1 - Viperson

4. Regional security cooperation in the former Soviet area ALYSON J. K. BAILES, VLADIMIR BARANOVSKY and PÁL DUNAY I. Introduction The use of regional organizations for purposes of security cooperation has
increased worldwide since the end of the cold war.[1] Traditionally devoted
to avoiding conflict and limiting military tensions between neighbours or
to combining their forces in other forms of positive cooperation, such
communities have had to address a further range of new threats after the
terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001. Aside from
several overlapping organizations in the wider Europe, the tendency for
such groups both to multiply and to elaborate their agendas has been plain
in Africa, South-East Asia, and Latin America (at both regional and
subregional level). Analysts and policymakers have also increasingly noted
that the regions generating the sharpest security problems-including
dangers of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction-are those that
lack such structures for cooperation or where neighbouring states are
linked only by negative dynamics.[2]
A chapter in the SIPRI Yearbook 2006 proposed some universal criteria for
judging the efficiency and legitimacy of security-oriented regional
mechanisms.[3] The authors identified four broad types of role-not mutually
exclusive-that regional organizations could play in the context of
security: (a) avoiding, containing and resolving conflict within the
region; (b) pursuing practical military cooperation, including in non-zero-
sum contexts such as international peace missions; (c) promoting reform,
democracy and good governance in the defence and security field or more
generally; and (d) tackling functional issues, including the so-called new
threats and other challenges arising in the borderland between security and
economics. They suggested the following tests for legitimacy and
effectiveness, based on observation and actual policy discourse rather than
theory: '(a) whether cooperation is coerced and hegemonic; (b) whether it
posits a zero-sum relationship with the outside world; (c) whether it is
rigid or static (or adaptable and capable of growth); (d) whether it is
artificial and superficial; and (e) whether it is efficient in terms of
management and resource use'.[4] Tests based on the type of structure or
degree of institutionalization were deliberately avoided, since these
features should be adapted to regions' specific needs. SIPRI has examined a
number of regional structures and evaluated them from these standpoints.[5]
This chapter applies this new analytical approach to three explicitly
security-related constructs existing in the former Soviet space-the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), and the grouping of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Moldova called the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development-GUAM
(hereafter referred to as GUAM)-together with the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), which links some members of those groups with China
(see table 4.1 in section II, below). All these groups tend to be poorly
known outside their region and are often exposed to normative criticism
both outside and in some parts of that region. The three Russia-led groups
(the CIS, the CSTO and the SCO) are often seen in the West as aiming at a
kind of neo-Soviet hegemony, implying coercion and undemocratic
practices;[6] their opposition to terrorism and insurgency is interpreted
as a common agenda of isolating and crushing minority elements; and
strategically, they are viewed as an essentially zero-sum effort to balance
Western groupings or to obstruct US and Western influence. It is widely
assumed that all four groups suffer from rigid, artificial forms of
governance and low levels of efficiency and output. The present account
explores such judgements and normative questions, to which these
organizations deserve to be subjected as much as any others. The answers
are sought in a historical perspective and in the light of factual,
dispassionate reporting and analysis.
The next section of this chapter provides the historical element by
sketching the background to the emergence of the first post-Soviet regional
grouping, the CIS, and the subsequent development of the CSTO, GUAM and the
SCO. Sections III-VI evaluate the CIS, the CSTO, GUAM and the SCO,
respectively, against the five criteria proposed above. The conclusions are
presented in section VII. II. Background: basic realities of the former Soviet area The break-up of the Soviet Union was neither adequately prepared nor
seriously negotiated. Most of the political actors that were directly
involved had very vague ideas (if any) of what would take the place of a
single state that had covered one-sixth of the globe. Against such a
background, it is not surprising that the emerging picture of regional
security cooperation has its chaotic and controversial features. It has, in
fact, developed in multiple formats that are set out and compared in table
4.1. The main factors shaping the evolution of security cooperation in the
post-Soviet area since 1990 may be summarized as follows. Force of inertia. For a certain period after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the inertial effect of a former common security space continued to
influence the newly independent states, despite their formal independence.
When the CIS was hastily proclaimed at the end of 1991 to replace the
Soviet Union,[7] the idea of maintaining common armed forces and a joint
military potential was considered workable. The same inertia-underpinned by
economic, historical, societal, cultural and psychological factors-
persisted well into the 1990s and beyond, but it could not indefinitely
provide a driving force for promoting regional security cooperation in fast
changing conditions.
'Former Soviet Union minus the Baltics'. The post-Soviet space was from
the beginning divided into two areas. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the
three Baltic states, disengaged from the rest of the post-Soviet territory
in a more radical way than any others, as clearly seen in their non-
membership of the CIS. Conversely, they set their sights on joining the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) far earlier than, for instance,
Georgia or Ukraine and were duly admitted as members of both NATO and the
European Union (EU) in 2004.
Cooperation between antagonists. In some cases, the prospects for regional
security cooperation were blocked or seriously undermined by disputes
inherited from Soviet or pre-Soviet times, with the potential to cause open
conflict-as in the case of the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over
the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh in south-western Azerbaijan.
While in some cases political and military interference by Russia in these
conflict areas in the early 1990s technically contributed to 'freezing
them', it was hardly perceived as neutral by Azerbaijan, Georgia or
Moldova, shaping the understanding of and attitudes towards Russia's
regional leadership (see also section V below). All this led to a
fragmenting and often polarization of the membership of such security-
related groupings as were created: thus the signatories of the 1992
Collective Security Treaty (Tashkent Treaty)[8] had little practical
meaning as a cooperative grouping while the antagonists Armenia and
Azerbaijan were both also part of the treaty. The fact that they both
continued to participate in the CIS even after Azerbaijan joined the rival
GUAM group says much about how weak the former organization is in the
security area.
A strategically heterogeneous space. The heterogeneous character of the
former Soviet area not only undermines region-wide security cooperation but
also promotes the development of smaller and cross-cutting groupings that
may overlap or directly conflict with each other. The resulting scope for
dissipation of effort may be illustrated by the fact that Russia and the
Central Asian states are committed to cooperating against terrorism within
three different frameworks: the CIS, the CSTO and the SCO.
Russia's predominance. The predominance of Russia in the former Soviet
area (even if it is eroding) represents the most powerful independent
variable within the post-Soviet space. Not only is Russia by far the
strongest state in terms of size, military forces and economic potential,
but it has the strategic character of a 'hub' to which former Soviet states
are joined by a more strategically significant relationship than any pair
of such states can have with each other. The practical implications of
these facts for regionalism are, however, neither straightforward nor
predetermined: some neighbours accept or even seek Russia's 'paternalistic'
lead, while others defy it almost on principle (see 'Politics first'
below).
The search for self-identification. In the slow but steady process of
defining their separate identities, the former Soviet republics have often
realized that their new state security agendas are dissimilar, perhaps
conflicting, and becoming more so over time. Even a grouping as relatively
tight as the CSTO embraces countries with such different geopolitical and
security environments as Belarus, on the one hand, and Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan, on the other. Different needs are of course compatible with
cooperation, but they will gradually erode