Experts hear death bells ringing for Russia’s CIS
By Marielle Eudes, Agence France-Presse
Manila Times, Philippines
Monday, April 04, 2005
MOSCOW: The Commonwealth of Independent States, an organization
loosely uniting all former Soviet republics minus the three Baltic
states, was always fragile to begin with, but with three consecutive
revolutions among its members within a year and a half, it is now
all but crumbling.
Even Russia, which has been the organization’s driving force since
its inception 14 years ago, now seems increasingly resigned to seeing
the 12-member CIS sink into irrelevance.
The CIS was founded in December 1991 on the very day the Soviet Union
disappeared. Dominated by Moscow, it was meant to be the instrument
that would allow Russia to retain its influence over the former
Soviet empire.
But over the past year and a half, three faithful Kremlin allies
were toppled in peaceful revolutions: Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia,
Leonid Kuchma in Ukraine, and, last week, Askar Akayev in Kyrgyzstan.
In Moldova, the revolution occurred as a quiet change of hats at the
top-the ruling Communists who came to power on a pro-Russia ticket
won a recent election fielding a clear Western-friendly agenda.
In Georgia and Ukraine, the new authorities have swapped their
predecessors’ pro-Kremlin allegiance for a clearly pro-Western stance.
Even though Kyrgyzstan’s new interim leaders have vowed to continue
their deposed predecessor’s Moscow-friendly policies, the lightning
toppling of the government there has spawned speculation that the
CIS would soon collapse.
“The CIS is currently undergoing the most critical phase of its
history,” Alexander Lukashenko, the authoritarian president of Belarus,
recently admitted. “There is more and more talk about its uselessness
… It has transformed, but no one really knows into what any more.”
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the organization’s
insignificance, during a visit to Armenia last week.
The CIS was only created “to allow a civilized divorce” between
the Soviet republics and “never had economic super-tasks,” Putin
said. But it remains “a useful club for exchanging information and
studying political and humanitarian questions,” he said.
Even if this discussion club does survive, indications are that it
will be little more than an empty shell, a far cry from the 1990s’
grandiose declarations on a common, 12-member common economic space
and the thousands of joint documents its members have signed over
the years, observers said.
“Many suspected the CIS was not viable, but the Russian president’s
declarations are its official epitaph,” the Russian weekly Itogy
wrote last week.
Besides their shared Soviet past, the 12 members of the CIS never
had much in common.
Some, like Armenia and Azerbaijan, have waged war on each other over
disputed land, in this case the Nagorno Karabakh enclave. Some,
like Georgia and Ukraine, allowed the opposition to own media,
while the leaders of others, like Belarus and Turkmenistan, turned
to authoritarianism reminiscent of Soviet times.
Consensus among all was always minimal, and reached only on such
uncontroversial issues like sharing each other’s air space or fighting
terrorism.
As a result, “the CIS eventually ceased to interest its main
financial sponsor, Russia,” Russian daily Vremya Novostyey wrote
earlier this week.
“With US [military] bases standing along Russian bases in Central
Asia, US military specialists being invited to Georgia while Tbilisi
is trying to get rid of Russian military, and peaceful revolutions
being staged in one CIS member after the other, Moscow has come to
the pragmatic conclusion that it is better off investing its money
and its efforts” in more useful relations, Vremya Novostyey added.
This does not mean, however, that the Kremlin has renounced all
ambitions in the post-Soviet space. But it will increasingly act
through other channels.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday inaugurated a new
economic center aimed at encouraging integration within the zone.
He said efforts should now be concentrated on agreements signed
between two countries, like the loose Russian-Belarus “Union,” four
countries, like the Economic Space uniting Russia, Belarus, Ukraine
and KaÂzakhstan, and six countries, like the Collective Security
Treaty grouping Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Belarus
and Russia.
“The CIS has played an important part, but it must now be replaced
by more efficient mechanisms,” said the center’s new director,
Alexander Lebedev
–Boundary_(ID_h/1vV/R4VCfc5iFjKUcAxw)–