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On the Role of the “Caucasian Tandem” in Guam

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On the Role of the “Caucasian Tandem” in Guam CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS (Special Issue) No. 3-4(51-52), 2008 ON THE ROLE OF THE “CAUCASIAN TANDEM” IN GUAM Vladimer PAPAVA D.Sc. (Econ.), professor, Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, Corresponding Member of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences (Tbilisi, Georgia) I n t r o d u c t i o n he disintegration of the U.S.S.R. and col- for the Baltic states, other countries are still en- lapse of the communist system made sig- countering a multitude of obstacles and unre- T nificant changes to the geopolitical map of solved issues as they attempt to gain membership the world. States with similar characteristics in these unions. rooted in the relatively recent historical past More than ten years ago, Georgia, Ukraine, have appeared in the post-Soviet expanse. These Azerbaijan, and Moldova created the regional states do not have a multitude of state institutions international organization called GUAM, which and have inherited the distorted system of the is an institutional entity designed to find com- command economy. Since they have no experi- mon interests and coordinate joint action plans. ence in state independence, these countries, in The fact that this structure has existed for many addition to the numerous unresolved domestic years shows that each country individually, as tasks, have also found themselves faced with well as the organization they represent as a problems caused by the expanding dimensions whole still have many unresolved problems. At of globalization. present, the question of strengthening and devel- Globalization is characterized today by the oping GUAM is particularly urgent, and it is a creation of regional unions of states with similar priority not only for the states that belong to this interests, thus making it easier for these coun- structure, but also for the West, the interests of tries to reach common goals through joint ef- which in the post-Soviet expanse are largely re- forts. lated to the interests of GUAM. A variety of different regional unions of GUAM’s development might be success- the former Soviet republics have formed in the fully promoted by means of the “Caucasian Tan- territory of the disintegrated U.S.S.R. And it is dem”1 of Azerbaijan and Georgia, which has al- interesting that these formations are far from al- ready largely shown its efficacy and efficiency in ways limited to the post-Soviet expanse. On the resolving many problems that affect the interests contrary, it has become a priority for many of the of these Caucasian republics. former Union republics to become members of interstate unions that existed even before the col- 1 See: T. Beridze, E. Ismailov, V. Papava, Tsent- lapse of the Soviet Union, such as NATO and the ralnyy Kavkaz i ekonomika Gruzii, Nurlan, Baku, 2004, EU. Whereas this proved a very manageable task pp. 42-44. 47 No. 3-4(51-52), 2008 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS (Special Issue) In order to clarify the essence of the “Cau- ent to at least briefly describe the fragmentation casian Tandem” and define its role in strengthen- processes of the geopolitical space occurring in ing and developing GUAM, it would be expedi- the post-Soviet expanse. Fragmentation of the Post-Soviet Geopolitical Space and GUAM The collapse of the U.S.S.R. triggered not only the historical process of the formation of inde- pendent states, but also of regional political and economic unions in the post-Soviet expanse. The first of them was the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which encompasses almost the entire territory of the former Soviet Union (with the exception of the Baltic countries). Many experts al- ready agree, to one extent or another, that this structure, which was institutionalized into an interna- tional regional organization, is not making a sufficient contribution to the integration processes.2 One of the main reasons for this is the continued restriction of the integration processes to the framework of the CIS along the same lines as the closed nature of production cooperation that characterized the Soviet economic system.3 It is also important that Russia’s economic interests today are related more to other entities of the world economy than to the CIS: Russia’s main sales markets are not within the Commonwealth, but beyond its boundaries, since the CIS accounts for only 15% of Russia’s foreign trade turnover.4 In other words, for the Russian Federation, the Commonwealth is a “legless” organ- ization that will not go anywhere, so Russia can afford to direct its attention to more economically attractive regions, secure in the knowledge that it always has the CIS within its reach. Moreover, the Russian Federation itself has its own priorities within the CIS, where interrelations with some of its members have been raised to the rank of strict priorities (for example, Russia regards Armenia as its strategic partner and even outpost in the Caucasus),5 while others, such as Georgia, has been coined as a so-called Russian CIS outcast, with respect to which Moscow introduced tough visa conditions, closed its markets to the republic’s products, cancelled air and postal communication, and even took the liberty of persecuting ethnic Georgians living in the Russian Federation. 