Moscow Seeks to Take Advantage of Iraq Conflict to Reassert its Leadership in CIS

Igor Torbakov: With US troops controlling Baghdad, Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to temper criticism in Russia of the American military campaign in Iraq. The Russian leadership wants to avoid doing anything that might antagonize US policy makers. Instead, Russia hopes to take advantage of the Bush administration's preoccupation with the Middle East to accelerate Moscow's own strategic integration plan in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Moscow's official view is that the Bush administration has made a "serious mistake" in launching the Iraq war without first receiving the sanction of the United Nations Security Council. Speaking at a gathering of Duma-faction heads in the Kremlin on March 28, Putin characterized the current Iraq war as shaking the foundations of global stability and international law. He repeated Moscow's calls for an immediate halt to military operations, adding that the Security Council should handle the resolution of the Iraq crisis.

However, Putin clarified his position April 3, bluntly stating that Russia has no desire to dwell on the morality of the United States' strategy on the Iraq issue. As for emotional anti-war speeches by some Russian political figures, Putin continued, "I share their emotions in part, but I do realize that emotions are a poor adviser for taking decisions," the Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.

Some political analysts in Moscow say Putin wants to minimize Moscow's differences with Washington on Iraq - at least in the public realm - in order to take maximum advantage of widely anticipated shifts in the global geopolitical landscape. Many sense that with global attention fixated on the current upheaval in the Middle East, there is opportunity for Russia to promote its interests in the former Soviet space.

Indeed, the Iraq crisis appears to be fostering a spirit of "revisionism" within the Moscow analytic community. "The world is now at the threshold of the huge [territorial] redivision that in many respects resembles the events of the beginning of the 20th century. Each country seeks to create its own security sphere," argues Andrei Kokoshin, the Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs and former deputy defense minister, during the recent discussion at the session of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow. According to Kokoshin, "Russia's sole sphere of interests [is] the post-Soviet space."

The war in Iraq, other observers believe, provides Russia with a golden opportunity to radically boost its integrationist efforts. "Taking into account that the global restructuring has obviously begun, our country has to do its utmost to restore, at least on the confederative basis, the Greater Russia comprising Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation," political analyst Vitalii Tretyakov said in a commentary published in the Literaturnaya Gazeta weekly.

"Today we probably have the unique last chance to achieve this," Tretyakov added.

While there is general consensus on the grand strategy of promoting integration, strategic and tactical differences remain within the Russian policy-making community. Some favor an emphasis on economic policy. But an apparent majority believes security concerns should take precedence.

In his commentary, Tretyakov drew the contours of a would-be confederative Eurasian state, with Russia at its core, and bound together by a new economic integration blueprint recently unveiled in Moscow. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archives].

Meanwhile, the so-called "security school" of thought contends that the Iraq crisis has brought to the fore the military-political component of the Eurasian cooperation. Today, security-oriented analysts argue it is simply impossible for Russia to realize any economic ambitions without first resolving the issue of who is friend and who is foe within the CIS.

"Time has come for Russia, as the leading power in the CIS, to work out a well-grounded strategy for a defense alliance with those CIS partners who will not resort to tactics of playing on contradictions between Moscow and Washington," political scientist Artyom Ulunian wrote in the Rossiiskiye Vesti newspaper.

"The 'second edition' of the Warsaw Pact, based on the commonality of the defense interests in Eurasia, is in the offing," Ulunian asserted.

Kokoshin agrees. He refers to four components that Russia can utilize to promote what he describes as the Putin Doctrine - the establishment of a highly integrated core of key states surround by the loose grouping of other CIS members. The components are the Union of Russia and Belarus, the Collective Security Treaty (CST), the Eurasian Economic Union and the CIS Anti-Terrorist Center.

Under current circumstances, Kokoshin argues, of the four components, the CST is the key one. "The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has to turn into the full-fledged military-political body; all our partners in the CST fully support this transformation," he says.

In trying to strengthen the CST, Russia is benefiting from the fact that many states in Central Asia and the Caucasus are becoming increasingly wary of cooperation with the United States. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archives]. Of all the states in the region, only Georgia and Uzbekistan remain solid supporters of the United States. Strategic planners in Moscow are currently trying to enhance Russia's image as a traditional and more reliable ally for Central Asian and Caucasus states.

Kokoshin and other Russian experts explain the desire of post-Soviet states to cling closer to Russia by the dramatically increased sense of insecurity on the part of those countries' leaders. The changing geopolitical situation creates an uncertain environment for the post-Soviet elites, analysts say. "After the developments in Iraq, many [rulers of the CIS member-states] whom the West regards as corrupt, anti-democratic, autocratic and even totalitarian have started thinking of what might happen to them in the near future," points out Kokoshin. Such concerns are pushing certain CIS countries back under Russia's security umbrella.

It is noteworthy that on the very day the US-led coalition began the military operations in Iraq, the secretaries of the National Security Councils of the CST member-countries gathered in Moscow for a meeting. Two main issues were on the agenda - the situation in Iraq and the transformation of the CST into the CSTO.

According to the report published in the Russian Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda, the desire to upgrade the CST and turn it into a true security bloc was prompted by "the necessity to adapt the Treaty to the new geopolitical realities." Many experts believe an agreement to formally constitute the CSTO may be signed later in April during the spring session of the Collective Security Council of the CST member-states in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital.