CIS countries do not consider Russia a dominant global player (although they are wary of its recent growth in strength), and again, some CIS countries are focused more on the expanses of Europe, while others are busy cementing contacts with China.
Most economic integration issues in the CIS arise due to the fact that CIS member countries are both partners and, simultaneously, competitors. Economic pragmatism, which today’s ruling elites find much more understandable than the vaguely formulated post-Soviet states’ “common goals,” does more to stimulate competition than multilateral cooperation and the integration in the post-Soviet space. Russian-Ukrainian relations in the defense industry are a striking example of this “competitive cooperation.” The two countries are rivals in the global arms market. However, it is clear that for a number of defense industry sectors, only mutual cooperation between these two countries enables the production of competitive products.
The fact that the CIS has tended to function poorly rather than well for the past ten years, is acknowledged by virtually all. However, no one has offered an effective remedy for this protracted crisis. In fact there is no such remedy, because originally (back in 1991) there was no clear definition or understanding of the goals of this political union. And in the twenty years of its existence, the CIS’s efficiency at solving its own economic problems, ethnic and intergovernmental conflicts, has been extremely low. Vladimir Putin’s statement in 2005 that the CIS has exhausted itself was symptomatic in this regard.
The CIS remains amorphous, and so naturally, relations continue to be clarified within the framework of “local” unifying projects, such as the Customs Union, EurAsEC, CSTO, GUUAM (now – GUAM) and the Russia-Belarus Union State. The development of such projects fragments the community's space on the one hand, but at the same time, it allows clear goals to be formulated and many illusions abandoned.
Post-Soviet integration has been obstructed, or at least impaired, for many reasons. But in any case, if we are to understand this phenomenon, we must return to the events of 1990-1991, and try to clarify what the long-term consequences of disintegration are.
When Russia declared independence on June 12, 1990, it set in motion a situational chain reaction and the rapid disintegration of the Soviet space ensued. In the spirit of the policy of “idealism,” Russia’s new leadership sought to establish partnerships with most Western countries, seeing them as crucial for modernization, and these leaders manifested maximum flexibility and loyalty in foreign policy. At the same time, Russia was also extremely critical of the industrial inheritance from the Soviet Union. For the foreign policy establishment, relations with former Soviet countries were firmly on the back burner.
As soon as relations with the West ceased to be Moscow’s monopoly, elites across the CIS and Baltic states did everything possible to establish ever closer ties with NATO and the EU rather than Russia. As a result, strong pro-Western lobbies took shape throughout these regions.
By the time that Russia abandoned that policy of “idealism,” returned to foreign policy “realism” (starting with Primakov and subsequently since Vladimir Putin came to power) and, belatedly, started exercising greater autonomy in relation to the West, other post-Soviet elites, on the contrary, had become ever more convinced that the Euro-Atlantic world was the “promised land” for which it should strive at any cost. As for Russia’s ruling class, having become more independent, it barely changed its attitude to post-Soviet states, still deeming them a non-priority area.
Far-reaching privatization (such as, for example, that implemented in Ukraine) led to the owners of significant property countrywide (“oligarchs”) expressing an interest in legalizing their capital in the West. All this determined the post-Soviet elite’s broadly pro-Western orientation and, consequently, their negative or, at least, extremely restrained and ambivalent (in the double-dealing sense) attitude to integration within the CIS. Thus they formed a parasitic relationship with Russia – striving to obtain economic benefits while not offering any commitments in return.
The de-industrialization brought on by the collapse of the previous economic system led to a weakening or loss of the manufacturing companies that had been integrated into the production chain in post-Soviet countries. As a result, as my Belarusian colleague Yury Shevtsov has observed, de-industrialization strengthened the commodity and oil-and-gas corporation component in Russia’s foreign and domestic policy.
A conflict of interests has arisen between, on the one hand, producing nations such as Russia and Kazakhstan, and energy consuming and transit countries, such as Ukraine and Belarus, on the other. The positions taken by the commodity lobby, which is not always interested in deepening the integration process at any cost, find a reflection in Russia's main foreign policy strategy document – “Russia approaches trade and economic relations with CIS member states, taking the level of cooperation achieved into account and consistently adhering to market principles as important conditions for the promotion of truly equal relations and strengthening the objective prerequisites for the promotion of new forms of integration.”
And yet, the major hindrance to integration within the CIS is a general lack of political will.
Russia regards CIS countries as an insignificant area for its activities, in contrast to its priority areas which it perceives as being the European Union, the U.S., China – but never the CIS. Often, Russia does not even hide its somewhat disdainful attitude to the various national leaders in the former Soviet space.
CIS countries do not consider Russia a dominant global player (although they are wary of its recent growth in strength), and again, some CIS countries are focused more on the expanses of Europe, while others are busy cementing contacts with China.
And then there are concerns about the actual or alleged expansionist intentions of Russian business. There the fear that even a small bite will merely whet their appetite, and that any steps toward Russia still entail endless concessions and transfer of their most important economic assets to Russian control. Incidentally, while in no way defending the Minsk authorities’ authoritarian tendencies, I should say that the current dissonance in Russian-Belarusian relations, at least in Ukraine, is not understood as benefiting Russia and is viewed as an argument against integration into the common customs area (Belarus is already part of it, so what?)
Consequently, in Russia there is a palpable lack of confidence in post-Soviet countries’ elites. The latter are often, not without reason, suspected of hypocrisy and disloyalty. It is very difficult to deal with fence-sitting partners who adopt one position in Moscow, another in Washington and yet another in Brussels. It is very difficult to work with leaders who see relations with Russia as a necessary evil, and conversely, dialogue with the West as the embodiment of all their earthly hopes.
Anti-Russian agitators in the CIS say outright that Europe has agreed to accelerate Ukraine’s inclusion in the FTA (free trade zone), because they sense how Russia is growing, and feel that they have to stop the process of Ukraine’s absorption into Russia by blocking its entry into the Customs Union. Nationalists recognize that the sole purpose of this European gambit is preventing Russia from growing stronger through Ukraine joining the Customs Union. In other words, it's purely a political, not economic, decision. They do not cite Ukrainian economic interests as a factor.
The subject of expanded cooperation within the CIS could be expounded upon at length, but in any case, it is obvious that there is a complete failure of cultural cooperation. The various governments’ agencies must have signed a myriad of outstanding documents. But as long as students in Kiev, Kharkiv and Donetsk find it easier to study abroad in universities in the U.S. and Western Europe than in Moscow and St. Petersburg, only naive utopians can harbor any hope of cultural integration.
Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.