CIS, EURASEC, SCO, CES AND OTHERS: GENESIS OF POST-SOVIET INTEGRATION PROCESSES
Regnum, Russia
June 25 2006
A session of EurAsEC Interstate Council presided by Byelorussian
President Alexander Lukashenko convened in Minsk on June 23. The
agenda has been announced beforehand: the heads of states discussed
Uzbekistan’s access to the organization, creation of the Customs union,
and the concept of EurAsEC’s international policy were discussed.
EurAsEC is an international economic organization whose functions
are to form common external custom borders of its founding countries
(Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan),
developing a common foreign economic policy, tariffs, prices, and
other constituents of common market functioning. A treaty on EurAsEC
foundation was signed on October 10, 2000 in Kazakhstani capital
Astana by presidents of Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
and Tajikistan. In May 2002, a EurAsEC observer status was granted to
Moldavian and Ukrainian leaderships on their request, later Armenia
also received the status.
EurAsEC is an open organization. It could be accessed by any state
that will not only take on responsibilities defined in the Convention
on the foundation of the Community and other conventions effective in
the framework of the Community, but will also take efforts to meet
these obligations. EurAsEC observer status is granted to a state or
an international (intergovernmental) organization on their request.
EurAsEC is a successor of the CIS Customs union that is fully
consistent with the UNO principles and international legal norms. It
is designed to effectively promote the process of creating by the CIS
Customs union member countries of a Common Economic Space (CES) and
coordinating their approaches to the integration into international
economic and trade system.
Among the top near-term EurAsEC priorities are:
1) transport: solving the problem of common tariffs, increasing
commodity traffic, simplifying customs rules, completing internal
official procedures on the signed conventions, and creating
transnational forwarding corporations;
2) power industry: joint exploration of hydro-energy complexes in
Central Asia, solving the problem of energy and water supplies,
and creating a common energy budget;
3) workforce migration: assuring migrants’ social protection, creating
an effective system of regulation and control of workforce migration,
combating migration-related crime, solving problems due to migrants’
and their employers’ taxpaying;
4) agro-industrial complex: coordinating agricultural policies of
EurAsEC member countries, creating a common grocery market of Community
member countries, reducing transporting expenses, and establishing
new market institutions in the field.
Interestingly, EurAsEC creation and functioning is considered one of
the most successful projects within the CIS. On June 7 2006, Community
Secretary General Grigoriy Rapota said that the Minsk session would
become decisive in EurAsEC formation and development.
He also informed that a Customs union contractual base of 12 agreements
had been developed on the expert level, 16 more agreements still were
to be adopted. Discussing access of EurAsEC member states to the WTO
was also planned to be discussed at the meeting. "How the Customs union
can be married to accessing WTO? There are several options," Rapota
said. "First is to create a Customs union, with its eventual access to
WTO. Another option is to join WTO independently, coordinating member
countries’ positions with all others, thereby minimizing possible
‘damage.’" Rapota also said that almost everything was ready for
the Customs union establishment; time schedules and development pace
remained to be set.
The CIS has essentially accomplished its historical mission. And the
fact that a number of CIS member countries – seriously or jokingly –
announced their intent to exit the organization since the beginning of
2006 is yet another evidence of the trend. Nobody is questioning such
intentions; in fact, Russia’s authorities themselves openly admitted
that the CIS had been created for the "civilized divorce" of the former
union republics. They also pointed out to the fact that it is thanks
to the CIS that former Soviet republics managed to escape repeating
the Balkan-style "blood-bath divorce" on the post-Soviet space.
A lot of CIS "subsidiaries" have been created right inside the CIS
all along its existence: Customs union, Central Asian union, Eurasian
union, the Russia-Belarus Union State, and, of course, GUUAM-GUAM.
For different reasons, the only effective structure within the CIS is
CSTO which is a military, military-political, and military-technical
rather than economic cooperation organization. In other words, at
least for the six CIS member countries, the set of challenges and
risks of the current period appeared to be a better unifying factor
than the desire to join efforts catching up with economic development
of the world "economic locomotives" and improving welfare of their
own peoples.
That is why, frankly speaking, as early as when the projects on
EurAsEC and CES creation started to emerge, they were envisioned
as prototypes of some political and economic future of CIS and all
the integration structures that were created within it. Only with a
greater accent on purely economic aspects, rather than military and
military-related ones, due to the necessity of developing cooperation
in such a sensitive field as establishing national security of member
countries from the viewpoint of joint resisting the attacks of the
terrorist "international."
The year 2006 is, however, a decisive one in many respects. May be that
is why we sense the tension and hear public apprehension voiced in a
number of western capitals, related directly to the efforts to take
steps towards further EurAsEC development? All the more so, toward the
development of SCO that is, we believe, is also one of the integration
structures that arouse within the CIS, despite the Chinese membership?
