CIS and EAEU - Closing the Circle or Completion of the Project Cycle
On December 25-26, events related to the work of both the CIS and the EAEU took place in the Leningrad Region: another informal meeting of the heads of state of the CIS and a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council. It was the pre-New Year period, and it is quite logical that the dialogues were largely devoted to summing up the results of the work.
From an analytical point of view, these events are interesting not at all because of the formal summing up of intermediate results. Both formats were a kind of historical cycle, and the further it goes, the more difficult it becomes for both integration associations to correspond to economic and foreign policy realities.
Informal mouthpiece and role distribution
This time the events took place at the Igora ski resort, located 70 km north of St. Petersburg. The place is beautiful, the weather is mild, the air is fresh, and the President of Belarus could not resist chopping wood for the stove once again. Incidentally, he chops it regularly and sometimes even in almost commercial quantities.
The tragedy with the Azerbaijani flight "Baku-Grozny" did not allow the President of Azerbaijan to take part, who had to turn back. Since the plane eventually crashed on the territory of Kazakhstan, and among the passengers were citizens of Azerbaijan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, the incident affected the agenda of the entire pre-New Year forum at once.
Against this background, the bickering between A. Lukashenko and N. Pashinyan, which is somewhat customary for these events, has faded into the background. The Belarusian president usually acts as a kind of mouthpiece through which claims are voiced to the Armenian prime minister.
N. Pashinyan often behaves quite provocatively, and the question here is why he does this. He needs to create the impression that all these protocol events collectively create a negative atmosphere specifically around Armenia.
Here, of course, a lot depends on what will be shown and what will not be shown. For example, A. Lukashenko's mockery about N. Pashinyan's beard is not yet a reason for a skirmish in the internal dialogue of the leaders, but the demonstration of something like this is already a characteristic of the situation as a whole and its marker.
N. Pashinyan plays out the conflict in formats like the EAEU and the CSTO, where there is no mechanism for the collective withdrawal of one participant by voting of the others. There is only “self-recusal.”
In terms of work in the CIS format, it is certainly worth noting the trolling of N. Pashinyan himself by the President of Azerbaijan. This trolling is usually much more subtle than N. Pashinyan's response, but in the end neither adds anything positive, since then in Armenia itself the media and speakers traditionally say: "Look, everyone is against us there."
But does this cancel the fact that N. Pashinyan is simply exploiting these integration formats for both informational and political purposes, as well as economic ones? No, it does not. Therefore, by such markers-picks, which selectively go into space, one can look at the level of contradictions and the vector of the participants.
It should also be noted that it is A. Lukashenko who is the speaker who directly broadcasts the main problem areas in terms of the EAEU and the CIS. Moscow here demonstrates more of the position: "Everything is fine, but there are some rough edges," and Minsk usually voices the utmost specifics: tariff policy, participation in government contracts, etc. The same is true for Yerevan's position.
All this could be attributed to the peculiarity (inevitable) of relations within the post-Soviet political and economic superstructures. However, the third year of the SVO, sanctions that are already simply obviously not sanctions per se, but long political vectors, the struggle of big players in Central Asia and the Caucasus, as well as the clearly reached limits in the model of economic integration no longer allow these role features to be perceived as such.
The same A. Lukashenko spoke very emotionally and in detail about the problems of the limits of integration back in May of this year (“The anniversary summit of the EAEU is an opportunity to rethink the goals and objectives of this association"). It is becoming increasingly difficult for Moscow to pretend that "everything is going well, just with some natural rough edges." Post-Soviet formats are increasingly experiencing centrifugal tendencies. The cycles that the CU-EurAsEC-EAEU and CIS have gone through are practically over.
Formats and factors
In the vastness of the former USSR today, several integration models and schemes coexist. The first is the CIS itself, the authorship of which belongs not even to the participants of the USSR, but to their respected Western partners. The partners were not really eager to see complete chaos in the vastness of the former Union, given the nuclear arsenals and related industries. The CIS did indeed play a certain stabilizing role for everyone, but it should be noted that it was the CIS that laid the foundation for relations between Russia and the post-Soviet republics in the category of "third country regime".
This is a trade regime with separate application of duties and customs requirements, import, export and transit permits, document flow, and population movement. Ukraine was also included, which, if only formally, was not a member of the CIS at all, since it had not ratified the statutory documents. But all the conditions of the "third country" regime were in effect for it. Even taking into account bilateral agreements, it operated with a large surplus.
The second scheme is related to the work of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) format. This format was actually invented separately by Moscow and Beijing. Firstly, bilateral relations have changed, secondly, the issue of Afghanistan, Xinjiang and Afghanistan's influence in Central Asia has become a full-blown issue for China. The SCO was originally about regional security, and it is still 50% about the same thing now.
