CSTO: the different perspectives of the Eurasian alliance

At the Minsk summit, Kazakhstan's President Tokaev responded to Secretary Tasmagambetov (a Moscow loyalist) by saying that 'there is no need to constantly raise alarms, even when problems exist'. There is a tendency for several members of the post-Soviet alliance to sideline themselves in pursuit of their own national interests.

Minsk (AsiaNews) - At the summit of the CSTO, the Eurasian military alliance gathered in Minsk in recent days, the president of Kazakhstan Kasym-Žomart Tokaev invited us not to overestimate the level of threats facing the member states (Russia, Belarus , Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and also Armenia which this time withdrew).

The impression is that the Kazakh president wanted to somehow respond to the statements of the Kazakh general secretary of the CSTO, Imangali Tasmagambetov, a politician very loyal to Moscow in office since 1 January this year.

The secretary had spoken of the worsening of confrontation at a global and regional level, and "the worsening of the international political context is accompanied by an ever decreasing management capacity of the international relations system".

All of this is made even more difficult by the use of "hybrid technologies", which make it increasingly difficult to recognize the real threats and the authentic nature of violations of national sovereignty. For Tokaev, while not ignoring these threats and inviting us to "keep the various tactics and strategies of the alliance in line", it is not necessary to raise continuous alarms, even when problems exist.

Moreover, the Kazakh president observed, "threats have always existed, it is the very nature of the international community", but the continuous appeals in this regard "spread the illusion that we are afraid of something or someone", creating false interpretations.

As Kazakh political scientist Gaziz Abišev observed, "these words do not only mean a brake on Tasmagambetov's aggressiveness, but are a clear signal for all the other members of the organization, and above all for the Kremlin."

The secretary is in reality only the spokesperson of the heads of state and their security apparatus, and here Russia together with Belarus dominates above all, "a bit like the secretary of NATO reflects above all the position of Washington", observes Abišev . Precisely the invasion of Ukraine was justified by Putin and Lukashenko as "defense from security threats" of the two countries bordering Ukraine.

Another expert in international politics, the Kazakh historian Danijar Ašimbaev, also agrees with this assessment, seeing the escalation of "concerns about responding to threats" as a strategy aimed more than anything else "at giving weight to the CSTO itself, which wants to be more incisive than he is actually able to express."

The Eurasian alliance has formally existed for many years (it was founded in 1992, almost immediately after the end of the USSR), but it has never really intervened to resolve crises, and the only demonstration action that we remember is that of January 2022 in Kazakhstan to quell street riots, shortly before the start of the invasion of Ukraine.

As Ašimbaev underlines, "Tokaev's words reflect the traditional peacemaking position of our country" which does not want to enter into conflict with anyone, and therefore "wants to prevent the CSTO from becoming an instrument of global conflict", becoming a direct political-military force against some declared enemy.

Tasmagambetov also tried to "cover" Moscow in the ongoing disagreement with Armenia, denying his formal exit from the CSTO: "we maintain contact with them, and we will officially inform them of the results of the meeting", declared the secretary.

Ultimately, Armenia is orienting itself on the model of current Georgia, moderately pro-Russian and pro-Western at the same time, concludes Ašimbaev, "trying to make the most of both directions". All CSTO members, in reality, mainly pursue their own national interests, and future scenarios could change in unexpected and unforeseeable ways.