The western creature (some argue that it is a purely a U.S.-Turkish
strategic project) in the face of GUUAM kicked the bucket after
the so-called "Andijan events," when the Uzbekistani leadership got
disappointed in the U.S. tutelage over the "democratic processes"
in Central Asia. First, the leadership almost immediately drew the U.S.
military base out of the Uzbekistani territory. Second, it also did
not hesitate to withdraw from GUUAM, which automatically returned
the bloc to the embryo state. Third, on January 25, it formalized
Uzbekistan’s full-fledged membership in EurAsEC. This was how the
initiative to create and raise a U.S.-Turkish Trojan horse within the
CIS to counterweight the growing Russian influence on the Eurasian
space collapsed.
True, instead of GUUAM-GUAM, the CIS public received a set of two odd
symbiotic structures: the Organization for Democracy and Economic
Development-GUAM (ODED-GUAM) and the notorious Commonwealth of
Democratic Choice (CDC). If one looks at them closely, they will
notice that "geographically speaking," the only aim of creating
these quasi-structures (whose member countries have very little in
common economically) is imposing strict limits on Russia’s room for
maneuver in the Baltic and Black Sea regions, as well as fencing
these reservoirs from other CIS countries who decided not to put
bets on the openly anti-Russian integration structures created in
the post-Soviet space.
It is hard to believe that the proposed ODED-GUAM and CDC projects
would create "alternative" to Russia suppliers or transit zones of
energy carriers in the post-Soviet space, as is apparently desired
by the Washington gurus of the "Baltic-Black Sea union." For all the
projects put forward by Baltic, Ukrainian, and Georgian spokespeople
could be at best described as economically unprofitable from the
start. Indeed, they are not at all economic in their nature: they
just broadcast of the anti-Russian political trend that has become so
popular today to the west, north-west, and south-west of the modern
borders of the Russian Federation.
The senseless strategic projects are not viable, no matter how many
states were pushed in their boundaries by the authors of the projects,
and how much money was assigned for the waste paper.
Speaking frankly, today, both the patrons of ODED-GUAM and CDC and the
heads of member states of these structures do not have as much time as
they used to have in the 1990s when foundations for the anti-Russian
strategic projects were laid in the post-Soviet space.
Really well-grounded Eurasian projects mentioned above, like EurAsEC,
CES, and, of course, the SCO are a different story. In fact, CSTO
and SCO have started cooperation, at least, in the issue of joint
resistance to the international terrorism.
Today, it is becoming ultimately clear that in some of their aspects
the original plans of EurAsEC, CES, and CSTO creators also crashed,
since it was assumed that, sooner or later, Ukraine would become
a qualified member of these integration projects. As we can see,
the "revolutionary" leadership of the modern Ukraine is even ready
to induce the emergence of intra-national "demarcation lines," as
long as it "breaks away" and becomes the updated "sanitary cordon"
designed to "restrain" Russia and her allies. As for the Ukraine’s
desire to trench herself all along the Russian-Ukrainian border, it
is reminiscent of a swift-flowing episode of regressive schizophrenia,
just as the revived talks about Kievan Rus being a historical precursor
of Ukraine, not of Russia.
Therefore, we must give up the hope that the Ukrainian leadership at
some last moment will "jump on a departing train," realizing that
all the western roads, except for the one to NATO, are blocked by
exactly economical barriers richly seasoned with political reasoning
about the Constitution of the United Europe not being ratified. In
this case, perspectives of EurAsEC and CES, rather than of CSTO,
are more interesting, although these days in Minsk issues are being
discussed at the CSTO, not CES Heads of states’ council.
If we manage to resolve issues impeding activities of EurAsEC member
countries, then, keeping in mind that the Community is in its essence
an expanded CES option, we should also remember that the structure
still remains open for new memberships, i.e., to everyone, including
states that have never been CIS or former USSR members. Comparing
the levels of interstate negotiations, especially for the last 6-8
months, one will notice that countries that have never been former
USSR members are interested not only in SCO but also EurAsEC.
Opinions have already been voiced that the Ukraine itself (apparently,
the country will soon also depart from its observer status in the
Community) could be replaced in the margins of the structure by
Iran who already has an observer status in the SCO and continues to
develop ties and cooperation almost with all the CIS member countries
bordering it.
Thus, the Minsk summits will really become decisive ones. But not
only for the EurAsEC further development. Essentially, the issue at
stake is about what the geopolitical layout in the post-Soviet space
may become on the eve of G8 summit in St. Petersburg coming July.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