2 See, for example: R. Grinberg, L. Zevin, et al., 10 let Sodruzhestva nezavisimykh gosudarstv: illiuzii, razocharov- aniia, nadezhdy, RAS Institute of International Economics and Political Research, Moscow, 2001; L. Kozik, P. Kokhno, SNG: realii i perspektivy, Yuridicheskiy mir BK Publishing House, Moscow, 2001; V. Shulga (head of a group of au- thors), Ekonomika SNG: 10 let reformirnovaniia i integratsionnogo razvitiia, Finstatinform, Moscow, 2001; N. Shum- skiy, Sotrudnichestvo nezavisimykh gosudarstv: problemy i perspektivy razvitiia, Tekhnoprint, Minsk, 2001; idem, “Eko- nomicheskaia integratsiia gosudarstv Sodruzhestva: vozmozhnosti i perspektivy,” Voprosy ekonomiki, No. 6, 2003; idem, “Obshchee ekonomicheskoe prostranstvo gosudarstv Sodruzhestva: optimalny format,” Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhd- unarodnye otnosheniia, No. 2, 2004. 3 See, for example: B. Coppieters, “The Failure of Regionalism in Eurasia and the Western Ascendancy over Russia’s Near Abroad,” in: Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia, ed. by B. Coppieters, A. Zverev, D. Trenin, FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS, London, 1998, pp. 194-197; M.B. Olcott, A. Åslund, Sh.W. Garnett, Getting it Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, 1999. 4 See: L. Vardomskiy, “Integratsionnyy proekt: byt’ ili ne byt’?” Novosti-Moldova Information Agency, 9 July, 2007, available at [http://www.newsmoldova.ru/print_version.html?nws_id=634258]. 5 See, for example: F. Cameron, J.M. Domañski, “Russian Foreign Policy with Special Reference to its Western Neighbors,” EPC (European Policy Center) Issue Paper, No. 37, 2005, available at [http://www.epc.eu/TEWN/pdf/ 354600757_EPC%20Issue%20Paper%2037%20Russian%20Foreign%20Policy.pdf]; T. Liloyan, “Armenia-Russia’s Out- post in South Caucasus—Duma Speaker,” ArmenianDiaspora.com, 15 December, 2004, available at [http://www. armeniandiaspora.com/archive/16794.html]. 48 CENTRAL ASIA AND THE CAUCASUS (Special Issue) No. 3-4(51-52), 2008 All of this promoted gradual fragmentation of the post-Soviet geopolitical space. Special men- tion should be made of the Customs Union in the CIS, to which Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyr- gyzstan, and Tajikistan belong. The member states of this structure went on to form an interstate or- ganization called the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC). Uzbekistan joined it in January 2006. In 2003, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus signed a treaty on the formation of a Single Economic Space (SES). It is worth noting that the experience of the first years testifies to the exist- ence of a whole slew of contradictions among the integrating states caused primarily by incompatibil- ity of their interests.6 In 2002, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan created the Central Asian Coop- eration Organization (CACO), which Russia also joined in October 2004. The possibility of forming a Russia-Belarus Union State has been discussed for several years now, but implementation of this project is hindered by the failure of the sides to reach a common understanding about the structure of this entity: according to the Russian view, Belarus should join Russia as a federal district, while Belarus sees the Union State as a confederation.7 In October 1997, four countries—Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Moldova—created the GUAM organization, which Uzbekistan joined in April 1999, thus changing the name of this structure to GUUAM. In May 2005, GUUAM once again became GUAM due to Uzbekistan’s withdrawal from it. In May 2006, GUAM was transformed into an international formation called the Organiza- tion for Democracy and Economic Development—GUAM (ODED-GUAM). In addition to these transnational structures, the states of the post-Soviet expanse are members of various international unions (for example, the EU, NATO, BSECO, and SCO), to which countries other than the post-Soviet states also belong. Creation of the listed transnational regional organizations in the post-Soviet expanse shows that significant fragmentation has occurred today in this geopolitical area. According to Stanislav Belkovskiy, the founder of the Institute of National Strategy of Ukraine and Russia, an integrated post-Soviet expanse no longer exists as a geopolitical phenomenon, rather three post-Soviet ex- panses have appeared in its place: the western part of the former U.S.S.R., where the informal lead- er is Ukraine (which GUAM theoretically also serves), Russia and Belarus, and the so-called South Asian part, where the role of informal leader belongs to Kazakhstan.8 Despite the fact that this particular breakdown of the post-Soviet geopolitical space is open to discussion, we must neverthe- less understand that the actual fact of this territorial fragmentation is beyond doubt.
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