Eurasia Daily Monitor
October 3, 2007 — Volume 4, Issue 183
RUSSIA SETTING UP `COLLECTIVE PEACEKEEPING` FORCES
by Vladimir Socor
On October 2 Russia’s Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the
Collective Security Treaty Organization, told mass media that the CSTO is
creating its own `peacekeeping’ forces. The member countries are Russia,
Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Bordyuzha outlined the political and military concepts underlying CSTO
peacekeeping, to be approved at the organization’s October 6 summit in
Dushanbe.
CSTO peacekeeper troops are to be used if necessary on the territories
of member countries, by collective decision of the member countries’
presidents. In Moscow’s view, such use would not require a United Nations
mandate. Those troops could also be used on the territories of `other
countries of the world, in any region,’ in such cases under a UN mandate.
However, in both eventualities, Bordyuzha allowed a possibility of sending
CSTO peacekeeping troops `on some country’s request.’
Deployment of CSTO troops to conflict areas shall be subject to
consent by the local parties to the conflict. To illustrate, Bordyuzha
singled out Georgia: `CSTO peacekeepers may be used in the Georgian-Abkhaz
and Georgian-Ossetian conflict zones, only with mutual agreement of the
sides.’
The organizational model of the force resembles that of the CSTO’s
Rapid-Deployment Force (mainly a conventional-type force billed as
`anti-terrorist’) and is thereby a descendant of the former Warsaw Pact
model. Units assigned by each member country to the Collective Force shall
each be based on the respective national territory. They would remain under
national command in peacetime or when not on collective mission. Those units
shall undergo special training and receive Russian equipment on preferential
terms (preferential also in relation to the rest of national forces). This
implies presence of Russian officers and advisers.
The national units would convene periodically for joint exercises in
one or more of the member countries under `joint’ command. If a
`peacekeeping’ operation is undertaken, the units would be transferred from
national to a `single’ command. The terms joint and single imply de facto
Russian command, with decorative deputy positions from member countries and
a Russian-dominated staff in full control of the operation.
Constitutive documents of this `peacekeeping’ force were prepared at
the August 21 Moscow meeting of CSTO countries’ deputy defense, foreign
affairs, and finance ministers and security council secretaries. The
documents were apparently finalized at the September 28 Bishkek meeting of
the member countries’ defense ministers, in time for the presidents’
signature at the Dushanbe summit. At each step along the way Bordyuzha
lifted, if slightly, a corner of the curtain on these plans.
The CSTO lays claim to a `zone of CSTO responsibility’ that, in Moscow
‘s view, clearly extends beyond the territories of the seven member
countries. This claim transpires in the offer to deploy peacekeepers to
Georgian territories, even as Moscow rules out any genuine international
peacekeeping troops there. Georgia is not a CSTO member. Nevertheless,
Russia de facto includes Abkhazia and South Ossetia — and even the nearby
Georgian areas beyond demarcation lines — in an exclusive zone of Russian
`peacekeeping’ responsibility. From this point on it would apparently like
to place it under a CSTO flag.
Russia could also try this tactic in Moldova’s Transnistria, where
Russian `peacekeeping’ troops are also stationed without any mandate, in a
non-CSTO country. Offers to `internationalize’ those contingents under CSTO
colors might serve as a propagandistic counter-move to Western, Georgian, or
Moldovan proposals currently on the table for genuine transformation of
those Russian operations. Meanwhile, in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict —
an inter-state conflict, as are Russia’s in Georgia and Moldova — no
peacekeeping troops were ever deployed. The OSCE created such an option,
back in 1993; but this organization could never be expected to manage such
an operation credibly, given the built-in veto system that takes hold even
before mandate drafting. Armenia is the only CSTO member country other than
Russia involved in a military conflict against a non-member country,
Azerbaijan.
At the ongoing UN General Assembly session in New York, Russian
Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov declared that Russian peacekeeping
troops in Abkhazia operate on a `collective’ mandate and `not through Russia
‘s will, but through a multilateral format’. Thus, he claimed, any changes
to that operation can only be made through that purported multilateral
format. Russian state media reports tried to construe Lavrov’s reference as
meaning the CSTO. That statement is misleading on a number of counts, of
which Lavrov — long involved with Georgian affairs — must have been aware.
Russia in 1994 forced a prostrate Georgia on a purely bilateral basis
to accept the deployment of Russian `peacekeeping’ troops in Abkhazia,
following Russia’s own military intervention there. After creating those
facts, Moscow brought the matter to the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS), which then simply rubber-stamped the prolongation of that Russian
operation year-after-year. There was never a clear record of voting on this
issue at CIS summits, which were often chaotic. In many cases, Moscow
drafted and published the communiqués unilaterally on the organization’s
behalf, including on the Abkhazia `peacekeeping’ issue. In 2000,
then-president Eduard Shevardnadze gave up the empty right of Georgian
consent to prolongation of the mandate at six-month intervals. Instead, he
agreed under duress to automatic renewal.
All this illustrates the lawless environment prevailing in CIS
internal arrangements as long as Russia took the CIS seriously as its
instrument. But it is academic in terms of mandate-conferral, because the
CIS was not recognized as a full-fledged international organization and has
no right to authorize `peacekeeping’ operations. Russia has long campaigned
for this at the international level, unsuccessfully. Thus, the Russian
operation in Abkhazia has no mandate; and is purely Russian in its
composition. In Moldova’s Transnistria there is not even a CIS
pseudo-mandate for the Russian troops.
Now with the CSTO’s launching in a `peacekeeping’ role, complete with
`collective’ troops, Moscow can be expected to try using a CSTO flag of
convenience over Russian `peacekeeping,’ or at least to try obstructing
genuine internationalization by offering CSTO `internationalization.’
(Interfax, August 21, September 26, 28, 30, October 2; Itar-Tass,
RIA-Novosti, September 21, 26-27, October 2; see EDM, October 1 )
–Vladimir Socor