EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Wanted: A New CIS Policy for Russia

EURASIA INSIGHT

WANTED: A NEW CIS POLICY FOR RUSSIA
Igor Torbakov 9/23/04

Since the Beslan tragedy, Moscow has redoubled its efforts to cast itself as the force best committed to eradicating terrorism in the Caucasus and Central Asia. But whether that campaign will prove sufficient to reunite and inspire members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) remains in doubt. Last week’s CIS conference made clear that Russia has still not defined a persuasive policy toward members of the "near abroad."

The Kremlin clearly understands the scope of the challenge. The CIS, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a July 19 meeting of the Russian Security Council, is faced with a tough choice: either to turn itself into an "effectively functioning, influential regional organization" or cease to exist as a geo-political player.

With Putin once again chairing the CIS, the onus falls on Moscow to propose a strategy capable of meeting that challenge. As the Kremlin crafts its response to Beslan, it has placed the fight against terrorism as a leading contender for that role.

In one of the two-day conference’s few expressions of unity, CIS leaders signed a statement that expressed "complete solidarity with Russia in its fight against terrorism." Putin’s call for "legality, joint efforts and firmness" was particularly championed by Uzbek President Islam Karimov and Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev, both of whom have struggled with militant-related violence in their own countries in recent years. Karimov proposed the creation of a CIS-specific list of wanted terrorists and Akayev echoed the Kremlin’s call for preemptive strikes against terrorist training bases. "We cannot just sit and wait for terrorists to come to us from Afghanistan or somewhere else and force us to fight them in our territory," Akayev told reporters.

But anti-terrorism could prove a limited option for building CIS unity. A public spat between Putin and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili over Moscow’s involvement with the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia illustrated the extent to which long-standing divisions among CIS members linger on. [For background see the EurasiaNet Insight archive]. The opposition New Rights Party has since called for Georgia to withdraw altogether from the organization, arguing that its membership is "a waste of time and money," Interfax reported.

One CIS leader appears to agree: Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin refused to attend the conference, saying that discussions between Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus for creation of an economic union would dominate its agenda. Turkmenistan’s reclusive President Saparmurat Niyazov used a doctor’s appointment to explain his own absence from the event.

But if anti-terrorism falls short in transforming the CIS, two alternative, pro-democracy strategies, both heavily promoted prior to Beslan, now also stand little chance of fitting the bill.

The first � loosely described as "banks rather than tanks" -- envisions Russia as a democratic missionary in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, but one that uses private businesses rather than direct intervention as agents for change. Championed by Anatoly Chubais, Russia’s one-time privatization czar and the head of United Energy Systems, a company with strong business interests in the Caucasus, the strategy foresees the pursuit of profit by Russian firms as a means for encouraging market reform and, eventually, democratic forms of government throughout Eurasia.

The second strategy focuses exclusively on political development. A policy paper by Konstantin Kosachev, head of the State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, recently outlined its scope. In it, Kosachev urged Moscow to revise its policies toward CIS members to present them with a "democratic alternative" to strong-arm forms of rule. But the logic is based as much on countering the West’s own inroads into the region. Russia, Kosachev wrote in the June 25 edition of the daily Izvestia, should pursue a strategy which would result in the "elimination of the currently widespread perception of Russia’s influence and presence in the post-Soviet space as a phenomenon [that] hinders the development of democracy."

But with the rollback of political dissent in Russia under Putin, the notion of Moscow as an "exporter of democracy" has become irrelevant, some analysts argue. "Nowadays, Russians themselves suffer from the deficit of this export commodity," noted Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the influential foreign policy journal Rossiya v Globalnoi Politike, in a July 23 commentary posted on the Gazeta.ru website.

Putin himself, nine days before the conference began, emphasized this concept to a group of Western journalists and academics. Democratic systems of government, he said, can produce dangerous political and ethnic conflicts rather than resolve them. Democracy introduced too quickly or in ways not "in conformity with the development of society" could be "carrying a destructive element," he contended.

A number of Russian commentators take that argument even further. In a commentary published on September 16 in the government paper Rossiisskaya Gazeta, veteran political analyst and journalist Vitaly Tretyakov argued that China, rather than the West, more closely parallels Russia’s form of government: political power heavily concentrated in the center, with a state-guided focus on market development. Such a model does not have exact parallels within the CIS, though Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have both aggressively encouraged the development of their energy industries, while keeping political power firmly in state hands.

Others urge caution: an authoritarian approach to government -- and the policies it engenders -- could merely encourage crises within the region. "Permanent reproduction of the post-Soviet [socio-political] model will ultimately lead to its final collapse," argued political analyst Nikita Nikolayev in a September 16 commentary published in the Rossiiskiye Vesti weekly.

Editor�s Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York; and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey.

The Central Eurasia Project aims, through its website, meetings, papers, and grants, to foster a more informed debate about the social, political and economic developments of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It is a program of the Open Society Institute-New York. The Open Society Institute-New York is a private operating and grantmaking foundation that promotes the development of open societies around the world by supporting educational, social, and legal reform, and by encouraging alternative approaches to complex and controversial issues.

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the position of the Open Society Institute and are the sole responsibility of the author or authors.