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12.05.07
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Disquiet On The Eastern Front
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By Vladimir Frolov
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Integration Projects in the Former Soviet Space
On Dec. 8, 1991, the leaders of three Soviet republics - Russia, Ukraine and Belarus gathered in the forest retreat of Belovezhskaya Pushcha near Minsk and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Soviet Union ceased to exist three weeks later. Ever since then, the leaders of the former Soviet republics, with the notable exception of the three Baltic states and the hermit kingdom of Turkmenistan, have been obsessed with the idea of integration in the former Soviet space. Fifteen years later, there is regrettably little to show for their efforts besides the proliferation of integrationist projects. However, the multitude of international organizations formed on the ruins of the Soviet Union has helped solve one very serious problem - how to achieve the peaceful separation of formerly tightly- knit territories without degenerating into war, as was the case in the former Yugoslavia.
In this respect, the integrationist projects in the former Soviet Union succeeded beyond expectations, and the leaders of the former Soviet republics should be congratulated on their success in keeping peace in times of immense political turmoil and economic and social upheaval.
The Role of the CIS
The Commonwealth of Independent States was designed to promote cooperation between the former Soviet republics in the political, economic, humanitarian and cultural spheres. On Dec. 21, 1991, eight other states - Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - joined Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as founding members of the CIS. Georgia joined the organization in October 1993, after the nationalist government of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia was toppled in a civil war and former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze was installed as president.
The CIS Charter was adopted on Jan. 22, 1993. Ukraine, Moldova and Turkmenistan never ratified the Charter, but take part in CIS activities. The highest decision making body in the CIS is the Council of the Heads of States, which gathers twice a year and operates by consensus. The Council of the Heads of Governments meets four times a year and coordinates economic cooperation efforts. Chairmanships in both councils alternate between member states in alphabetical order. The CIS permanent executive body is the Executive Committee, headquartered in Minsk.
The CIS has also attempted to coordinate the member states’ foreign and defense policies through the respective Councils of Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers, supported by the Joint Coordinating Staff, but effective synchronization among CIS states proved to be difficult to achieve since the member states have sometimes had divergent interests. At the September 2004 CIS summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, it was decided to abolish the Council of Defense Ministers and the Joint Coordinating Staff and replace them with a CIS Security Council composed of the member states’ foreign and defense ministers, heads of security councils and secret services as well as border guard services. But that body continues to struggle with its responsibilities and has had little meaningful impact on the policies of member states.
The CIS also has an Interparliamentary Assembly, a collection of parliamentarians from the member states that meets twice a year in St. Petersburg. Unlike the European Parliament, however, the CIS assembly is not directly elected, and its responsibility is limited to developing non-obligatory legislative proposals.
Such initiatives have become the basic modus operandi of the CIS - it adopts hundreds of well intentioned decisions and legal agreements, then fails to follow up on their implementation. Examples include: the CIS Economic Union Treaty of 1993; the CIS Free Trade Agreement of 1994; the CIS Payment Union Agreement of 1994 and the Advanced Integration Development Plan of 1994.
In August 2005, Turkmenistan decided to withdraw from the CIS, although retaining its status as an observer. At the moment, neither Turkmenistan nor Ukraine take active part in the CIS deliberations, and Georgia has repeatedly threatened to leave the organization.
Several attempts have been made to reform the CIS in order to achieve a meaningful level of integration. Kazakhstan and its president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, have been driving the modernization effort as part of an effort to increase that country’s importance in Eurasia due to fears of Chinese expansion. Kazakhstan has proposed several conceptual plans for upgrading the CIS, most recently in the run up to the October 2006 CIS summit in Minsk. But as usual, consensus was difficult to reach, and all plans for CIS reform were postponed until the June 2007 summit in St. Petersburg.
Economic Integration
By the end of the 1990s, it was clear that economic integration within the entire CIS was not feasible. The countries’ political and economic orientations had become too divergent and, in some cases, incompatible. However, it was also clear that a narrower set of participants might be able to agree on a measure of coordination in their economic and trade policies, and that such coordination could be mutually advantageous.
