Second, CSTO would form "collective emergency reaction forces" with wide-ranging functions that included responding to natural or other disasters. Third, CSTO would operate not only within its present jurisdiction (consisting of the territories of its member states) but also "outside this area".
These decisions will be formalized at a CSTO summit in Minsk on June 23. In a modest way, CSTO proposes to follow NATO's lead as a collective security alliance with global reach.
An impression prevailed since the very inception of the Commonwealth of Independent States' (CIS's) Collective Security Treaty in 1992 that its purpose was twofold, namely to prevent NATO's eastward expansion and, second, to provide Russian military protection to some former Soviet republics.
But the CSTO lacked credibility for most of its life. NATO continued to expand, while CSTO member countries often lacked unity of purpose, largely due to ambivalences in Russia's own "Euro-Atlantic" outlook.
The CSTO's stated objectives are to ensure peace and to preserve the territorial integrity of its member states, to coordinate activities against international terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, and to provide immediate military assistance to a member country in the event of a military threat.
In June 2004, the CSTO first proposed cooperation with NATO. But NATO was determined that the CSTO ought to wither away in the fullness of time - and nothing should be done or said that might give the CSTO a habitation and a name.
Even in the Afghan theater, where the CSTO would have legitimate interests and a certain utility, despite repeated Russian demarche, NATO preferred to be the lone ranger.
Moscow also has taken note that regardless of its sensitivities regarding any further NATO expansion into the territories of the former Soviet republics (especially Ukraine), Washington is all set to get NATO to do precisely that. In fact, US officials went on record this month that Ukraine would be admitted as a NATO member by 2008.
Equally, Moscow realizes there is really no "breaking mechanism" within NATO to challenge Washington's writ on such matters. French President Jacques Chirac is far too preoccupied with the morass in French political life to bother about US "hyperpower" anymore, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains keen not to annoy Washington.
US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Daniel Fried noted in a briefing in New York last September that the "atmosphere has changed" within NATO - "trans-Atlantic discord and dysfunctionality" was no longer hampering NATO decision-making.
"It is our intention now, the intention of the United States, to take these good atmospherics and put the US-European relationship to work for common objectives based on our common values and common assessments," Fried said.
NATO is also demonstratively making an exception for Ukraine by not insisting that before it become a member country, Kiev must resolve the problem of the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, or that it should do something about the manifest opposition to NATO membership among the majority of Ukraine's population. And at the same time, Ukraine's membership of the European Union remains highly problematic.
The newly appointed US ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor (who, incidentally, represented the United States in Kabul as the "coordinator" during the US intervention in 2001-02), almost claimed Ukraine as a de facto NATO ally already. During the congressional hearing in Washington on his appointment two weeks ago, Taylor expressed dissatisfaction with the agreement between Russia and Ukraine over gas deliveries.
He said, "If the new government [in Kiev] decides that it wants to review the deal, then we [the United States] would support such a step. We have already made this known. We will provide assistance to Ukraine on this question."
Meanwhile, in an extraordinary speech at the Washington Press Club last Thursday, the commander of US and European forces, General James Jones, said NATO was not "an alliance that is showing signs of fatigue or irrelevance". To the contrary, this year "is a pivotal year" for NATO, perhaps more so than any of the past several years, he said.
The general spoke of NATO's phenomenal transformation as a security organization: "The future of NATO is not to be a reactive, defensive static alliance, but it is to be more flexible, more proactive." Beyond peacekeeping (and peace-enforcing, as in Afghanistan and Sudan), NATO will also work for "conflict prevention", according to Jones.
NATO will increasingly involve itself in the political decision-making processes. Thus the agenda of the NATO summit in November in the Latvian capital Riga includes such topics as energy security, critical infrastructure security, nuclear non-proliferation, the "frozen conflicts" in the post-Soviet space, etc.
All the same, Ukraine's impending NATO membership is a defining moment for Russia. As a leading Russian political observer, Fedor Lukyanov, wrote in the Gazeta, "This will almost constitute the biggest challenge to Moscow in the entire period of its post-Soviet relations with the West ... the main trouble is not so much at the practical level as at the ideological ... We are not dealing here with the realization of a plan, but rather with an unstoppable momentum that supplants conscious future policy."
