ANALYSIS: The CIS summit: back to the USSR? (08/12/01)

ANALYSIS

The CIS summit: back to the USSR?

by Liz Fuller
RFE/RL Newsline

Although last week's CIS summit in Sochi was billed as an informal get-together, the top issue on the agenda was bound to, and did, engender controversy and even annoyance among the meeting's 10 participants. (Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov was absent for at least the third consecutive time, while Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze explained his absence in terms of the tensions generated in Tbilisi by the July 26 murder of TV journalist Giorgi Sanaya.)

The issue at stake has plagued the CIS since its inception a decade ago, namely, whether it is desirable (let alone possible) to reach consensus on shared common objectives and on measures to ensure the optimum degree of cooperation between CIS states in achieving those objectives. That question presupposes that CIS member-states will, if necessary, subordinate their own interests to that of the CIS as a whole, and that they will refrain from adopting policies that could undermine the CIS.

There has been no shortage either of declarations of intent, or of specific programs of measures, or even of separate alignments within the CIS (the Collective Security Pact and the CIS Customs Union) intended to promote such cooperation. But the overwhelming majority of the hundreds of measures agreed on has never been implemented: in early 1998, then-CIS Executive Secretary Ivan Korotchenya calculated that of 887 documents drafted since the CIS was created, only 130 had been signed by all member-states.

One of the reasons that so many initiatives intended to promote greater coordination between CIS states have failed has been the enduring suspicion of several of them that Russia perceives the CIS above all as a mechanism for restoring its control over other former Soviet republics. That suspicion was substantiated by an article published on the eve of the March 1997 CIS summit in Moscow that outlined measures for sabotaging alternative alliances emerging within the CIS in order to preserve and strengthen Russia's influence throughout the former USSR. Those proposals, which then Russian President Boris Yeltsin reportedly endorsed, cast a pall over the Chisinau CIS summit in October of that year, and expedited the emergence of GUAM, the unambiguously pro-Western alignment of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova.

In the apparent realization that the threat of subversion risked sounding the deathknell for the CIS, Moscow in the spring of 1998 embarked on an alternative approach to promoting economic cooperation between the CIS member-states in the form of an Inter-State Economic Agreement that would theoretically benefit them all. Boris Berezovsky, at that juncture still riding high in the saddle as CIS executive secretary, was tasked with persuading CIS presidents of the advantages of that model, and he subsequently presented an ambitious blueprint for economic cooperation that envisaged the creation of one or several CIS free-trade zones as the first step toward an economic union.

But even that strategy aroused suspicion: Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, for example, objected that Mr. Berezovsky had exceeded his brief. In early 1999, Mr. Berezovsky was removed from his CIS post, after which Uzbekistan first declined to renew its membership in the CIS Collective Security Pact and then joined GUAM.

Although the planned free-trade zone has figured on the agenda of subsequent CIS summits, priority has been given to upgrading an alternative vehicle for closer intra-CIS economic cooperation, namely the transformation of the CIS Customs Union (comprising Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) into the Eurasian Economic Community. But that move only served to strengthen the impression of the emergence of two opposing camps within the CIS: the Eurasian Economic Community and GUUAM.

The emergence in mid-1999 of an Islamic threat to both Central Asia and to Russia (or the tacit agreement to construe both the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and the pro-independence Chechen fighters as constituting such a long-term threat by virtue of their putative connections with the Taliban) served to provide an alternative focus for cooperation. At the first summit presided over by Vladimir Putin (in January 2000) in his capacity as then-acting Russian president, participants endorsed a proposal by President Karimov and his Kazak counterpart Nursultan Nazarbaev to draft an international program of measures to combat terrorism, including establishing a CIS anti-terrorism center.

The establishment of that center and the creation of the CIS rapid reaction force have eclipsed the planned free-trade zone. But at the Sochi summit last week, President Putin again returned to the question of promoting closer and more effective economic cooperation within the CIS as "the sole basis for developing cooperation in all spheres."

Mr. Putin also focused on the role of what he termed "regional organizations" within the CIS, a formulation that suggests that, consciously or unconsciously, he does not regard the other former Soviet republics as sovereign states. Mr. Putin declared that "I want to emphasize that the Union State of Russia and Belarus, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Collective Security Treaty, GUUAM, the Central Asia Economic Community can by all means complement the Commonwealth and ... can even become a sort of laboratory for conducting specific variations on cooperation prior to their subsequent introduction throughout the CIS."

But the Russian president went on to make clear that such "regional organizations" should not adopt policies that could be perceived as directed against the broader collective interests of the CIS as a whole - a warning that was almost certainly directed specifically at GUUAM, which has recently proposed creating its own free-trade zone, and several of whose members make no secret of their ultimate aspiration to NATO membership. It is, Mr. Putin said, "most important and a matter of principle" that "regional organizations work to strengthen the commonwealth as a whole and toward ... raising the living standards of our peoples and safeguarding the security of all our countries."

What specific objections to that argument were expressed in the ensuing behind-closed-doors discussion, and by whom, is not known. But according to Vremya Novostei, when the 10 presidents finally emerged from that session, Azerbaijan's Heidar Aliev asked loudly: "Shouldn't we create the Soviet Union again?" prompting a lively discussion of who should occupy what post in a new USSR. (Vremya Novostei did not supply details, but suggestions may have included Mr. Putin as CPSU general secretary; either Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka or Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov, both of them former collective farm chairmen, as agriculture secretary; Mr. Nazarbaev as chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers; Armenian President Robert Kocharian as defense minister; and Aliev as KGB chairman.)

But while Mr. Aliev's off-the-cuff comment may have eased tensions momentarily, Mr. Putin's arguments are likely to have given further impetus to precisely those centrifugal and pro- Western tendencies within the CIS that he abhors most. How Moscow intends to counter those tendencies remains to be seen.

Liz Fuller is editor-in-chief of RFE/RL Newsline.

| Home Page |