Some constructive criticism of the CSTO

The CSTO has faced plenty of (deserved) criticism for its failure to help Kyrgyzstan during the terrible ethnic violence there this summer. But few people have offered advice on how to reform the organization to make it more effective. Dmitry Trenin of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace takes a shot at some constructive criticism. Some of his recommendations:

First of all, the CSTO needs to focus on the biggest security threat. For most of the CSTO countries today (for Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, in any case), the largest security threats come from hotbeds of instability within Central Asia and in adjacent regions. There are other problems too, in the Caucasus in particular, but they do not affect the interests of the majority of member states and can be resolved by members independently or on a bilateral basis. The CSTO’s focus needs to be, above all, on Central Asia.

Second, the CSTO needs to integrate a serious political component into its organization. Its political dimension today boils down to regular summits between the presidents of member countries and to the work of the organization’s general secretariat and its staff. This is not enough. The organization needs a modern international political component with a multinational, integrated structure that would work on analyzing and forecasting developments, as well as on short-term and strategic planning, coordinating the efforts of member states, and developing a dense network of person-to-person contacts at the operational level. This political side of the organization could have its headquarters in, say, Astana, Kazakhstan.

Third, the CSTO needs a more solid military component. This component needs to be directed against real and predicted threats, not merely a pale and anachronistic imitation of the Warsaw Pact. A joint missile defense system is clearly not the biggest priority for the CSTO today. The Collective Rapid Reaction Force is an important and useful new development within the CSTO, but so far it exists more on paper than in reality. This force is intended to be specifically aimed at fighting insurgent and terrorist groups, but such an instrument alone is not enough. The CSTO also needs collective police and peacekeeping forces able to prevent and suppress riots, as well as interethnic, social, and other internal conflicts.

These are all eminently sensible, even obvious, recommendations -- so why haven't they been implemented? My off-the-top-of-my-head guess is that they (especially the second two here) require a level of decentralization of authority that isn't present in many of the CSTO countries. Any other ideas?