In the current world situation, with the demand for oil expected to rise steeply, and stay high long-term, because of the future needs of China and India, and other rapidly industrialising countries, every government is bound to be preoccupied with ensuring its access to oil on favourable terms if it is a net consumer, or with selling at the most favourable price, if it is a net producer. So the grouping, now named the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), quite logically invited India, Pakistan and Iran to its meeting in July 2005, and would obviously regard them as possible recruits.^[6] The meeting rather tartly urged the United States to set a date for departure from its Central Asian bases, and the Uzbeks gave Washington six months notice to quit.^[7]

What seems to me particularly noteworthy in that rather obscure episode is that it suggests that regional organisations may be useful diplomatic instruments for enabling middle and minor powers to rein in the ambitions of the most powerful sovereignties, not only the United States but others as they emerge. Recent events in Latin America strongly reinforce that view.