ANALYSIS: CIS: the jackals and the lion (04/11/99)

ANALYSIS

CIS: the jackals and the lion

by Paul Goble

As the Commonwealth of Independent States was preparing for a summit in Moscow on April 2, one of Russia's leading foreign-policy commentators argued that Moscow should stop trying to integrate the former Soviet space on the basis of the CIS and instead deal one-on-one with each of the former Soviet republics.

Appearing at a roundtable discussion organized by the Russian foreign-policy journal International Affairs, Sergei Karaganov suggested that the CIS today "is a rare example of a retrograde movement in history" and that overcoming "illusions" about it will serve Moscow's interests as it attempts to expand its influence in the countries that now belong to the commonwealth.

Mr. Karaganov, who is chairman of the prestigious Russian Council for Foreign and Defense Policy and deputy director of the Academy of Sciences Institute of Europe, has frequently been a bellwether for Russian policy toward the former Soviet republics. And as a result, his argument now is likely to affect how Moscow approaches the CIS.

According to Mr. Karaganov, the CIS "has long been moving increasingly in the direction of its own disintegration." He suggested it crossed that Rubicon five or six years ago, when it failed to serve as the basis for creating an integrated economic space on the territory of the former Soviet Union. It has been retained, Mr. Karaganov insisted, largely because current Russian leaders bear some responsibility for the demise of the USSR.

Because that opportunity was missed, Mr. Karaganov continued, the increasing differences among these countries have now made it impossible to create such an integrated economic space. The more than 1,000 CIS agreements that some of the commonwealth's members have signed have had the effect of discrediting the very idea of future cooperation.

Mr. Karaganov went on to argue that the non-Russian countries made "a major strategic mistake" in not agreeing to a tight political arrangement five years ago, one that would have restricted Russia's freedom of action even more than their own. Indeed, he suggested that this mistake was "a paragon of foreign-policy idiocy."

In fact, several CIS leaders, particularly Kazakstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, did push at that time for a more precisely defined arrangement among the commonwealth countries, while Russian leaders routinely refused to agree, a reflection of their recognition at the time of what Mr. Karaganov is suggesting now.

Mr. Karaganov also suggested that the non-Russian leaders now recognize their "mistake" and are forming various coalitions and alliances - such as GUAM, which unites Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova and may expand to include others - to gang up on Russia as Mr. Karaganov said they did at the CIS summit in Chisinau in October 1997.

In describing these moves, Mr. Karaganov offered the following metaphor. He suggested that the non-Russian leaders now recognize that "only a pack of jackals can tear a lion to pieces." He asked rhetorically what policy the lion, even if he is "sick and wounded," should adopt. And he suggested that "more likely than not" there is only one answer: "to crush the jackals one by one."

Unfortunately, as Mr. Karaganov noted, Russia lacks "the political and economic resources" needed to do so and therefore should remain calm, recognizing that at present "there is no need to crush anyone."

While some observers may see this comment as vitiating his metaphor, many of the leaders of the CIS member-states are likely to perceive it as something else: an effort to pressure them into following Moscow's line lest Moscow deal with them one by one in the future, as Mr. Karaganov's wounded "lion" might deal with individual "jackals."

While some of these leaders may be impressed by Mr. Karaganov's logic, others certainly will not be, thus setting the stage for a possibly contentious set of relationships between Russia and its neighbors.

Paul Goble is the publisher of RFE/RL Newsline.

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