.

In reality, much of the destruction is preventable. Poor planning and reckless construction have put people in harm’s way. Roads, hotels, even entire towns, are expanding into zones geomorphology tells us are flood prone.

When disaster follows, we blame the climate. But the harder truth is that our own decisions magnify the risks.

Ignoring geomorphology has serious consequences. For governments, it means billions spent on disaster relief and rebuilding after every monsoon. For developers, it means investments washed away in a single night. For tourists, it means the risk of being caught in floods during what should be a holiday. And for mountain communities, it means living in constant danger.

What is needed is geomorphic literacy. Planners, policymakers, developers and citizens need to read the land and respect its signals. The land itself tells us where floods have happened before, and where they will happen again. Listening to it can save lives.

Flash floods due to cloudbursts and glacial lake outbursts are a natural part of the Himalayan monsoon. They cannot be prevented, and climate change may make them more frequent. But the devastation they cause is not inevitable – it is shaped by where and how we build.

Geomorphology is nature’s diary, showing where water and debris have flowed for centuries. Learning to read it can keep people safe.

The Dharali disaster is a painful reminder that the real danger is not only in the sky, but in our failure to understand and respect the land beneath our feet. Unless we take that lesson seriously and build geomorphic awareness into planning, policy making and public understanding, tragedies like Dharali will keep happening, year after year.

Manudeo Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Himalayan flash floods: climate change worsens them, but poor planning makes them deadly – https://theconversation.com/himalayan-flash-floods-climate-change-worsens-them-but-poor-planning-makes-them-deadly-263561

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Sweeney, Professor, Lancaster Law School, Lancaster University

There has been widespread international outrage at Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, northern Gaza, on August 25. The attack took the form of a “double tap” strike. The first attack killed at least one person, then – as medics, journalists and other responders rushed to the scene – a second attack on the same location killed another 20 people. This included five journalists and several medical staff treating people injured in the first attack.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has called the incident a “tragic mishap”. But whether or not the attacks on the hospital were intentionally directed, the double tap tactic almost certainly falls under those acts of war prohibited by the law of armed conflict and could constitute a war crime on that basis alone.

Whether or not charges specifically relating to the attacks on Nasser Hospital are ever brought, it’s an opportunity to examine how international law operates in situations like this.

Who is fighting who, and why it matters

That the hostilities in Gaza constitute, in international law, an “armed conflict” is beyond doubt. That means that there are grounds for the application of the law of armed conflict (LOAC) – or as it is also known, international humanitarian law.

If we see today’s conflict as being between Israel and Hamas, then it would be a non-international conflict because it would not be between two or more states. But if it is between Israel and Palestine then, whether or not Israel recognises Palestine as a valid state, it would be international. In May 2024, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan caused some controversy when he said that it was both, running in parallel.

This issue is important because the rules covering international and non-international armed conflict are not the same. The rules on international armed conflict are older and more detailed. This also means that there are separate lists of international and non-international war crimes in the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. But the LOAC rules relevant to a double-tap attack are similar enough in both types of conflict that we can postpone coming to a conclusion on this until such as time as war crime charges are actually brought.

Law of armed conflict

The first essential feature of LOAC is that it is all based on the idea that the means (weapons) and methods (tactics) used in an armed conflict are “not unlimited”. That is why some weapons are banned – chemical weapons, for example. When it comes to tactics it is, for example, unlawful to order to “take no prisoners”.

There are other even more fundamental rules on methods that govern the conduct of hostilities.

The main rules on hostilities are often said to be humanity, necessity, distinction and proportionality. Humanity is about not inflicting unnecessary suffering. Necessity requires that in applying the other rules a commander should be able to do what they need to “win”, but no more than that. Distinction requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. Proportionality requires that when a lawful objective is attacked, the expected “collateral damage” should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack.

It’s important to note that a judgement on proportionality must be made before a military action is launched and during an attack “constant care” should be taken that the situation really is what the military commander thought it was when they ordered the attack. That rule is meant to minimise accidents.

Double-tap attacks

Distinction and proportionality are the key principles for looking at a “double-tap attack” such as the one on August 25. First, applying the rule on distinction, there are only very limited circumstances in which a hospital could ever be a lawful target. Hospitals are marked out for special protection under the Geneva Conventions. The same goes for journalists, who are protected alongside all other civilians, as long as they do not become engaged in fighting.

Further to this, it would be reasonable to expect that after a lethal attack medics would attend the site, and journalists might want to cover it. Launching the second attack could therefore be said to be either intentionally directed against the medics and journalists or, at the very least, uncaring as to whether both lawful and unlawful targets might be killed. That is known as an “indiscriminate” attack. So it also violates the rule on distinction. It is also difficult to see how the second attack could have been accidental.

