Tashkent’s suspension of its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) worried other members of this organization. However, the experts from Moscow, Yerevan and Astana have concluded that this action is quite typical for the Uzbek authorities and cannot affect the interests of the members of the CSTO in the short run, though it may increase the contradictions in the Russian-American relations.
According to Adzar Kurtov, editor-in-chief of "Problems of National Strategy", Tashkent’s policy can become a worrying sign for Dushanbe: “After the withdrawal of the Americans from Afghanistan they are going to leave a significant portion of their equipment – not weapons, but equipment that can be used to provide a military presence, such as construction machinery, cars etc. They will not transport it to their national territory, but will leave it in the Central Asian states. And in this sense, Tashkent is interested in the lion's share of this portion left by the Americans and their allies. It was also interesting that Tajikistan did not get it, because Tajikistan could use it for more successful and more rapid construction of the Rogun Dam.
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have previously been in the framework of the same military-political alliance, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and now Uzbekistan's hands are free. The conflict that exists around the construction of the Rogun Dam, and this year there was a clear escalation of it, when Uzbekistan dismantled the railway line leading to one of the southern regions of Tajikistan and it stopped the gas supply, causing a serious threat to major budget-forming enterprises in Tajikistan, this conflict could escalate. No one is immune from this.
The Tajik authorities, from my point of view, should think many times before making fantastic demands on Moscow that the rent for the Russian military base should be, according to the Tajik side, a fantastic amount of $300 million per year. If the negotiations on this matter are delayed, and the funding for the development of this base is also delayed further, they should take into account that this base provides the security of Tajikistan”.
Andrey Kazantsev, director of the research center of the Institute of International Relations of MGIMO University, thinks that “the Collective Security Treaty Organization, in fact, is not weakened by the secession of such a member as Uzbekistan. In reality, it ceased cooperating with the CSTO in the military sphere, in the participation in some type of collective structures like the CRRF, in funding and even information sharing, much earlier. I think there has been no real cooperation with Tashkent within the CSTO since about 2009. The fact that such a member is leaving the organization does not contribute to its weakening. On the contrary, it will strengthen the integration within it.
Concerning the situation with the Russian base in Tajikistan, it seems to me that the secession of Uzbekistan, the suspension of its membership in the CSTO, will strengthen the desire of Tajikistan to keep this base. The situation in Afghanistan is very difficult and uncertain; no one in the world, in general, can predict what there will be after 2014. Tajikistan, in principle, finds itself in this frontal zone, which may appear again. The Russian base has always been the guarantor of the inviolability of the borders of Tajikistan in this direction. In this situation, of course, demanding the maximum price for the base, a price that Russia might not be able to pay, would not be quite reasonable, in my opinion.
All that we see is not something new for specialists on Central Asia. This is true for Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan: this is what is called “multi-vectoral foreign policy in action”. All the Central Asian states use this multi-vectoral policy. Another thing is how policies of various states differ from each other. The essence of this multi-vectoral policy was formulated long before the formation of the new independent states of Central Asia. In particular, in Afghanistan under President Daud, even before the Soviet invasion, there was a saying: "Afghan policy is to light American cigarettes with Russian matches." All the Central Asian states, including those we are now discussing, have been engaged in such a multi-vectoral policy and continue it. Thinking that this could lead to some fundamentally new development in the region is quite premature, to my mind”.
Bolat Baikadamov, director of the Parliamentary Institute "Nur Otan", thinks that “Uzbekistan's withdrawal from the Collective Security Treaty Organization and other regional organizations is rather a trend; these are consistent policies of the Uzbek authorities, and there is nothing new. For 20 years, Uzbekistan has always demonstrated this deplorable stability. The secession from the Collective Security Treaty Organization is the direct evidence of this policy. I believe that its withdrawal from this organization weakens both the organization and the very situation of security in the region. I'll tell you why.
Firstly, the Uzbek political regime will not last forever, and any change of power in favour of other elites or the leader of these elites will always be followed, especially in these conditions, by unforeseen consequences. It may go beyond Uzbekistan, and it could directly or indirectly affect the interests of neighboring states, including Kazakhstan.
