Azerbaijan’s Exit from CIS Now ‘Inevitable,’ Baku Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 5 – Azerbaijan’s exit from the Moscow-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) now “inevitable,” an action that will seal “the end of ‘the post-imperial space,’” according to A. Shakur, a foreign policy commentator for Baku’s Minval agency in an article that is already being reposted and translated.

            One of the saddest scenes in the world of theater involves aging actors who no longer have a role to play and can attract attention only when they walk through the foyer of theaters where they may garner attention from an audience that remembers what they once were and wants to see them for that reason, Shakur says (minval.az/news/124514976).

            But there is something even more pathetic than that, he continues, and that is the activities of international cooperation formats that were once relevant because they reflected common interests but are no longer so because those common interests no longer exist. They may hold meetings, but they are no more than aging actors in a foyer.

            “One such outdated structure is the Commonwealth of Independent States,” an organization that is now capable “only of organizing informal summits” but that at the outset in the view of Moscow at least was to be the matrix for the restoration of some unified state centered on the Russian capital.

“In the 1990s, both Moscow and the West seriously considered the chance that the CIS would become the framework under which the former Soviet republics would merge into a new confederation or federation. Publicly, the organization was presented as ‘a civilized divorce;’ but in reality, repeated attempts were made to establish supranational structures within it.”

Given that closer integration projects have emerged, “the CIS itself has in effect entered a vegetative state,” an organization Moscow has “continued to try to use to promote supranational elements, including in such seemly harmless areas as the teacher of the Russian language in other countries,” Shakur writes.

But those efforts and meetings can’t hide the reality that the CIS is already half dead, he continues. The three Baltic countries were never members, Georgia and Ukraine have left after Moscow invaded them, and Moldova is preparing to withdraw. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan may soon follow given their problems with Russia.

If Azerbaijan leaves, that will be the end because Moscow has few resources at present to do anything about this approaching end of the former Soviet space. Its economy isn’t going well, and both its use of force against its neighbors and mistreatment of citizens of these countries in Russia are only driving ever more of these states away from Russia.

Equally or even more important, countries beyond the borders of the former Soviet pace are “strengthening their positions,” including but not limited to the Organization of Turkic States, China, the EU and the US. And Shakur points out that “Azerbaijan’s closest allies -- Türkiye and Pakistan — are not CIS members. Nor are many of its main economic partners.

All this, the commentator concludes, “prompts a fundamental question: what practice purpose does the CIS serve for Azerbaijan, especially given Russia’s continuing ambitions within that framework” including by the use of naked force. “Has the time not come for Baku to leave this platform altogether?”

On a personal note, the author of these lines owns a poster that won a competition in Azerbaijan 30 years ago. It shows a house of cards labeled the CIS with only one showing a member country, Azerbaijan. The legend on that poster reads “To Be or Not to Be.” Then Baku answered one way; now it appears to be on the way to answering it in another.