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Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies
Washington, D.C. IASPS Policy Briefings: Oil in Geostrategic Perspective Date: October 23, 2002 Number: 1 |
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Eurasian Military-Political Bloc Mooted at CIS Summit By Vladimir Socor, IASPS Senior Fellow Russian President Vladimir Putin and the presidents of Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed the founding documents of a Collective Security Organization (CSO) on October 7 at the CIS summit in Chisinau, Moldova. The move has received almost no attention in the West. The CSO is designed to operationalize the 1992 CIS Collective Security Treaty (CST), advancing from a largely declarative document to a political-military structure. Creation of the CSO marks a further step toward the formation of a Russian-led bloc in Eurasia -- a goal that Putin declared from the outset of his presidency in January 2000 and reasserted at successive CIS/CSO summits since then, most recently in May of this year. It remains a priority of Putin’s “near abroad” policy, despite the reluctance of most of those five countries to follow along. At this summit, the six presidents adopted a common decision to request their respective parliaments to ratify the signed documents by May 2003. This timeframe, unusually short by CIS standards, was almost certainly accepted at Putin’s insistence. At least some of the other presidents, and the parliaments under their control, are likely to drag their feet. The documents just signed in Chisinau include the CSO’s Charter and an agreement on the CSO’s legal status. The latter document may be understood as incorporating elements of a framework status-of-forces agreement. It would purport to cover troops and other personnel from CSO member countries on the territories of other member countries. In practice, this would basically mean Russian troops and personnel on member countries’ territories. Throughout the discussions these past two years on creating the CSO, the Russian side has indicated that it values this evolving mechanism primarily for authorizing the short-notice entry, transit, or operations of Russian troops on the member countries’ territories, as well as providing a multilateral framework for joint military exercises. Antiterrorism provides Moscow’s current rationale for planning such troop movements and exercises under Russian leadership. Although Russian officials often acknowledge that the United States and its allies have successfully eliminated any terrorist threats to Russia from Central Asia post-September 2001--and even as some Russian officials admit that Russia is not up to that job--Moscow is nevertheless currently redoubling the use of antiterrorist rhetoric to justify the formation of military and security structrure in Central Asia under its own leadership. In the wake of the summit, Presidential administration deputy chief Sergei Prikhodko and other Russian officials described the CSO as a “collective military-political structure.” Both this formula and the planned modus operandi of the CSO--as unveiled at the May 2002 CSO summit--recall the Warsaw Treaty Organization in several ways. Like that defunct organization, the “collective” CST/CSO would: provide a framework for bilateral relations between Moscow and each of the member countries; ensure that doctrine, planning, procurement policies, and training within the CSO are centrally controlled from Moscow; guarantee that Russian officers dominate the nominally collective staffs; and, if necessary, place a collective stamp of approval on Russian-initiated troop movements. The CSO mechanism is explicitly designed for use on the territories of its own member countries, recalling the Warsaw Pact’s role in lending its collective name to what were in essence Russian policies and operations. Putin took over the chairmanship of CST’s council of heads of state at the CST countries’ summit in Moscow in May of this year. There, Putin called for the amorphous CST group to be upgraded to an Organization, complete with a military structure. The chairmanship takeover by Putin (from Armenian President Robert Kocharian) crassly bypassed the group’s own rule which requires rotation in the alphabetical order of the countries’ names. It was another signal in the series of little-noted signals of Putin’s intentions to accelerate the formation of the CSO. The Moscow summit had carefully been timed to coincide exactly with NATO’s Reykjavik meeting which confirmed the alliance’s enlargement intentions as well as the new partnership with Russia. Putin’s move appeared designed to signal that Moscow feels itself entitled to set up a bloc of its own. The May 2002 Moscow summit also confirmed the basic strategic concept behind the evolving CSO. This would entail three “regional groups of forces”: a Western group of Russia and Belarus, a Caucasus group of Russia and Armenia, and a Central Asian group of Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. In peacetime, each regional group would consist of specially assigned units that would train jointly. In wartime or other major emergencies, the member countries’ forces would act under “joint command” -- i.e., under Russian generals heading “joint” headquarters with nominal deputies from the member countries. Military action in any one theater would have to be authorized by political decision of the heads of state. This, too, resembles the Warsaw Pact model. At present, all this exists only on paper and in the political intent of Russian leaders. In the Western region, the Belarusan forces in their entirety form only nominally a “joint group” with Russia’s forces based on contiguous Russian territory, and would supposedly pass under “joint” command in a hypothetical crisis. No such arrangements are known to exist between Russia and Armenia, and no joint rapid-deployment group, although Armenia is hosting ample Russian forces. The Central Asian “regional group” is the only one to be designated a “rapid deployment force.” It consists of four battalions, one each from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Russian battalion is in fact a “reinforced” (i.e, above the normally authorized strength) battalion of the 201st motor-rifle division, stationed in Tajikistan. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz battalions are nationally based, and only make a fleeting appearance for infrequent exercises, mostly on national territory. The joint exercises, planned by Russia’s General Staff in Central Asia on a small scale to begin with, can seldom meet even the modest planned goals because of lack of funds. The Chisinau summit of the CST/CSO was expected to take up Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov’s proposal to create a CSO joint command, “on the basis of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces,” and to be headed by a Russian four-star general. This proposal by Putin’s closest confidant was a carryover from the Moscow summit, where it ran into resistance from some of the attending presidents. Only Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus supported it openly. The fact that the proposal made again no headway in Chisinau suggests that some presidents continue resisting it. Putin’s design to form a military bloc faces at least four daunting obstacles. First, Russia’s financial constraints. Second, the parlous state of its military and the drain on it in Chechnya. Third, the palpable reluctance of most of the member countries to be corralled into a Moscow-led military bloc. Fourth and crucially, the growing U.S.-led Western presence in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. These countries have by now learned from their own experience that security assistance--including antiterrorist assistance--from Western countries is incomparably more effective than anything Moscow can offer. Nevertheless, Moscow will likely continue pushing for development of the CSO at upcoming summits, in the expectation of an eventual rebound of Russian strength. This consideration also apparently inspires the policy of clinging to military bases and outposts deep inside Georgia and also in Moldova, countries that are not members of the CST/CSO or any Russian-led military structure. This effort forms part of a rearguard action by Putin to line up a group of countries behind Russia, seeking to to recoup influence lost though NATO’s enlargement in Europe and the U.S.-led deployments in Central Asia. In Central Asia, that effort includes setting up a Russian air base in Kyrgyzstan at the Kant airport, in proximity to the Manas base of the American-led coalition forces. For now, these countermoves are barely noticed in the West at the political level. Due attention could stiffen the local countries’ resistance to the gradual creation of a Russian-led bloc in Eurasia. |