The third integration model is connected with the European Union and their ideas, which were eventually formalized in the Eastern Partnership project. The main conductor of this project was Poland, actively assisted by the Czech Republic, and this was reflected in its geography - Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Transcaucasia, but not Central Asia.
The fourth model is the same three-stage project CU-EurAsEC-EAEC, which in theory should have become our response to Curzon's ultimatum (or Chamberlain's, but in the first case more accurately). Many patterns were taken from the ideas of the European Union at different stages of its assembly, but, as usual, the goal-setting, logical contradictions, and also completely unique relations with Ukraine, which in reality was a fairly large participant in transit and trade schemes on a CIS scale, let us down. This goal-setting will ultimately lead to what will be turned upside down.
The fifth scheme of relations should be called a special system of bilateral agreements, which has become a life "in itself". What cannot be resolved within the CIS-EAEU framework can be "resolved" within the framework of bilateral agreements. These agreements at the moment, apparently, seemed to be part of "smart diplomacy" - very much in our style (we are not strangers), but in the end they also eroded the integration formats, the EAEU first of all.
It must be said that bilateral diplomacy in the style of “let’s sit down, decide, think about it,” as well as the general characteristic style of such work, was the Achilles heel of all integration ideas of Russia in general.
On the one hand, everyone looked at the integration model of the European Union with its different contours, approaches and results in the form of a mutual market and the creation of a zone of mutual, common value for goods and services.
On the other hand, the European Union - this whole product of lack of spirituality and sinfulness, unlike us, has always had a very decent level of centralization. Not even in terms of decision-making, but in terms of goal-setting.
The EU is a very formalized structure, where integration is not just some abstraction (we need to grow more, we need to trade more, etc.), but a kind of matryoshka matrices. There is a core - the first contour, the second contour, the third contour, the fourth, and only with Turkey is there a separate model of relations. Everything else in terms of the statuses of "candidate", "association", "participant with status A", "B", etc. - these are all formal and very strict criteria.
The EU, despite various problems and "outbursts" of players, quite calmly imposes collective sanctions and rather sensitive financial ones. Why is that?
Well, here we need to look at the difference between goal-setting and abstraction. The EU is, of course, a product of sin, but take individual EU countries and look at their foreign trade turnover - almost 60% of the turnover is with countries of either the main EU or its immediate borders.
This is the marker (one) of the total cost, therefore the sanctions are sensitive, therefore they do not speak out against the “collective soulless Brussels”, and if they do speak out (which we sometimes mistakenly take for “pro-Russianness”), it is precisely in order to bargain for the best. These frictions are quite severe because they are going in within the framework of formal rules.
It's not like that with us. There are formal rules within the post-Soviet formats of the EAEU-CIS, but we are people, not some kind of sinners-formalists or "over-meeting bureaucrats". Everything can be resolved within the framework of private negotiations.
Has anyone seen (heard) that any financial fines were applied or restrictions were imposed within the CIS-EAEU? There is Hungary, which does not want to accept the migration policy from Brussels, for Budapest deductions from a number of financial tranches are provided. Migration is a formalized part of the EU model, therefore there are formalized fines, and opposition to the EU policy in terms of Russia is not codified in the EU, therefore there is a fight, a lot of noise - there are no restrictions, because they are not within the framework of the model. Not yet within the framework, of course.
And who imposes restrictions on Budapest or Warsaw? Collective Brussels. And Warsaw is a serious player against Russia, but there are restrictions, and Warsaw is not going to leave the EU. Is it conceivable that something like that would happen within the CIS-EAEU? No.
All this is presented as a more progressive model in relation to the EU, where everything is “inclusive and transparent”, everyone’s voice is heard, unlike in the soulless Brussels, and all problems are solved. Well, how are they solved? Well, traditionally, mostly by bilateral treaties and agreements. As a result, the same EAEU is turning from a format into a formality. The regulatory framework, if compared with the EU, will soon be the same in volume, but where is the 50-60% of foreign trade turnover within the EAEU-CIS?
It should be taken into account that the Ukrainian factor presented a huge problem for Russia in terms of post-Soviet integration. Ukrainian business, politics and commodity transit corroded relations between the participants like a kind of acid. Ukraine did something everywhere with the hands of others in terms of the CU-EurAsEC-EAEU. Tweaked and adjusted here and there. This factor is rarely mentioned, but it is huge.
Root contradictions
Moscow's "caution" in terms of using the factor of income from labor migration in Central Asia has become a byword. It is impossible to even remember that this is an economic lever for us, because levers are in the hands of soulless Western sinners, and we have complete inclusion and internationalism (what else is there). What if the EAEU-CIS partners really go into the arms of the West? After all, it is possible to "settle", agree and renegotiate, etc. There is no point in talking about any restrictions in terms of finances or collective demands from the "integration format".
