As NATO draws down troops from Afghan soil, the continued fight in this beleaguered country and a possible resurgence of the Taliban pose three acute problems to Eurasian security: demographic decline, regional instability, and international terrorism. To cope with these challenges to peace in Eurasia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization should take a more comprehensive role in stabilizing Afghanistan.

From Dmitri A. Titoff, atlantic-community.org:  When SCO emerged at the turn of the century, some Western observers worried that its key founders, Russia and China, plotted an anti-NATO bloc. They didn't.

While the United States and its North Atlantic partners have reaffirmed their commitment to Afghanistan through to 2014, the Western alliance has also clearly signaled it is not willing to offer an unlimited “blank check” to Kabul.

From Alexander Kramarenko, the Moscow Times:  1.  Russia does have civilian and democratic control over its armed forces, which one could easily confirm by following debates in the country’s media.

From Robin Paxton, Reuters:  Thousands of Russian, Chinese and Kazakh soldiers began two weeks of war games in Kazakhstan on Monday, preparing to counter regional threats ranging from drug traffickers to Islamist militants.

In an open letter to the China Daily while on a trip to China last February, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari described the Sino-Pakistan relationship thusly: 

Perhaps no relationship between two sovereign states is as unique and durable as that between Pakistan and China.

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The Obama administration's decision to sit in on next week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) meeting in Moscow is a welcome sign of U.S. readiness to engage on many levels to deal with real world issues. 

The Atlantic Council’s Robert Manning recently focused our attention on the October Asia-Europe Summit in Beijing.  We Americans might have missed the significance of the emerging multipolarity and shifts in global power while up to our elbows in election politics and financial woes.