"One of the fatal mistakes of [Soviet president Mikhail] Gorbachev's leadership," Lukyanov wrote, "was the fact that the Kremlin did not get the organization that personified the 50-year-old ideological confrontation eliminated. The Warsaw Pact was dispatched to meet its 'maker', but NATO, which was formed to oppose the USSR, was preserved. And no matter what is said about NATO's new character, no one will convince the Russian generals and politicians that the expansion is not directed against Moscow."
Furthermore, NATO enlargement has exacerbated differences regarding the future of the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The CFE (which was designed to maintain a balance of forces between the Warsaw Pact and NATO) has begun to lose its effectiveness.
On Friday, Washington issued the first explicit signal that the US would not ratify the CFE's Adaptation Agreement (signed in Istanbul in November 1999) until Russia withdrew its 1,500-strong military contingent and equipment from the Dneister River region in Moldova. Announcing this, the US official in charge of arms control, assistant secretary of state Paula De Sutter, said NATO sided with Washington on this issue.
Moscow considers any such linkage "illegitimate and counterproductive". A question mark has arisen over the further fate of the CFE, which was indeed one of the biggest arms-control projects in all of European history. An international conference is going on in Vienna until Friday to discuss the differences. Moscow has warned that if the CFE remained unratified by NATO, it may be forced to make "fundamental decisions as to the future of the cornerstone of European security".
The CFE was designed to reduce conventional armaments further and on the whole greatly lower the role of military power as a factor in interstate relations on the European continent. It prescribes enhanced weapons-verification measures. For Moscow, with the Warsaw Pact defunct (and with erstwhile Warsaw Pact member states already having joined NATO), the implications of the "non-ratification" of the CFE by NATO are far-reaching.
If the US would have its way, Moscow could not insist on being kept informed or exercise its right (under CFE) to verify the extent of NATO's military power being amassed close to Russia's border.
In this context, Moscow began revisiting the doctrine of collective security. The meeting of the foreign and defense ministers of the CSTO countries in Moscow last November was the first sign that Russia would be "creating its own version of NATO", as the Russian opposition daily Kommersant wryly noted at that time.
Russian officials have begun sounding acrimonious in recent months. Addressing the CSTO gathering in Moscow in November, Igor Ivanov, secretary of Russia's National Security Council, accused the US and NATO of stoking tensions in the territories of the former Soviet republics. The chief of Russian General Staff, General Yury Baluyevsky, was quoted as saying, "We are following NATO's attempts to involve CIS states in the bloc's activity and to weaken their relations with Russia."
Ivanov announced in April that Russia and Belarus would start integrating their air-defense systems by the end of the year. Ivanov also said the CSTO would carry out large-scale military exercises in the "Eastern European direction" in June in which crack Russian units deployed in the Moscow Military District and various kinds of aircraft, including long-range AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System), would take part.
On April 22, Russia announced the test flight of its new intermediate-range missile with multiple warheads at Kapustiny Yar in the Astrakhan region. Large-scale exercises were held at the end of April as part of the unified CIS air-defense system (in which Uzbekistan also took part). On May 11, Ivanov said NATO had no political or military reasons to expand further into the former Soviet republics. Ivanov warned that Russia would adjust its foreign policy and military doctrine to meet the new challenge.
As the director of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of US and Canada Studies, Sergei Rogov, put it, "This decision [Ukraine's NATO membership] would be very significant for Russia, because it could radically change its relations with NATO for the worse."
Influential Russian commentator Gleb Pavlovsky concurred that Russia was unlikely to let Ukraine's accession pass by default.
Significantly, General Baluyevsky revealed on May 18 that possible joint military maneuvers of the member countries of the CSTO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) were under discussion. In essence, this would be tantamount to joint military exercises involving Russia and its (remaining) allies in the post-Soviet space and China.
Now comes the Russian statement that the CSTO intends to assume the role and character of an international organization that is geared for undertaking operations even beyond Eurasia. The SCO and CSTO summits in June are without doubt invested with profound significance for the international system.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).