On Feb. 26, 1999, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan signed a Treaty on Customs Union and Common Economic Space, providing for free movement of goods, capital, services and people. However, the treaty neither specified a time frame for achieving the objectives, nor created the necessary institutional structures.
To eliminate those deficiencies, on Oct. 10, 2000 the same countries signed a treaty that established the Eurasian Economic Community (EvrAzEs). The treaty, ratified by all member states, gives Russia the lead role in the project by introducing a weighted voting system according to GDP. Ukraine and Moldova have had observer status in the group since 2002, while Armenia became an observer in 2003. Uzbekistan joined the organization in January 2006.
EvrAzEs set up institutional bodies like the Interstate Council, its highest decision making body, the Integration Council and the Interparliamentary Assembly. It also has a permanent secretariat that works to coordinate national customs and trade regimes. This, however, did not preclude Kyrgyzstan from joining the WTO without coordination with the other member states. The Customs Union and the Common Economic Space so far remain unattainable.
Many regional analysts and politicians believed that a solution was found in a new integration project launched in February 2003 in Yalta, when the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan agreed to form the Joint Economic Space (EEP) The advantage of the new group was that it included Ukraine, without which no single economic space in the former Soviet Union is feasible.
The member states were supposed to agree on joint economic and regulatory policies, joint trade policies and unified customs tariffs, fiscal and monetary policies. At the September 2004 summit in Astana, the member states agreed to a set of 29 policy guiding documents that were to be implemented into binding agreements to create the unified regulatory environment for the EEP. There was also a new feature embedded in those agreements - a supranational body that would ensure the implementation of the unified economic, trade, fiscal and monetary polices - something not unlike the European Commission.
However, this proved to be a deal-breaker for Ukraine. With its government in crisis after the Orange Revolution, the political will for the project dissipated, despite some strong popular support. Ukraine’s new Orange government thought it could quickly secure EU membership, which would make joining the EEP unnecessary. Additionally, working toward the EEP would be a distraction from the more important objective of wooing the EU, and possibly even detrimental to these efforts. After the EU made it clear that Ukrainian membership was not in the cards and a new parliament was elected in 2006, Ukraine’s leadership showed renewed interest in the project.
By early 2007 a new proposal emerged for economic integration in the former Soviet space: The Eurasian Economic Union, united by a single currency - the Eurasian Ruble. Kazakhstan appears to be pushing this idea, and whether other states will endorse it remains to be seen.
The Union State that Isn’t
The only full scale integrationist project in the region has been the Union State between Russia and Belarus - a real confederate state, or so it seemed. Launched as a presidential initiative in April 1997 following then-President Boris Yeltsin’s campaign pledge during the 1996 elections, it was officially chartered under the Union Treaty in December 1999.
The project aimed at the highest level of integration possible - a single economic space, a single currency to be introduced in 2005, a confederate parliament to be elected in 2007 by direct vote, common citizenship and rights for employment, a single military doctrine and an integrated military command structure.
Multiple Union State bodies have been created - the Higher Council, made up of the heads of state; the Permanent Council, consisting of cabinet ministers; the Customs Committee, the Audit chamber, the Union Court and the Commission on Human Rights.
Over 200 interstate agreements and treaties have been signed, although few of them have been implemented. A customs union has been inaugurated, but never functioned as envisioned. The single currency plan appears to have foundered after Minsk insisted that it retain the right to print money?giving Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko the power to continue inflationary economic policies and subsidizing state-run industries.
But even more importantly, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view for the Union State differed fundamentally from that of President Lukashenko. For Putin, the idea makes sense only if Belarus joins Russia as a subject of the Russian Federation and essentially gives up its sovereignty. This will not upset Russia’s economic development and will drag Belarus onto the path of economic and political reform. Lukashenko’s interest in the union has been quite different. For Lukashenko, it was a chance to enter Russian politics and position himself as a viable contender for the Presidency of the Union State. Lukashenko has many supporters among Russian nationalists, so this idea was not entirely far-fetched. But on Jan. 1, 2007, Russia sharply raised its heavily subsidized prices for natural gas supplied to Belarus, effectively ending any talk of unification.