And even if it were argued that the hospital was a lawful target, for example due to being used by Hamas fighters to stage attacks on the Israeli forces, the collateral damage was almost certainly going to be vast. So, for that reason, it would violate the rule on proportionality.

Israel is a state party to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which require that “grave breaches” of their rules are investigated and prosecuted. Alternatively, and whether or not the conflict is found to be international or non-international, the Rome Statute provides a solid basis for the above violations of LOAC to be prosecuted as war crimes at the International Criminal Court.

James Sweeney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Was the ‘double tap’ attack on Gaza’s Nasser hospital a war crime? Here’s what the laws of war say – https://theconversation.com/was-the-double-tap-attack-on-gazas-nasser-hospital-a-war-crime-heres-what-the-laws-of-war-say-263955

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Helen Hall, Professor, Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University

Nuns loom large in the European imagination. They are often caricatured to the point of dehumanisation. Either as a grotesque comic creation, like the chocolate-obsessed sister in Father Ted (1995-1998), or a monstrous aberration, like the demon Valak from the Conjuring (2013-2025) films.

Either way, by rendering the nun unreal, and stripping her of personhood, these portrayals allow viewers to avoid confronting the uncomfortable questions that a flesh and blood nun raises. In contrast, nuns who are not safely contained in the realm of fiction, but live and breathe in our world, force us to consider whether the aspirations and desires that society expects women, and indeed human beings, to feel, are in fact cultural rather than innate.

If we take the dangerous step of acknowledging that nuns are no different from anybody else, we face the unsettling question of whether we too could reshape our experience of sexuality, fulfilment, interpersonal connection and community. Watching the new documentary film Mother Vera pushes viewers forcefully to take that step.

Following a conversation with a family member, Mother Vera, the protagonist nun of the film, is compelled to reclaim buried memories and face the events that led her to choose life in a convent. This leads her on a journey of renewal and transformation, with all of the losses and gains bound up with change. However, the visual storytelling weaves a complex tapestry of emotions and ideas as this unfolds.

Mother Vera is an immersive work of art and the beauty of the cinematography is almost hypnotic. Countryside, animals and people move across the screen and pull observers into a different time and place. On occasion it is so vivid that it is almost possible to catch the scent of the candles in a darkened church, or the smell of cattle in the yard.

Yet while it is highly evocative, Mother Vera is a demanding watch. The audience is permitted to enter into the life of the nun and her order, and given an infinitesimal, but powerful, taste of the silence and stillness of that domain.

Engaging with it is radically different from seeing a film propelled forward by constant dialogue, or framed in a way that leads viewers inexorably towards a prescribed moral conclusion or emotional response. Mother Vera not only gives those watching space to react and reflect individually, it almost compels them to do so.

Read more:
Nuns are a staple on the Hollywood screen – even as they disappear from real life. What’s behind our timeless obsession?

This is not to suggest that the film ever pretends naivety or neutrality – it is far too carefully constructed for that. It also plays with some very well-worn tropes in respect of nuns and indeed religion. The story arc centred on a slow burn of inner and outer liberation is a familiar one.

Equally, the central character is depicted in a way that sets her apart from the audience. The clothes that she wears and the physical setting through which she moves call to mind not just another era, but another period in history. There are moments when she seems almost medieval, as she is shown from a distance riding on horseback, long garments flowing, or when the camera pans to a close up of her face, framed by stark black cloth.

Playing with archetypes

At times, Mother Vera teeters on the verge of being overdone. It comes close to the cliché of presenting nuns as distinct from other members of society, and needing to shed something of their otherworldly nature if they are to reintegrate, or even authentically interact, with those outside of the cloister walls.

However, the sophistication of the film as a whole means that we are not expected to unquestioningly consume these cardboard cut-out ideas. Instead, we are invited to play with the archetypes on screen and interrogate the extent to which we really believe in them.

These archetypes are complicated because they are not entirely without grounding in reality. Members of religious orders are indeed secluded and set apart from the wider population, and live their lives according to an alternative set of parameters. When entering an order, there are formal rites of passage, as a person moves from one context into another. The question of what it might mean to walk in the opposite direction, creating more personal symbolism, is a recurring theme.

Significantly, within the protagonist’s journey there are threads of continuity: most obviously, but not uniquely, her bond with horses. These points of continuity demonstrate that in some respects, both the distinct periods of an individual’s life, and the sacred and secular realms of society, are part of an integrated whole.