At one time we had to reinforce the security of the organization with the necessary resources that would allow Uzbekistan not to sell stability like goods to both Russia and the United States of America. For 20 years, this threat has gradually turned in the minds of the Uzbek elite into a very profitable product that can, of course, be sold on the foreign market, and the United States of America can use it.
Uzbekistan has been a sovereign state for only 20 years. It does not have enough forces for a decent domestic economic performance, there is no free liberal economy, and it is not competitive. In addition, there is nothing we would call freedom or openness in this country. No democratic system. None that allows a country to build the social, political, cultural, and other communications with other countries that can invest their funds in this country. They invest only in the military sphere or in the prevention of further destabilizing developments, that is, removal of the threat by payments.
This situation leads to the conclusion about Uzbekistan that it is not modern and is incapable of solving the problems of internal regional security on its own. The CSTO is a very good institution in order to stabilize the situation in the region and in Uzbekistan itself, which would gradually lead to the achievement of the regional maximum or a level of security that would remove this threat for a long time”.
According to Sergei Minasyan, head of the Department of Political Studies of the Institute of the Caucasus, “any particular problems in Armenia in the CSTO in the Caucasus with the secession of Uzbekistan from the Collective Security Treaty Organization are unlikely. It is more exactly the opposite, although it may sound paradoxical, but the suspension of the participation of Uzbekistan in the CSTO structures will positively influence improving the efficiency and manageability of the CSTO. It's no secret that in the last couple of years one of the activities of the CSTO Secretary was searching for some sophisticated mechanisms of the activity of the structures of the Collective Security Treaty Organization - namely, the CSTO's military structures, when such a member as Uzbekistan always tries to extinguish all the integration initiatives. So, for example, there have been developments of creating a mechanism by means of which they could make decisions in the absence of consensus, or "consensus minus one member", etc. On the other hand, it is natural for Armenia that the CSTO represents, first of all, bilateral Armenian-Russian military and military-political cooperation, and in this respect, shall we say, nothing important will occur. I think that it is obvious, especially after August 2010 and the signing of a new document regulating the matter of the Russian military base in Armenia, which now provides security on the territory of Armenia as well as throughout the South Caucasus region. In many ways, it also contributes to countering possible threats, for instance, those related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. All these mechanisms received a second wind. We also expect large-scale exercises of the CSTO in September. They also will show that the Collective Security Treaty Organization in the Caucasus does not have any special challenges”.
David Jamalyan, Ph.D. in Psychology, military expert thinks that “the CSTO as an organization, as a geopolitical reality, has become stronger recently without the active participation of Uzbekistan. In this sense, the secession of this country and the suspension of its membership is unlikely to really influence or affect the viability of the CSTO. It has been already said, and it's hard not to agree with it, that the membership of Uzbekistan in many respects was of a formal nature. There was a lack of interest in integration, there was passivity, and this was primarily manifested in the military aspect of the cooperation within the CSTO. So we can hardly talk about some big losses for the CSTO.
Of course, there was a certain theoretical possibility of using the potential of Uzbekistan's military capabilities to some extent, when it was a member of the CSTO. But since there was passivity and unwillingness to be engaged in the activities of the CSTO, this possibility in the period of membership in the Collective Security Treaty Organization was of a prospective nature. So the organization has nothing really to lose in this case.
However, of course, we can talk about its geopolitical aspect. Some threats certainly exist; if the secession of Uzbekistan is considered from the viewpoint of Uzbek-American relations and the possibility of the construction of U.S. military bases there, in my opinion, we should pay attention to the following two aspects of this issue.
If potential military bases are used in Afghanistan and are somehow to be used to fortify the position of the United States in the region, then we can even see some aspect of cooperation, since it is no secret that both Russia and the CSTO get a benefit to some extent from the activity of the Americans in Afghanistan. They are at war with those who might became Russia’s enemies. By the way, the Afghan area is one of the few areas of cooperation between Russia and the United States. But if we consider the potential of the U.S. military bases in the context of the anti-Iranian policy of the United States, the situation certainly becomes more worrying”.
