With the NATO summit in Washington having dominated headlines with its rituals of unity and deterrence, something more transformative was taking shape in Tianjin, China.

There, away from the cameras and choreographed soundbites, a new security architecture was being drawn not by force, but by consensus. This alliance now presents an existential threat to the old world order.

Blueprints for a Post-Western Order

On July 15, 2025, while most Western media outlets were fixated on NATO posturing in Washington, a very different kind of summit took place in Tianjin, China. There, the foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states gathered under the quiet but firm leadership of China’s Wang Yi. Iran’s Abbas Araghchi, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov, and India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar joined ministers from Central Asia, Belarus, and Pakistan to lay the foundations for what Tehran called an “anti-NATO” vision for Eurasian security.

Notably, the Iranian delegation was not at the conference as guest observers. Iran came with a plan. And Abbas Araghchi delivered a strategic blueprint to transform the SCO from a cautious regional forum into a vehicle for sovereign resilience and multipolar order. His proposals included:

1)     A permanent coordination mechanism to track hybrid warfare

2)    A Shanghai Security Forum for intelligence exchange

3)    A sanctions-resistance center

4)    Cultural defenses against Western information hegemony

The Iranian minister invoked UN Charter violations and Resolution 487 to argue that the so-called “rules-based order” has become a mask for coercive diplomacy and unchecked aggression.

Wang Yi’s keynote echoed those priorities but expanded the frame: he warned of deepening global fragmentation, accused unnamed powers of weaponizing international law, and called for a rebirth of multilateralism anchored in the “Shanghai Spirit”, mutual respect, diversity, and civilizational pluralism.

The meeting also produced a series of draft resolutions for the upcoming Tianjin Heads of State summit, including a decade-long SCO development strategy. And while the world looked elsewhere, China’s foreign minister stood with Iran’s top diplomat to announce that more than 20 heads of state and 10 international organizations would join the Tianjin Summit from August 31 to September 1.

Two Worlds, One Silence

In the West, the meeting barely registered a footnote in the media. The usual pundits were busy analyzing Ukraine, parsing Donald Trump’s latest flop-flop on sanctions and other warnings, and twisting to more support for Kyiv. The vague declarations about “democratic resolve” have inundated Western mainstream media, but no one stopped to ask what happens when half the world isn’t invited to the party.

The SCO, in contrast, offered no grandiose slogans or media fireworks. It is not yet a formal alliance. But its architecture is growing - deliberately, persistently - around the shared trauma of sanctions, military interference, and post-colonial exhaustion. The quiet revolution underway in Tianjin is not ideological. It is civilizational. It is a response to a world where sovereignty is selectively granted and global governance is administered like a private club.

Iran’s proposals may or may not be adopted in full. But their presence on the table - endorsed, discussed, and co-hosted by two of the world’s nuclear powers - marks a turning point. The world is cleaving. Not just politically, but epistemologically. What is considered legitimate action, who is considered civilized, and whose pain counts - these questions are being rewritten.

It was never just about NATO. It is about the return of history.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/08/05/the-other-summit-what-the-west-forgot-to-cover-about-tianjin/