2982019990

Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone

assets, and the others was at the heart of the disagreement. Simple logie indicated that Russia’s weight in the organization could not but lead to a new hegemony.

Four of the former republics, the three Baltic States and Georgia, refused to join. The remainder, a total of ten in addition to Russia, divided along the Russia/ Ukrainę axis. Six - Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia - were not ready to stand alone in the period of transition, and were willing to follow Russia for security and economic reasons. The first five were ready to stay in the Union in 1991, while Armenia, battling Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, needed Russian support. The other three, Moldova, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan, shared Ukraine’s viewpoint.

Internal divisions madę for little progress either on economic or military fronts in the first year of CIS existence, and the division of assets and contentious issues re-mained unresolved, except by bilateral agreements. Of hundreds of CIS agreements concluded, few were signed and even fewer were ratified and implemented. Trade and fiscal coordination suffered because of economic crisis. Maintenance of joint forces proved impossible and member States proceeded to build their own national armies¹.

Russia’s decision to create its own national army was a turning point in the country’s military thinking and a prelude to enshrining “peacekeeping” as a centrepiece of Russian policy in the “near abroad.” Military and political thinking converged by mid-1993 and a consensus emerged on a new policy. The resulting initiatives and the synchroni-zation of the political and military aspects may well lead to a revitalization of the CIS as an instrument of Russia’s neo-imperialist policy.

3. Political Context

The 1992 debate over Russian foreign policy has usually been portrayed as the debate between President Yeltsin’s pro-Western “liberals”, and the “nationalist right” centred on Parliament (the same Parliament that was forcibly disbanded by the president in Oc-tober 1993). In retrospect, and in application specifically to the policy towards the “near abroad”, it appears that the differences were morę apparent than real, and had morę to do with the instrumentalities and scope than with the content of the policy.

In the first place, the struggle for power between the president and Parliament led to a polarization of views. But some of the government’s most vocal critics came from the democratic side of the spectrum, while some of the outspoken “liberals,” such as

14

1

Ann Sheehy, The CIS: A Progress Report, RFE/RL Research Report 1, No. 28, September 25,1992, pp. 1-6.