On January 18, 2023, the EU released a “joint motion for a resolution on the humanitarian consequences of the blockade in Nagorno-Karabakh,” planning to deploy a security mission in Armenia, a result of continuous efforts of its leader Nikol Pashinyan. Westminster Hall debates on the closure of the Lachin Corridor and the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh are scheduled in the UK for Tuesday, January 24, 2023. These European initiatives, obviously with more to follow, reflect an increasing invasion into the Russian political turf in the Caucasian region. Russian-created Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) loses its influence in the region, which becomes a playground for the West, Turkey and China.
For Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who, on May 15, 1992, signed Collective Security Treaty as its foreign policy long arm to exert Russia’s influence in the former USSR republics, it was just a formal body to substitute the late Warsaw Pact in a mini format. But Vladimir Putin made s step further, creating the Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) on May 14, 2002, trying to reaffirm Russia’s dominance in Caucasia and Central Asia regions in an evident attempt to re-create the USSR model.
Currently having only six member-states (Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan), CSTO, formed after the example of the Warsaw Pact, created in 1955 and declared at an end in 1991, has had some turbulent times recently, and one can compare its current state of being with the situation in the Warsaw Pact in 1980-81 when its member countries were simmering after the Solidarity movement demonstrations in Poland. Back then, Leonid Brezhnev, the head of the USSR, declared that “we will not leave Socialist Poland in trouble.” Furthermore, the USSR managed to cope with the crisis for some time, only to collapse ten years later.
Brezhnev’s articulated his “limited sovereignty” doctrine in 1968 after the Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia to crack down on the starting democratic movement. Since then, the Warsaw Pact’s military abilities were to be considered by national opposition leaders when fighting for reforms. Furthermore, the Polish governance crisis of 1980-81, when the military invasion was indirectly promised but never fulfilled, showed the limitations of this doctrine.
After Gorbachev came to power in 1985, Brezhnev’s doctrine silently died. Moreover, the Western credit lines of Hungary and Poland did not allow Gorbachev, who sought Western support at the time, to exert the Warsaw Pact’s military influence in those countries in the 1980-s when anti-socialist reforms started to broaden.
Putin created CSTO in 2002 as a logical development of the Collective Security Treaty of 1992 and as a reaction to a US-supported coalition of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova, with Uzbekistan joining later, that created their strategic pact GUUAM, although never had enough resources and consensus to develop a solid joint military force.
CSTO’s importance for Russia made Vladimir Putin fly to Yerevan to participate in its summit on November 23, 2022, in a futile attempt to block the centrifugal tendencies tearing the Organization apart.
CSTO, an anti-NATO heir of the Warsaw Pact, was created to stress Russia’s dominance, making countries who did not want to follow Russia’s policy leave the Organization. However, Russian less-than-effective governance practices could not make CSTO an effective international power structure. Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet Union left the countries that recently gained independence with some significant territorial and other claims to each other.
The Soviet Union’s collapse ignited wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which ended in 1994, and a civil war in Tajikistan, which officially was over in 1997. Unfortunately, these wars did not allow the countries to agree on border delimitation with their neighbors. As a result, we saw another round of Armenia-Azerbaijan military conflict, with more to follow.
The same for Tajikistan. The country has had more than 230 situations of military conflict with Kyrgyzstan over the issue of who owns the river Isfara. Moreover, we should not forget that Uzbekistan also claims ownership of the disputed river, although not yet involved in a military confrontation with its neighbors.
The lack of will to compromise on issues of joint utilization of the scarce water resources between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgystan; mutual accusations in support of radical (Islamic) opposition between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; incessant flow of smuggling illegal goods, including drags, through Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan to neighboring countries – all of this is just another preamble to future military escalations.
Russia has taken the suzerain mandate to manage the post-Soviet terrain, including countries that could not resist the Russian influence before creating CSTO. The ubiquitous rise of China has changed the power balance in the CIS landscape. China follows the path of exerting soft power through the economy, providing cheap credits, executing essential infrastructure projects, and trying to corrupt leading national political leaders into its sphere of influence. So, China, not Russia, replicates the USSR power game in CIS countries, though very indirectly. And when Putin dared to use Russian troops, nominally called CSTO’s military force, for the first time in January 2022 in Kazakhstan., his desire to show his military might ended just four days after China’s snuffy grumping made him withdraw.