We are captivated by the crossroads at which this particular nun has found herself, because her dilemmas and decisions resonate with our own, regardless of belief, gender, language or other characteristics. Not only does Mother Vera vividly evoke its specific setting, in doing so, it lays bare universal struggles.

Mother Vera is beautifully constructed and manages to be both lavish and minimalist at the same time. The existential nature of the material that it explores, combined with its appeal to the senses, mean that it lingers in the mind long after the film has ended.

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Helen Hall is a priest in the Church of England

– ref. Mother Vera: beautiful documentary film about a nun’s dilemma – reviewed by a priest – https://theconversation.com/mother-vera-beautiful-documentary-film-about-a-nuns-dilemma-reviewed-by-a-priest-263746

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kumbirai Mabwe, Senior Lecturer in Banking and Finance, Cardiff Metropolitan University

Skilled migrants play an important role in the UK economy. But while the UK celebrates the skills they bring, it doesn’t always make it easy for them to thrive financially.

Migrants tend to arrive with a good work ethic, qualifications, professional experience and a drive to succeed. But unlike UK natives who grow up with the country’s financial system, they have to navigate unfamiliar banks and financial products. They might also come up against unwritten rules, such as needing a good credit score to access mortgages, loans and even mobile phone contracts.

The UK has relatively high levels of financial literacy compared to other countries. However, financial literacy and financial behaviour tend to vary between natives and migrants. Additionally, migrants may face other disadvantages such as unrecognised qualifications or pay gaps.

The UK government has made banking easier in recent years, but opening an account can be a challenge for newly arrived migrants. They may not be able to meet stringent identity document requirements, for example.

Most skilled migrants arrive with no knowledge of the credit score system. Those who do are sometimes still surprised that they cannot bring their overseas credit score and need to start again from scratch.

A lack of UK credit history isn’t a reflection of migrants’ financial irresponsibility. Rather, it is a consequence of coming from a different financial system. But without a UK credit record, lenders cannot assess reliability, often restricting migrants’ access to credit. This has short and long-term financial consequences. Migrants are not “poor”, but they are financially invisible and may end up paying more for credit.

Migrants also often face distinct challenges in terms of their financial priorities (things like cost of visas, supporting family or investing in their home country, for example). These may delay or limit their engagement with the UK financial system.

These differing priorities are shaped by cultural norms, attitudes towards debt and risk, and varying levels of trust in financial institutions. Skilled migrants often arrive with debt from their move and may take on more while settling in the UK.

But unfamiliarity with the UK financial system can then make it hard to distinguish between good and bad debt –in other words, the kind of debt that might ultimately make them wealthier like a mortgage or loan to pay for education, as opposed to high-interest borrowing, for example.

Day-to-day money

Though skilled migrants may have budgeting and saving skills, their struggle to find appropriate financial products can mean resorting to risky and unregulated ways of accessing credit such as rotating credit and saving associations. These schemes are typical in developing countries and involve a group pooling their money, with one member periodically receiving a lump sum.

Skilled migrants can also face restrictions when it comes to accessing public funds such as welfare benefits. This underscores the importance of maintaining emergency funds, perhaps covering three to six months of living expenses but which migrants tend not to have.

This financial preparedness becomes even more important given the tightening in the job market, changing immigration rules and rising visa costs. These bring uncertainty, which can affect long-term financial planning for things like retirement and pensions.

Our research has also uncovered gender-based differences in skilled migrants’ financial behaviour. Unfortunately, female migrants seem to be more financially vulnerable than their male counterparts – often because of lower levels of education as well as remaining reliant on male partners, who may have arrived in the UK before they did.

Ultimately, though, the longer someone has stayed in the UK the better from a financial point of view. They tend to become familiar with the system, and their financial literacy improves.

Services like the Money and Pensions Service offer financial guidance, including debt advice. Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper also play an important role in supporting migrants to improve their understanding of budgeting, debt and access to financial services.

But these services may still lack understanding of the cultural diversity and dual lives of migrants. Tailored financial advice is essential to help these people make informed decisions and achieve long-term stability. This advice could come from ethnic-minority financial wellness coaches who take into account migrants’ diverse values, lifestyles and opportunities.

The journey of a skilled migrant to the UK is a testament to their ambition. It is vital that banks and policymakers invest in education, products and services that are tailored to migrants’ specific financial needs.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why personal finance is harder when you’re a migrant – https://theconversation.com/why-personal-finance-is-harder-when-youre-a-migrant-262976

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Neta Crawford, Montague Burton Chair in International Relations, University of Oxford

Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel, mostly unarmed civilians, in its surprise attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023. Using Gaza health ministry statistics, the UN says more than 62,000 people have subsequently been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas. An additional 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank.

