MOSCOW STRUGGLING TO TRANSFORM CSTO INTO A "RUSSIAN NATO"
Pavel Felgenhauer
Jamestown Foundation
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June 4 2009
After the war with Georgia last August, Moscow has attempted to
transform the Russian-dominated seven-member Collective Security Treaty
Organization (CSTO) – a loose alliance that has served mostly as a
forum for security consultations – into a military organization that
might counterbalance NATO. During the Russian invasion of Georgia,
no CSTO ally provided any assistance, or recognized the independence
of the Georgian separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In
February at a summit in Moscow, the presidents of Russia, Belarus,
Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan announced
the creation of a new CSTO rapid-reaction force. President Dmitry
Medvedev declared the force will be "adequate in size, effective,
armed with the most modern weapons and must be on par with NATO forces"
(EDM, February 5). It is well understood in Moscow that even a symbolic
military contribution is important politically. It is always better
to be heading a coalition of the willing, than to be a lone aggressor.
It was announced that a legally binding agreement to create the
Collective Operational Reaction Force or CORF will be signed at
the next CSTO summit in Moscow on June 14. Before that, a series of
meetings of other senior officials (defense ministers, secretaries of
the national security councils and foreign ministers) will finalize the
draft documents, prepared by the CSTO Secretariat. According to Russian
officials, establishing the CORF as well as further plans to create
a large permanent allied armed force in Central Asia will transform
the CSTO "into a NATO-like structure." The Russian foreign ministry
suggested that the permanent allied armed force in Central Asia will
defend the region from "outside aggression" and among other components
will include a fleet in the Caspian Sea (Kommersant, May 29).
This week the CSTO defense ministers’ meeting in Moscow ended
in failure – there was no agreement on the CORF. The CSTO
Secretary-General Nikolai Bordyuzha told journalists that Armenia
and Uzbekistan had blocked progress, "with Armenia demanding a more
concrete date for when the CORF will become operational." Bordyuzha
hoped that "by June 14, just before the summit, everything will be
ready for signing by the presidents" (Interfax, June 3).
The Uzbek president Islam Karimov signed the initial CORF agreement
in February with reservations, avoiding committing Uzbek forces to a
permanent structure, instead participating on a case-by-case basis
(Interfax, February 4). Apparently, Tashkent has continued to be
skeptical of the potential of the new force. Armenia also sees a
genuine external threat with an unresolved conflict with Azerbaijan
since the 1990’s over Karabakh, and an uneasy relationship with
Turkey. Armenia clearly wants a strong commitment of military aid
in a possible crisis – not an open-ended promise to intervene in
theory. The Central Asian CSTO countries including Uzbekistan,
see internal threats from Islamists and political opponents, but
no genuine external threat, at least while the U.S. and NATO remain
committed to Afghanistan and the Taliban does not move in force to
the borders of former Soviet Central Asia -as occurred in 2000.
The Russian defense ministry announced it is ready to commit the
bulk of the CORF troops – the 98th airborne division and the 31st
air-assault brigade. There are plans in Moscow to create joint Special
Forces within the CORF framework for antiterrorist operations. The
CSTO defense ministers were shown Russian-made uniforms and weapons,
which the defense ministry hopes they will purchase for their CORF
troops – standardizing their appearance and at least promoting a
display of interoperability (ITAR-TASS, June 3). Russian officials
also hope that Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan will each commit
a brigade together with special units. Kyrgyzstan will be asked to
provide a battalion. The Armenian and Uzbek commitment remains unclear
(Nezavisimaya Gazeta, June 3).
The Belarusian constitution does not allow the commitment of its
troops for combat abroad. In February Minsk angrily rebuffed Moscow,
and announced it does not plan to change its law, insisting that its
CORF contingent might only be used on Belarusian territory (Kommersant,
February 10). Recently, relations between Moscow and Minsk have become
more strained (EDM, June 2). Medvedev has described recent critical
remarks by Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenka as "unacceptable"
(Interfax, June 3). Uzbekistan is in a simmering conflict with its
CSTO neighbor Tajikistan, and has accused Kyrgyzstan of harboring
Islamist terrorists, and closed its border (EDM, May 28).
There are of course constant differences amongst NATO members, but it
is hardly the model which Medvedev had in mind, when he first announced
plans to create a Russian version of the Atlantic Alliance. There
are well-established procedures within NATO to settle differences,
but Moscow bureaucrats do not appear to have grasped the notion of
patient consensus building.
According to leaks from the CSTO secretariat in Moscow, the grand
plans of building the CORF have already been watered down. The
CORF troops will remain on national territory and under national
jurisdiction. There will be no CORF permanent joint staff or
command. The force will be assembled, a commander appointed and a staff
created whenever missions are approved by an emergency summit of the
CSTO presidents. In the latest example of Moscow-style bureaucracy,
it was proposed that the CORF commander will be appointed from the
nation on whose territory any operation is conducted (Nezavisimaya
Gazeta, June 3). The CORF appears at present to be stillborn -or
perhaps Moscow wants any plausible legal framework for possible future
intervention in neighboring states placed under the CSTO flag.