The Iranian factor worries Adzar Kurtov, too: ”It probably played a role in the decision of the higher leadership of Uzbekistan to join a new geopolitical informal alliance with Washington. Yes, indeed, it may also have an anti-Iranian orientation, both directly and indirectly. Concerning the indirect aspect, returning to the theme of the Rogun Dam, the Tajik authorities have done their best to strengthen their “national idea” to finish the construction of the Rogun Dam with the support of external sponsors or allies. This is the idea of transferring water from Tajikistan to Iran, which was loudly declared; this is also the so-called Union of the three Persian-speaking countries; these are much more different issues. And now Uzbekistan can crush these ideas in the bud, if indeed there is an alliance with Washington. This kills two birds with one stone; there are both anti-Iranian actions and anti-Tajik ones.
But I think that, in fact, the Americans are not only achieving a specific goal. In the end, for the United States of America, Uzbekistan is not that significantly valued. As compared to 180,000,000-strong Pakistan, with a good mobilized army and intelligence services with power in this country, when interdepartmental intelligence decides major policy issues of political development and foreign policy, not the President or Cabinet, and nearly 30 million, is much smaller in size than Uzbekistan? It's just ridiculous. Then the security of Central Asia is connected to fact that the Americans do not care. They are very fond of all parts of the world to come, create problems, organize chaos, and then leave the region and the chaos, giving a headache to other states. Yes, it will be a headache in Russia. But it will be even more of a headache in Central Asia. That's what you need to think about.
The policy of Tashkent, with its secession from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, is quite short-sighted. Now they have some political dividends because of their rapprochement with the United States. But they should remember the fate of the people we have just seen in North Africa and the Middle East, for example, Mubarak, the Egyptian president. He had been a great ally of the United States of America, and when they stopped needing him they discarded him ruthlessly, and now he is actually at death's door. And is the situation in Egypt different from the situation in Uzbekistan? It is very similar. The leader has also ruled for decades. There is also a rigid, authoritarian regime. There is also an economy that is lacking the necessary resources. There is the same dependence on external assistance, the same, perhaps, not security trading, but geopolitical loyalty trading. The reasons for this are also mostly the same ones, and the situation in Egypt could repeat itself in the former Soviet Union, including Central Asia and Uzbekistan. But the political elite of Uzbekistan believes that it will not happen right now or maybe will not happen at all, that is, they behave like temporary workers. Getting short-term rent at the expense of national interests is a feature of many of our partners in the post-Soviet space”.
Along with this, according to Andrey Kazantsev, “the Russian policy in the region cannot be reduced to the policy of the CSTO. The policy of the CSTO is only part of it. In this regard, the geopolitical risks associated with the secession of Uzbekistan still exist.
In my opinion, they are the following: there is a phenomenon in Central Asia, I call it a "geopolitical swing", that is, the fluctuations in the sphere of military-geopolitical influence of Russia and the U.S.. In the mid-late 90s, Uzbekistan had a pro-American government. Then there was a period in the late 90's, till 9/11 and the American invasion of Afghanistan, when Uzbekistan became closer to Russia and China, simply because they saw that the Americans had refused to solve the security problems of Central Asia. Then, when the Americans invaded Afghanistan, there was again a very tough period of a pro-American position of Uzbekistan, which ended after the uprising in Andijan, when Uzbekistan again switched to Russia and China for the period of a severe attitude towards Uzbekistan by the Western political elites. Now we are returning to a new phase of this pro-American policy, and it is important that Uzbekistan was always a trendsetter in the region. In this respect, it is dangerous from the point of view of Russia. This is the first geopolitical risk.
There is also a second geopolitical risk: the situation in Afghanistan is complicated, and the situation in the Central Asian states is also very difficult. It is very important that all major powers and all organizations operating in the region (I mean the great powers such as Russia, China, USA) interact in different ways.
In this regard, I would like to consider an Uzbek multi-vectoral system, because all the Central Asian states prefer a multi-vectoral policy, but if we consider the multi-vectoral policy of Kazakhstan, the aim is to be friendly with everyone and to interact positively with everyone. In my opinion, this kind of multi-vectoral policy is quite good. But concerning the multi-vectoral policy in Uzbekistan, the main aim of it is to set the great powers in opposition to each other and to make policy by means of this. The actions of Uzbekistan create a new background for inflaming the conflict between Russia and the U.S”.