Providing for Common Defense
The collapse of the Soviet Union revealed wide gaps in the defense perimeter of the newly independent states. To close some of those holes, particularly in air defense and border patrols, Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed the Tashkent Collective Security Treaty on May 15, 1992. Belarus, Azerbaijan and Georgia joined the treaty in 1993. The treaty provided for joint defense of the member states and set up structures to coordinate defense activities, but by 1999, after it proved ineffective, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan refused to continue their membership.
On May 14, 1999, the Collective Security Treaty was transformed into the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), with a structure similar in form to NATO. At a summit in Chisinau on Oct. 7, 2002, the CSTO’s Charter was adopted. The CSTO has a well developed structure of executive bodies, including the Council on Collective Security, composed of heads of state, as well as Councils of Foreign and Defense Ministers and Joint Military Staff.
The CSTO has proposed establishing a formal cooperative relationship with NATO, particularly with regard to operations in Afghanistan. But this offer remains on hold for the foreseeable future since NATO refuses to recognize the CSTO as a legitimate defense alliance.
Challenging Russia’s Primacy
In October 1997 during a diplomatic forum in Strasbourg, France, several former Soviet states formed an informal group with the goal of coordinating policies without having to deal with Russia. The group was called GUAM after its participants?Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova. In 1999, Uzbekistan joined the organization and it was renamed GUUAM.
The GUUAM states are the most reluctant to commit to the integrationist projects dominated by Russia. Most of GUUAM’s members have simmering ethnic conflicts on their territories and have to deal with the reality of unrecognized separatist states, many of which are encouraged by Russia. In 2001, GUUAM was recognized as an international regional organization and at its June 2001 summit in Yalta, the member-states adopted GUUAM’s Charter.
But the organization has proved to be no more effective than the CIS. It has passed a number of high-flying declarations and flowery statements, but failed to follow up on any of them. The hopes that its anti-Russian bias would attract new members and Western economic and military assistance, as well as active international mediation in the conflict zones, proved to be unjustified. Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan in particular have soured on GUUAM. Uzbekistan essentially ceased its participation in 2002, and after strong Western criticism of its human rights record following the events at Andijan in May 2005 when Uzbek police fired on street demonstrators, Tashkent formally withdrew from GUUAM and joined the pro-Russian OCST.
At the May 2006 summit in Kiev, the GUAM member-states signed a declaration calling for the creation of a new body - “Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM.” It remains to be seen whether this rebranding will help increase the organization’s relevance and influence.
Reaching Out to China
In 1996, five states - China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - began meeting in an informal regional cooperation forum called the Shanghai Five to discuss regional security and economic development. The forum worked so well that in 2001 the informal group was transformed into an international regional organization?the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Uzbekistan joined in 2001 and other countries, including India, Pakistan and Iran, have sent feelers about potential membership. Even the United States has inquired quietly about joining the group. The reason?apprehension about burgeoning ties between China, the emerging superpower, and Russia, the predominant regional player. There are reasons to believe that the SCO is turning into an instrument of Chinese influence in the post-Soviet space.
The Central Asian participants in the SCO are uneasy about the expansion of Chinese businesses and capital into Central Asia and are seeking Russia’s support to counterbalance China. For Russia, the SCO is another vehicle to check growing Chinese power in the region and entangle China in a web of cooperative relationships. But Russia is wary of China using the SCO to project its influence into Central Asia and is reluctant to increase membership of the organization, which might allow China to form alliances on specific issues.
Nevertheless, the SCO is a viable structure that has proved its usefulness, unlike most of the other organizations that have arisen in the post-Soviet space. And so, in this sense, it is one of the few success stories of regional organizations in the former Soviet territory.
Vladimir Frolov is the Director of the National Laboratory for Foreign Policy, a Moscow-based think tank. |
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