While we are working in the style of “how not to push away” and “how not to let anything happen”, investments not only from the EU or China in Central Asia are 3,2 times greater than Russian ones, but also investments from Arabian monarchies have approached 40 billion dollars – i.e. the Russian share.
That is, if we were first in second place, then in third, now we will soon be in fourth. Mutual trade turnover has remained at about 10% within the EAEU between the EAEU countries. It is growing, of course, due to sanctions, but this is not even close to European integration. Well, the US, Mexico and Canada have integration in turnover of about 70%, without any formalization. In practice, Minsk fights hardest for unsanctioned growth of turnover, but not always successfully.
If the EU had not gotten carried away with unrestrained leftist multiculturalism with an almost religious bias, then in Georgia and Moldova there would have been almost no questions on the topic of European integration. Because the economic interpenetration initially laid down in the EU project weighs a lot and really works.
We do not have interpenetration in terms of economy, there is no common value, but in terms of the ideology of multiculturalism, Russia will soon overtake Europe. That is, in the factor that categorically repels its possible supporters from integration.
Another amazing feature of this multicultural ideology of domestic origin is that, for better or worse, the fact is that national states were formed on the basis of the USSR. This can be criticized from the point of view of “post-knowledge” and “post-history”, how many “national mines” and other things were laid there, but history cannot be rewritten.
There is a Kazakh national state, a Turkmen, Tajik, Uzbek, Azerbaijani, Armenian, even the Belarusian identity cannot be eliminated, although this is a separate intellectual “case” that requires generally non-trivial and intelligent approaches to how to work with it.
It is clear that in the same Central Asia they are trying to talk about “Kazakh identity”, “Uzbek people”, “Tajik people”, etc., but this is a simulacrum for the outside world, since it is the national state that is being built at the core. In Russia, the simulacrum is of a different nature: “Russians without Russians”. A Russian is now, as it were, a collective Russian.
As a result, we get an interesting (although there is nothing funny here) collision, when there are formal structures, but a significant part is resolved through bilateral agreements and separately, there is no economic integration, leverage for political purposes cannot be used (we are not them), while the semantic integration through multiculturalism contradicts what the states are building around, and this same semantic construction pushes away from it the very Russian state-forming people. Everything contradicts each other.
If this is what Russia is supposed to oppose to the world's centers of power in the 21st century, then the designers of meanings and formats will be disappointed. In the same Central Asia, there will be another powerful player - in the form of the Arabian monarchies. That will definitely be there.
Closing circle
The historical cycle that the CIS-EAEU has gone through is practically over, and the main task that needs to be solved here (if they want to solve it, of course) is to turn the structure upside down.
The common value leads to integration into economic formats, economic formats create a center of political goal-setting, going beyond the political goal-setting presupposes pressure through levers and restrictions, and being within them — preferences. Individual agreements are replaced by collective ones and work through a common political center.
Now everything is starting to work (since the cycle has been completed, but the work is not done) in the reverse order - the CIS-EAEU structure is starting to decompose and corrode its very foundation - Russia. And it will decompose it if all these formats are not rebuilt or abandoned altogether. True, this process of "reverse integration" has already gone too far.
It is hard to believe that these changes will be Russian-authored, although only through them can we return to the position of the center of power. Nevertheless, there are also external factors that can work to our advantage here. If Iran and Uzbekistan join the same EAEU, then the EAEU, while remaining such in its name, will have to change qualitatively, since Iran is a very strong player with a political character.
If Azerbaijan enters there instead of Armenia, then Turkish policy will break Russian structures, if Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, then even more so, if Iran, then, on the contrary, it will balance. Leaving it as it is means further eating away at the Russian model as such. That is, the introduction of additional players is absolutely necessary to change the integration model, but their introduction into it without Iran will strengthen negative tendencies.
We ourselves contributed to the fact that changes in the integration model depend not so much on us as on the need to introduce new players and their quality. Iran has now received observer status in the EAEU. However, it is not very significant, it simply means that the observer should not act against the EAEU, and the EAEU as an organization - against the observer. It is approximately the same as with sanctions, Kazakhstan, for example, can comply with sanctions against the Russian Federation, but the sanctions are not against the EAEU, but are aimed at the Russian Federation. And this is "different". This example once again shows the amorphousness of this integration model.
A comprehensive strategic agreement with Iran is also planned, with different timeframes being named. The problem is that Iran will still have to adapt to the crisis factors that are at work for it because of Syria and the Syrian domino effect. In theory, one can still count on Iran's role as a powerful player within the framework of the EAEU structure, which will launch the transformation with its presence and influence. But what if Iran's integration is delayed or "it doesn't work out"?
Information