OPERATION CSTO: MOSCOW IN EURASIA
Today’s Zaman
Oct 9 2012
Turkey
ZAUR SHIRIYEV
Last week, the Armenian Parliament ratified a protocol that would allow
Russia, along with other members of the Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO), to veto any foreign military installations in
its territory. This prompted another discussion among the Armenian
political elite regarding whether or not this poses a serious threat
to national sovereignty. What is important here is that the ratified
protocol refers to “military installations” rather than “military
bases.” The former is a broader term, including any military base,
camp, post, station, yard, center or other activity.
In some sense this development could be seen as unremarkable, but a
closer look at the importance of this protocol and other developments
in CSTO member states will reveal more.
For starters, at their top-level summit meeting in Moscow on Dec. 20,
2011, CSTO leaders unanimously agreed that countries outside the
regional security bloc will only be able to establish military bases
in the territory of a member-state with the consent of all members.
This development led Uzbekistan to suspend its CSTO membership in late
June this year because it saw the agreement as an impediment to its
“independent decision making.” This decision [the Dec. 20 agreement
between CSTO member countries] is based on three lines of strategic
thinking:
First, it is to show that the CSTO is not simply a “paper tiger”
but an effective entity able to make significant contributions to
the security affairs of member countries. Indeed, rendering the CSTO
a fully-fledged military-political bloc cannot be achieved just by
means of re-structuring; this is a serious challenge.
The second reason is mainly linked to NATO forces’ scheduled withdrawal
from Afghanistan after 2014. Until then, Moscow’s main concern is
to block any unilateral action by the US; for example, obtaining
military bases or prolonging current lease agreements in Central
Asian countries, as Moscow has its eye on Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan
and Tajikistan, all of which are on the US agenda for military
cooperation. With regard to the US, the short-term threat for Russia
is in fact Iran. If the US is strengthening its military position in
Central Asia, this could send an urgent signal on the Iran issue.
Thirdly, the main deficiency of the CSTO is that the organization is
based more on members’ pragmatic considerations than a commonality
of interests or consensus on external threat perceptions. Arguably,
the same is true for NATO nowadays, but the difference is that NATO
was at least established based on common interests and values. In
the CSTO, whether cooperation with NATO or catering to the political
interests of CSTO leaders dominates is likely to depend on Putin’s
immediate interests.
Of course, this development hampers the effectiveness of the CSTO;
these are mostly “stimulus-response” steps by Russia. Until now, the
CSTO’s functionality has been based on responding to NATO’s enlargement
rather than building its own strategy, but now this is changing. In
a general sense, the situation can be explained as a “billiard ball
model” in international relations where the movements of states can
be fully explained in terms of the movements of other states.
With this in mind and considering the Armenian Parliament’s
ratification of the above-mentioned protocol, the next move is
Tajikistan. Russian President Vladimir Putin, visited Dushanbe,
finalizing an agreement with Tajikistan to extend the lease of Russia’s
military base there for another 30 years. Moscow recently sealed a
similar deal with Kyrgyzstan in September, extending the lease of
the Russian air base near the capital Bishkek as well as a number of
other military facilities until 2032.
What is interesting in this respect is that Kyrgyzstan remains the
only country in the world to host both Russian and US military bases.
The US’s current lease on the Manas Air Base expires in 2014, and US
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta travelled to Kyrgyzstan in March in
an effort to persuade the local government to leave the door open to
renewing access to the base after 2014. But in September, the Kyrgyz
government stated that after 2014 there are plans to make Manas a
civilian air base, indicating that Moscow has prevailed in this game.
According to this year’s data (January-September), the total economic
impact of Manas Air Base for the US is $116 million; however, the jet
fuel payment is $163 million, i.e. more than the total economic impact
— and the fuel, of course, comes from Russian energy company Gazprom.
On the other hand, every deal between any Central Asian country and
Washington is based on “Nasser style” neutrality and pragmatism. Gamal
Abdel Nasser was a Cold War-era Egyptian leader famous for his
“neutrality” in the geopolitical game between the US and the Soviet
Union; this strategy indicates a proven general “bandwagon” policy,
too, where states join together when useful allies are unavailable,
for they will face the threat alone if they choose to resist.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s tactics in Central Asia today are not the same as
in the 1990s, where for the sake of regional dominance Russia pursued
a policy of aggressive reintegration. Nonetheless, the results are
the same: Members of Moscow-led multi-state organizations are weak
and susceptible to manipulation.
During the Cold War, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s motto for NATO was, “No one
can defeat us unless we first defeat ourselves;” ironically, Putin’s
current motto seems identical — the “us,” however, is Russia alone,
not the CSTO collectively. And following recent developments, the
updated slogan of the CSTO could be “Americans out, some post-Soviet
countries in and everyone else down.”
From: A. Papazian