The statistics do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. But Israeli government officials have consistently said their military works hard to keep civilian harm to a minimum. As Ophir Falk, a foreign policy adviser to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 2024: “Any civilian casualty is a tragedy for sure. Israel seeks to minimise the civilian casualties, while Hamas seeks to maximise them.”

Falk added: “We seek to minimise them for two main reasons … one, it’s the right thing to do. We’re the only Jewish country on Earth, and that is our policy to minimise civilian casualties. And the other reason is because it’s effective.” By effective, he means that hurting civilians can backfire. It can lead to a loss of domestic and international support for the war, as well as increased Palestinian resistance.

Israeli media outlets have also detailed the “extensive measures” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it takes to keep civilians in Gaza safe. And they have repeated claims such as: “What the IDF has been doing in Gaza in this war is unprecedented in urban warfare, both in pace and caution.”

Israeli officials dispute the numbers of Palestinian civilians reported to have been killed in Gaza. Some have even claimed that the Gaza health ministry and UN have “lied” about the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the war.

But figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported recently by the Guardian, indicate that 83% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza as of May have been civilians.

Preventing civilian harm

The protection of civilians in war has not always been taken for granted. The US only began to emphasise the minimisation of inadvertent harm to civilians, or “collateral damage”, after the Vietnam war ended in 1975.

The inadvertent killing of civilians and massacres such as My Lai, where as many as 500 unarmed Vietnamese villagers were killed by US soldiers in 1968, were widely condemned. Precautions to avoid civilian harm, known as civilian casualty or civilian harm mitigation, have been gradually integrated into US military operations since then.

The US developed a practice of making pre-strike estimates of possible civilian harm – collateral damage estimates – in the 1990s. This was refined during the post-9/11 wars.

If civilian harm is estimated to be above a certain threshold, and disproportionate to the expected military advantage of an operation, the US military might change how it engages or not strike at all. US methods to minimise civilian casualties have been consistently updated, as recently as August 2022 and July 2024.

These precautions have not always been adhered to. They have also sometimes been relaxed when the US believes doing so is justified. But when they have been followed, the rate of civilian killing has been reduced.

The impetus for the US military to develop these programmes was not only to minimise harm to its own reputation and a desire to follow the laws of war. The point was also to avoid creating more militants by killing civilians.

The 2007 US Counterinsurgency Field Manual underscores the importance of avoiding civilian harm. It states: “an operation that kills five insurgents is counterproductive if collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more insurgents.”

It was equally important to convince observers that every effort was being made to ensure civilians were protected. As a 2006 study by US-based thinktank RAND corporation, paid for by the US air force, said:

By emphasizing the efforts that are being made to reduce civilian casualties (such as increased precision, smaller blast effects, improved target verification and so on), the Air Force and Department of Defense can help ensure that the US Congress and public have continued reason to trust that the US military is seeking new ways to reduce the prospects of civilian deaths in future military operations.

A demonstrated commitment to a philosophy of continuous improvement may be what is needed to ensure this trust in the future, and in the case of foreign audiences, to build trust in the first place.

Israel also began to use some of these methods. And it developed its own, context-specific practices in its wars with the Palestinians and other neighbours. In fact, Israel was a pioneer in the use of targeted drone strikes that it said were aimed at killing Palestinian militant leaders while avoiding civilian harm.

However, investigations have shown that Israel loosened its rules of engagement after the October 7 attacks. The New York Times reported that an order by military leadership authorised officers to risk killing up to 20 people in each airstrike targeting Hamas. In one extreme example from July 2024, a strike on Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif killed at least 90 civilians and injured around 300 more.

Israel’s own military data also now shows that Israeli officials have both overstated the number of militants they say have been killed and, by implication, the ratio of civilian to militant deaths.

Prior to the Guardian’s report, Israeli officials said the military had killed 17,000 to 18,000 Hamas combatants and other “terrorists”. They also implied that 50% of the total deaths in Gaza were Hamas or other combatants. Netanyahu simultaneously decried what he called “outrageous” claims of civilian casualty rates of up to 70%.

But Israel’s own numbers show the actual civilian casualty rate in Gaza is much higher than the figure Netanuyahu calls outrageous. It is also high compared to other conflicts. Research by the Costs of War project, which I co-founded, show that the rate of civilian casualties in American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were 68% and 26% respectively.

