The Collective Security Treaty Organisation: emergence, evolution and crisis of the military-political alliance

The paper focuses on the history of the emergence and functioning of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), a military-political alliance initiated by Russia in the early 2000s. Nowadays the alliance unites Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Initially, the CSTO was meant to become a key instrument of maintaining stability and providing security in the CIS space and to consolidate Russia's positions as a coordinator of member-states' foreign policies in the post-Soviet space. The authors point out the main stages of the CSTO's evolution and evaluate its role in the interstate relations in the post-Soviet space. Accordingly, the paper focuses on the CSTO's normative framework and member states' expectations from the alliance. The authors argue that the CSTO can be conceptualized as a so-called dead letter regime, an international regime marked with a high formalization of its normative framework combined with low expectations of relevant actors that the established norms would really be followed. Essentially, the participating countries do not need the CSTO for the pursuit of their strategic objectives, though the Organisation performs some residual functions in Central Asia. Thus, stagnation remains CSTO's most likely perspective.

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