Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- Dr. Andrea Schmitz, a well-known German expert on Eurasia at the German Science and Politics Foundation, considered one of the think tanks closest to the country’s authorities, wrote an analytical article on the Samarkand SCO summit.

“After the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine, unfriendly tendencies are intensifying, interpreting the international system through the categories of “friend-enemy”, “with us or against us”. Under the influence of such thinking, there are attempts to present the SCO summit in the Uzbek city of Samarkand as a platform for the formation of some kind of alliance that opposes the West. In fact, it’s not at all like that,” writes the German analyst.

Different interests and expectations from the SCO of each member state, which have become even more polarized against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical processes in the world, are the main argument in favor of the fact that this organization will not become a Eurasian analogue of NATO.

This situation within the SCO is described by Andrea Schmitz as "bloc-free multilateralism." This line is followed, for example, by the countries of Central Asia, especially its leaders - Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, whose political weight has increased significantly since the creation of this organization. This is one of the reasons why the SCO remains non-bloc, which the President of Uzbekistan chose to mention when hosting the Samarkand summit.

According to the German expert, the expansion of the SCO at the expense of such countries as Iran, and possibly Turkey in the future, is in the interests of the Central Asian countries, which prefer to continue to pursue a foreign policy strategy based on multilateralism.