MOSCOW, May 8 (Tatiana Stanovaya, leading expert of the Center for Political Technologies, specially for RIA Novosti) - The informal CIS summit, which took place today, preceded the official events devoted to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory over fascism. This fact is far from being accidental: Russia is, therefore, stressing the priority of the CIS as the USSR heritage and this event acquires a specific meaning in the context of the jubilee of the Great Victory. The further fate of the CIS is a very acute issue, which tops today's agenda. For the first time since 1998-1999, the CIS is experiencing a crisis. The leaders of Ukraine, Georgia and now already Moldova are openly speaking about the CIS as a structure of the past (although in his today's interview with Mayak radio station President of Moldova Vladimir Voronin spoke about the CIS' yet incompletely used possibilities, he more perceived the Commonwealth as a sort of a discussion club).
The issue of the expediency of keeping the CIS was already raised in 1999 due to the August 1998 financial crisis. The economies of the former Soviet republics closely linked with Russia started to experience all the negative consequences of the weakening of the Russian financial and economic system. Russian investors started quickly losing their positions in the markets of the CIS countries thinking about how to survive at least. Russia as a dominating creditor was getting less attractive. It was also in 1999 that the future of the Collective Security Treaty Organization became uncertain: Uzbekistan, Georgia and Azerbaijan withdrew from it (today the Collective Security Treaty Organization includes Russia, Belarus and Armenia, and also three Central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). It was precisely in 1999 that a new structure, GUUAM (the abbreviation consisting of the first letters of five member states: Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova) was created as a western-oriented alternative to the CIS.
Russia tried at that time to coordinate the efforts of the CIS member states not so much in the economic sphere as in the sphere of foreign policy to keep the Commonwealth alive. Russia attempted to make the CIS a sort of an umbrella to protect the CIS foreign policy interests amid the NATO expansion to the East. The election of new President of Russia Vladimir Putin in 2000 helped Russia to increase its geopolitical attractiveness. The period of 2000-2002 proved to be a period of stagnation for the CIS. This stagnation was overcome in 2003 with the emergence of the project of the common economic space for four states (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan).
Russia's attempts to accelerate the CIS integration processes in 2003 met with the understanding of the CIS member states: this was prompted by the emerging weaknesses of the ruling regimes in the CIS countries. The CIS as a structure for a dialog, in which Russia objectively played a central role, was considered as an additional resource for CIS ruling regimes to strengthen their internal political positions. In 2003, it was the CIS summit, at which the future President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, was presented with the direct support of his candidature by Russia. The same year, the CIS' leadership was passed over to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma who initiated constitutional reform in the country in the preparation for the 2004 presidential elections. Russia soon secured Ukraine's refusal to join NATO: the relevant clause was excluded from the country's military doctrine (it is true, though, that this clause was restored after Viktor Yushchenko was elected the President of Ukraine). CIS observers play a key role in making elections in the CIS countries legitimate. Simultaneously, there is increasing rivalry between the CIS institutions and European organizations, in particular, the OSCE, in assessing the results of electoral processes. Today the CIS member states are actively discussing the ways of the reformation of the OSCE whose decisions played quite a role in recognizing "color revolutions" in the post-Soviet space.
The re-orientation of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova to the West after the presidential elections in those countries and the revival of GUUAM (Tashkent recently announced its intention to withdraw from that organization) as an alternative to the CIS have put the Commonwealth on the brink of a new crisis. The Commonwealth of Independent States as an organization for the settlement of conflicts and integration is facing strong competition from the West. The CIS political problem today is that the geopolitical vectors of the CIS member states are being polarized. Those countries, which fear color revolutions (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Armenia) are turning towards Russia. Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, on the contrary, are embodying the disintegration vector inside the CIS. President of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili predicts a third wave of color revolutions while Ukraine also speaks, although to a lesser degree, about the export of revolutions to the CIS countries. Against this background, the support of the informal role of the CIS as a resource to keep the ruling regimes may prove to be fatal for the Commonwealth.
That is why, the topical issue today is to look for a new CIS formula. This formula can be based on stronger security, the struggle against terrorism and better efficiency of the CIS sectoral structures, and also on cooperation in the humanitarian field: a respective declaration was adopted today at the summit, which was attended by all the heads of the CIS states, except the Presidents of Georgia and Azerbaijan. The task of countering the threats of Nazism, terrorism and extremism pronounced by President Vladimir Putin in his opening speech is becoming a new ideological basis capable of shifting the emphasis from confrontation to integration trends. The contours of a new CIS paradigm based on the principles of security and humanism are thus emerging.