Civilians never deserve to be harmed through carelessness, inadvertence or deliberate targeting. Yet given the kind of war Israel is fighting – using large, indiscriminate weapons to destroy buildings and failing to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant – it has unsurprisingly produced high civilian casualty rates.

Neta Crawford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gaza: civilian death toll outpaces other modern wars – https://theconversation.com/gaza-civilian-death-toll-outpaces-other-modern-wars-263685

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating. But rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-liberal powers such as China and Russia have in agreeing and implementing a credible alternative.

Founded in Shanghai in 2001 with just six members – Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – the SCO has grown rapidly over the past decade. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024. Beyond these ten member states, the SCO also has two observers – Afghanistan and Mongolia – and 14 dialogue partners, including Turkey, Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, several of the Gulf states, and a number of other Asian states. If measured by population of its core member states, it is the world’s largest regional organisation.

Size clearly matters, but in the case of the SCO it creates problems rather than contributing to their resolution. The organisation did little in response to escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Kashmir that eventually brought the two long-standing rivals to the brink of nuclear confrontation. It took US mediation to de-escalate the violence. The SCO’s subsequent failure to condemn cross-border terrorism explicitly in a joint statement of the meeting of defence ministers at the end of June led India to refuse to sign it.

When Israel attacked Iran, the SCO issued a strongly worded condemnation of the attacks. But India distanced itself officially from the SCO statement.

These and other simmering tensions, such as between India and China over a new dam project in Tibet, are likely to be papered over at the SCO summit in Tianjin. China’s president, Xi Jinping, will be keen to demonstrate his country’s leadership of a large coalition of like-minded nations who oppose the hitherto US-led liberal international order.

However, the theme of this year’s summit is “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move”. This sounds more like an aspirational plea to member states, observers and dialogue partners rather than a concrete plan for action.

The so-called Shanghai spirit – a hazy mixture of standard Chinese talking points about mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation – is little more than empty rhetoric. It is also very fragile.

Two member states – India and Pakistan – have recently gone to war with each other. Two SCO dialogue partners – Armenia and Azerbaijan – have been involved in several full-scale violent confrontations since they became dialogue partners almost a decade ago. And if they have now embraced the Shanghai spirit, they did so, ironically, in Washington and after their relations with Russia significantly soured.

Nor does the SCO have much of a track record of constructive involvement in internal conflicts in its member states and dialogue partners, such as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This is even more obvious in the case of Afghanistan where Russia’s recent official recognition of the Taliban government poses yet another challenge to the SCO.

China has cautiously welcomed Russia’s recognition but not followed suit, while several Central Asian member states of the SCO already have a wide range of economic ties with Afghanistan. But Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states remain deeply ambivalent about the Taliban regime.

It’s also worth noting that the SCO’s very selective commitment to the Shanghai spirit does not extend to relations between the organisation and non-member states. That much is evident from the SCO’s lack of condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine. So it’s difficult to see where the SCO will move. Previous summits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 produced lengthy declarations of intent – but little follow-through.

Elephant in the room

The marked difference to these previous summits is, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

On the one hand, Trump has demonstrated the near-irrelevance of the SCO as a security player compared to the indispensability of the US when it comes to managing crises, such as those between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan and Cambodia and Thailand.

On the other hand, Trump’s weaponisation of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO. The US president’s imposition of punitive tariffs might see the organisation’s most powerful countries – China, Russia and India – align more closely against the US.

Sanctions against Russia, however unlikely they may be to be fully implemented by Trump, are still on the table. Heavy tariffs have now been imposed on India for continuing to buy Russian oil. And the trade war with China is only paused but not settled.

For their own sake, and even more so for the sake of their actual and potential partners in the global south, China, Russia and India must demonstrate a unity of purpose at the SCO summit. They will condemn the US and the liberal international order, which Trump himself is actively eroding. But their unity of purpose will be limited and performative.

Meanwhile, the differences that remain between them and their conflicting individual aspirations of leadership in a post-American international order will prevent them from offering a credible alternative.

Undoubtedly, there will be carefully choreographed displays of solidarity and aspirational statements of how the spirit of Shanghai will shape a new international order. But these rest on the false premise that a post-American international order will be a non-American order.

Trump may try to make a deal with Russia and China on a new world order, but a president who publicly muses about renaming the US department of defence to the department of war is unlikely to cede global leadership – at least not without a fight.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

– ref. Xi, Putin and Modi to meet in China – but don’t expect their Eurasian bloc summit to agree on anything important – https://theconversation.com/xi-putin-and-modi-to-meet-in-china-but-dont-expect-their-eurasian-bloc-summit-to-agree-on-anything-important-262243