At the same time, CSTO refused to send any military force after receiving an official address from Tajikistan in 2021, which felt it may not have been able to deter the Afghan military from regular violations of the Tajik-Afghan border. When Putin sees no gains in his international posture, he does not use Russian military force. However, his loss of international influence became more evident for CSTO countries’ leaders even before Russia unleashed a full-scale war in Ukraine.
During Russia’s military involvement in Syria, Putin had to coordinate his international power efforts with other regional powers, primarily Turkey and Israel. Although in 2021, Igor Yurgens, the head of the Kremlin-affiliated think tank Institute for Contemporary Development, proposed an idea to send CSTO peacekeepers to Syria in a blatant attempt to ease Russia’s military burden, this has never been discussed formally at any CSTO summit.
Decreasing Putin’s international independence became visible again when CSTO refused to interfere in the Armenia-Azerbaijan military conflict in both 2021 and 2022. Of course, Putin could never upset Turkey, which indirectly supported Azerbaijan. However, the inability to help Tajikistan in its more than legitimate address can not be regarded differently from the absence of a political will.
This absence of will, and possibly strength, became obvious for Armenia and Central Asian countries (backed by the US and China, respectively) that first decreased their involvement in CSTO joint military exercise and then started openly criticizing CSTO’s functionality and Russian foreign policy practices.
2022 became very sour for Putin. After his strategic blunder with Ukraine, when Russia’s inability to lead a successful traditional war and rapid loss of international authority became difficult to ignore even by its closest dependents, Kyrgyzstan refused to host the CSTO military exercise planned for 10-14 October 2022, and also ignored the exercise in Tajikistan. Armenia abstained from another CSTO’s military exercise in Kazakhstan, and at the very beginning of 2023, Armenia declared that it would abstain from any CSTO military exercise in 2023.
In September 2022, during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rakhmon publicly asked Vladimir Putin not to treat the Central Asian republics as vassals “the way it was in the USSR.” Armenian President Nikola Pashinyan, hosting a CSTO summit in November, refused to sign the resulting declaration.
All its members view CSTO as nominal and useless. Still, Russia’s view is different. CSTO has been essential to its USSR 2.0 project, performing a quasi-Warsaw Pact role there. Russia tried to use it as an integration mechanism of the post-Soviet terrain, which it considers its sphere of influence. But, unlike the USSR, Russia can not offer any uniting idea (even a wrong one), and its neo-imperial ambitions are only supported by money and pressure. With less Russian money and less Russian pressure, integration stops, and integration mechanisms threaten to collapse if member-states continue to see Russia losing power.
The Kremlin thinks in the past paradigm while its satellites start to think in the future, seeking support and new alliances. Different thinking evokes different actions, and we may soon see another “sovereignty parade” like the one USSR witnessed in 1988-1991.
Putin’s imperial unwillingness to correctly pronounce the problematic name of the leader of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Kemelevich Tokayev, became infamous in Russia. However, when the newly elected President of Kazakhstan came to Russia just a few days after the disastrous-for-Russia CSTO summit held in Yerevan, Putin did call him correctly for the first time, explicitly showing respect. Furthermore, Putin offered Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to form a “Three-Party Gas Union.” But in vain. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan rejected Russia’s proposal to pursue political and financial support elsewhere. Moreover, on December 12, Uzbekistan signed a gas treaty with Turkmenistan, a warning sign for Putin.
Besides strong economic ties with Russia and even economic dependence, the Central Asian countries defiantly dissociate themselves from Kremlin, enjoying multiple partner choices between Turkey, China, and the USA. The “Stans” seem to have started to follow Nelson Mandela’s wish, “May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears,” replacing the complicated past with a promising future.
While NATO guarantees not only security from external enemies to its member but also their freedom, since 1949, there have been no wars between thirty NATO members, the ugly Warsaw Pact copy called CSTO is a failed replica: its fundamental Treaty was signed in Uzbekistan, which left CSTO; two out of its current six members are in a state of war (Azerbaijan and Armenia), two countries (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) have incessant military conflicts.
CSTO is a good litmus test that measures how far Russia can project its power outside its borders. Belarus President Lukashenko said in Yerevan that the future of CSTO depends on the outcome of the war in Ukraine, bashfully calling it a special military operation, which means the end of the would-be Russian empire after the victory of Ukraine, Russian coercion mechanisms not working anymore.
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Vitaly Charushin
