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WHY UKRAINE NEEDS THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES
ANDREY MISHIN,
Director of the Institute of the Strategic Policy, Kyiv
Ukraine needs the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), firstly, because now it cannot go over to the bilateral relations with other CIS member-states in the sphere of the rail and air transport etc. For that we would have to spell out not only the main agreements, but also a lot of bylaws, various regulations etc. In other words, it would be necessary to remake everything that was created in the USSR and has been effective up to now.
So, Ukraine’s withdrawal from the CIS would result in the paralysis of the economy, and of the transport infrastructure in the first place. The CIS also provides for common social infrastructure with such elements as pensions, public welfare programs, assistance to the World II veterans, recognition of diplomas etc.
Secondly, the CIS hasn’t lost its importance as a means of maintaining regional security. Today it is the entire region, not a country that faces different challenges. A few people see that the CIS framework provides for successful cooperation of the military, security and law enforcement agencies. Consider such bodies as the Council of Prosecutors, the Council of the Special Services and the Council of Internal Ministers. Ukraine is represented in almost all the CIS coordinating bodies.
Six years ago it was questioned whether Ukraine should join the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly. Now Ukraine is a member of the Assembly and nobody says that this harms it or threatens the country’s sovereignty. On the contrary, the model laws worked out by the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly set the example for the domestic legislation.
Thus, the CIS is of great help for the multilateral cooperation with the neighbors. We must take advantage of this. As for the situations when one of the parties starts dominating, 15 years of the CIS membership taught Ukraine to evade problems by creating legal collisions. Partially that’s the reason why the CIS, as it is, hasn’t managed to become an efficient integration project in the post-Soviet space. But at the same time, this had a favorable effect on the development of the national sovereignties.
From the outset, Ukraine has recognized neither the CIS external boundaries nor the supranational governmental bodies. A curious situation emerged with the latter: the depositary of the documents, where we send the originals of the documents ratified, is the CIS Executive Committee, not the Belarusian Foreign Ministry. This way, de facto we recognize the CIS as a full-fledged international organization, while de jure we don’t.
This double-standard loyalty to the CIS is iconic not only for Ukraine, but also for Russia. Actually Russia has been hampering the processes of real socioeconomic integration in the post-Soviet space. Take for consideration the Belarus-Russia Union integration project. Comparing this project with the Kazakhstan-Russia relations, we can see the Belarus-Russia Union has been brought to a deadlock. And now Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka has started winning Ukraine round in order to jointly counteract Russia’s energy expansion.
The CIS Anniversary Summit indicated again that the conflicts exist, but nobody is going to withdraw from the CIS.
The CIS reform is being discussed all the time. The process of reforming the CIS got started 9 years ago at the Chisinau Summit in 1997. Then Boris Yeltsin allowed the CIS heads of state “to let off steam” about the sore points. From then on the CIS has been under permanent reform.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia pinned its hopes on the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC) and the Single Economic Space. For all that, the CIS has maintained its potential of easing tensions between such different Organizations as the GUAM, the EAEC and the Belarus-Russia Union.
Georgia’s membership in the CIS can serve as a case study. The state was the last to join the CIS in 1993 and the first to declare its withdrawal from the Organization (under Edward Shevardnadze in 1998). Nevertheless, Georgia continues to be the CIS member.
Moldova is in the same situation. But why?
The point is that during the Soviet Union’s collapse the elites of the Soviet Republics were afraid that they would continue fragmenting into smaller parts.
It has been 15 years, and there is no a separate Chechnya or the Ural republic in Russia, the other New Independent States have not disintegrated either. As to the problems of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria, they have existed since the first days of Perestroika. You might have noticed that on some maps Transnistria and Moldova are marked out with different colors. As a matter of fact, those troubled regions are the enclaves where the existing solutions simply won’t work.
On the other hand, the strengthening of the fight for control over energy resources unleashes the long-standing conflicts in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For all the complications, the CIS sometimes manages to eliminate the open conflicts among its members thus avoiding a new cold war.
December 7, 2006
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