A Greater Russian Eurasia Must Be Founded on Security Not Economics, Novichkov Says

            Staunton, June 2 – The Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (OCST), the 30^th anniversary of which its members marked on May 15, has been “the most successful integration project on the territory of the former Soviet Union,” Nikolay Novichkov says, a reminder that the construction of a greater Russian Eurasia must rest on security not economics.

            Efforts to base integration on economics alone have failed, the economist and Duma deputy says, because they invariably involved a continuing bargaining over what cooperation should look like, a pattern that prevents efforts in the direction of a new unity from going very far (mk.ru/politics/2022/06/02/chto-nuzhno-dlya-sozdaniya-bolshoy-rossiyskoy-evrazii.html).

            Security concerns are far more susceptible of giving rise to agreements that can be implemented by one or another party for the good of all. Indeed, the very word “collective” in the title of the OCST calls attention to the idea that an attack on one is an attack on all, something that promotes cooperation rather than discord. 

            At the same time, Novichkov argues, efforts to promote cooperation even in the security area would have achieved more if the partis had a common ideology, a position that unlike his commitment to the security segment puts him at odds with the Kremlin at present but one that may be influencing ever more officials there.

            If so, the OCST is likely to eclipse the CIS as the major forum Moscow will use to promote integration in the future, the clear result of a growing recognition in the Russian capital that economic cooperation won’t promote the unity of the former Soviet space but that security cooperation could have that effect.