François Picard is pleased to welcome Rana Mitter, historian, author and ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School. He sees the significance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as it pertains to the evolution of a changing international system. Once largely a symbolic vehicle for China and Russia to signal their distance from a US-led order, the SCO is quickly becoming a forum in which Asian powers increasingly coordinate around the material foundations of security: energy, technology, infrastructure and trade.