THE CSTO: A MINI-WARSAW PACT?
Another vector used to project Russian power in the post-Soviet space is security cooperation. This was originally organized within the framework of the CIS. Immediately after the demise of the Soviet Union, in May 1992, a Treaty on Collective Security, the “Tashkent Treaty,” was signed. It was Putin, who, in May 2002, took the initiative to transform this platform and make it into a new, separate organization and rename it the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Six former Soviet republics became members of this mini-Warsaw Pact: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan (the core states that also form the customs union), plus Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia. Uzbekistan joined in 2006. The member states are not allowed to join other military alliances, and there is a collective security guarantee (article 4), similar to article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Membership is made attractive by Moscow by offering the member states the possibility of buying military equipment in Russia at cost price. With the CSTO Moscow pursued two main objectives:
• First, to bind the participating countries in such a way that it would become more difficult to leave the organization.
• Second, to declare an exclusive zone of operation from which other security organizations and third countries (meaning: NATO, but implicitly also China) are excluded.
The first objective is pursued by a progressive integration of the command and control functions, including a common air defense, and the formation of a CSTO rapid reaction force. The second goal—to claim for the CSTO an exclusive zone of operation from which other security organizations are excluded—was one of the objectives of President Medvedev’s proposal for a new Pan European security treaty, launched in 2008.[34] Neither NATO, nor the United States, has agreed to grant Moscow via the CSTO such an exclusive droit de regard in the former Soviet space. Moscow, however, will continue its efforts to become the “Gendarme of Eurasia.”[35] That this role for the Kremlin also has its limitations became clear in June 2010, when during the ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan the Kyrgyz government asked for Russian peacekeepers in the region and Moscow did not respond—notwithstanding the fact that the events took place in a region in which Moscow claims to have “privileged interests.” Apparently the Kremlin knew that peacekeeping in this case would not bring any direct benefits to Russia, but would rather be an ungrateful and costly job. These were not the only problems. After his comeback as president in May 2012, Putin went to Uzbekistan. According to Fyodor Lukyanov this visit was “an attempt to reset relations with this recalcitrant and most unreliable CSTO ally whose position stands in the way of making this organization a working military and political alliance.”[36] Putin’s visit did not help. On June 28, 2012, Uzbekistan, the country that has the most significant armed forces in Central Asia, suddenly suspended its membership of the organization. The reason was the deep mistrust in Tashkent concerning the Russian intentions. These intentions evoke the specter of the infamous Brezhnev doctrine, because they include inter alia “to lower the threshold for intervention within the organization’s region, shift the respective decisionmaking mechanisms from a consensus to a majority rule, and develop a joint task force.”[37] According to the defense specialist Vladimir Socor, Uzbekistan’s departure showed that “this organization is purely symbolic…. The CSTO is mainly a symbol of Russia’s aspiration to become a great power and to be regarded as the leader of a bloc.”[38] But also symbolic organizations can bite. On April 11, 2013, Serbia was granted observer status at the Parliamentary Assembly of the CSTO (PA CSTO), showing that the CSTO had a certain attraction for a future EU member state. Afghanistan was equally granted observer status. “This is another confirmation,” said Sergey Naryshkin, president of the Duma and the Parliamentary Assembly of the CSTO, “that the PA CSTO has weight and is taken seriously on the international stage.”[39]
THE SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANIZATION: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD?
Another initiative that needs to be mentioned here is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). This forum also has its origin in the Yeltsin era. “Steps toward a closer Russian-Chinese relationship were outlined in March 1992 in a policy paper by Yeltsin’s former political advisor, Sergei Stankevich.”[40] It led to the foundation, in 1996, of the Shanghai Five, consisting of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and emerged from the border talks between China and the Soviet successor states. It was—again—Vladimir Putin, who took the initiative to expand this organization and give it a more powerful structure. In 2001, when Uzbekistan joined the organization, it got its new name and began to implement many activities, ranging from fighting terrorism and drugs trafficking to economic and cultural cooperation and the organization of joint military exercises. Pakistan, India, and Iran were invited as observers, while the United States was refused observer status. The SCO proudly claimed that—including the observer states—it represented “half of humanity.” The organization has an undeniable anti-US and anti-NATO focus. Used by Putin to project Russia’s power in the region, it is, however, a double-edged sword, and for Moscow it also brings inconveniences. Although it may be instrumental to the Kremlin’s objective of keeping NATO and the United States out of Central Asia, it simultaneously facilitates the Chinese penetration of the Central Asian republics. This penetration has for the moment a predominantly economic character, but it will undoubtedly soon acquire more political dimensions. For this reason two opposition politicians, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, severely criticized Putin’s China policy. “It would be more appropriate to call Putin’s policy toward China ‘capitulationist,’” they wrote. “In the years of Putin’s rule the Russian military-industrial complex has, in particular, armed the Chinese army.”[41] In the medium term, and certainly in the long run, the SCO could, indeed, become an asset for Beijing more than for Moscow, and their struggle for influence, markets, and energy, in the countries of Central Asia could soon become a zero-sum game.
BRIC, BIC, BRICS, OR BRIICS?
Putin has “made clear that Russia has no intention of joining anybody else’s ‘holy alliances,’” wrote Eugene Rumer.[42] This is, indeed, true. Putin prefers to build his own organizations. He is a staunch organization builder and undertakes initiatives in all possible directions, building organizations when only the slightest oportunity arises. An example is the first BRIC summit convened in Yekaterinburg on June 16, 2009. BRIC is a term coined by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs to indicate the four most important emerging economies in the world: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. It was meant by him only as an investment term and had nothing to do with politics. Putin, however, jumped at the opportunity, seeing another prominent role for Russia in a global forum. The first meeting of the presidents of the BRIC countries immediately exposed their fundamental differences. Two of them, Brazil and India, are democracies. The other two, China and Russia, are non-democratic dictatorships. While the first two are in effect newly emerging powers, the other two are already long-established and recognized powers on the world scene, both being permanent members of the UN Security Council. The four disagree on most issues: human rights, democracy, trade, climate change, and the reform of global governance. The year in which the first BRIC conference took place was also the year in which the term “BRIC”—in itself already an artificial construction—lost the last remnants of its initial meaning of fast-growing emerging economies: while in the crisis year 2009 the other countries continued to grow, Russia’s GDP plunged 7.9 percent—which was the worst performance among the Group of Twenty leading economies. Participants at a business conference in Moscow in February 2010, therefore, ironically, suggested changing the name from BRIC into BIC.[43] This did not prevent the BRIC from organizing its second conference in Brazil’s capital Brasilia in April 2010. Even if Russia, with its inefficient state capitalism, cronyism, and rampant corruption, remained the economic dwarf of the four, the BRIC format offered Moscow an extra forum to project its political influence on the world stage.
34
For a critical analysis of Medvedev’s proposal, see my paper “Medvedev’s Proposal for a Pan-European Security Pact: Its Six Hidden Objectives and How the West Should Respond,”
35
Cf. Stephen Blank, “The CSTO: Gendarme of Eurasia,”
36
Fyodor Lukyanov, “Eurasian Union is Putin’s Top Priority,”
37
Uwe Halbach, “Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union: A New Integration Project for the CIS Region?”
38
“Interview: Analyst Says Uzbekistan’s Suspension Shows CSTO is ‘Irrelevant,’”
40
Hall Gardner,
41
Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov,
42
Eugene B. Rumer, “Russian Foreign Policy beyond Putin,” Adelphi Paper No. 390 (London: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2007), 24.
43
Anders Åslund, “The End Seems Near for the Putin Model,”