NATO vs. the CSTO: security threat perceptions and responses to secessionist conflicts in Eurasia

ABSTRACT

While there is a growing body of research on the role of international organisations (IOs) in regional security governance, relatively little attention has been paid to IO responses to the secessionist conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK), in Abkhazia/South Ossetia in Georgia as well as in Crimea/Eastern Ukraine. This article explores the differences between NATO’s and the CSTO’s responses to the three conflicts. Our findings demonstrate that NATO neglected the conflict in NK which stands in sharp contrast to its active responses to the outbreak of war in Georgia (2008) and Crimea/Eastern Ukraine (2014). The CSTO, however, has largely avoided any engagement in all three cases. Three factors were of crucial importance to explain this variation: the level of regional security institutionalisation, both IOs’ geostrategic threat perceptions as well as both IOs’ mutual perception, hence, their IO-IO (non)relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparative security governance
• NATO
• CSTO
• regional organisations
• peace and conflict studies
• Eurasia

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Alexander Libman, Anastassia V. Obydenkova and Fabian Schöppner for their valuable comments and suggestions. Research for this paper was funded through the LOEWE Research Cluster “Regions of Conflict in Eastern Europe” under the Excellence Initiative of the Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts [Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst] at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, http://www.regions-of-conflict.com.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Known in Russian as ОДКБ – Организации договора о коллективной безопасности.

2. In terms of foreign security arrangements, former Soviet countries can be classified into three groups: First, there are the Baltic States which opted for and were admitted to NATO. Second, the CSTO (a military alliance since 2002) member-states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan (Uzbekistan suspended its membership in 2012). Finally, the remaining group includes other countries whose preferences have oscillated between Russia and NATO with Georgia and Ukraine seeking closer ties with NATO and Moldova and Azerbaijan pursuing an intricate balancing act. Turkmenistan pursues neutrality/non-alignment.

3. The website of the CSTO: https://odkb-csto.org/documents/statements. NATO’s statements are available at https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/index.htm (last accessed 15.02.2020).

4. The web link to the statement is broken and it seems the statement was removed.