CIS Remains Useful but is Less Important than It Used to Be, Kazakhstan Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 30 – The Commonwealth of Independent States was created when the USSR disintegrated both to manage that process of peaceful divorce and to maintain cooperation among its members, two Kazakhstan experts say. It has achieved the first but is only one organization in which the countries involved interact.

            As a result, it is less important to them in general and to Kazakhstan in particular, political scientists Daniyar Ashimbayev and Talgat Kaliyev say, the CIS is less important than it was i but is still useful as one of the places in which former Soviet republics can interact (orda.kz/maksimalno-mirnyj-razvod-sostojalsja-zachem-kazahstanu-sejchas-nuzhno-sng-413117/).

            Ahimbayev stresses that the primary task of the CIS was to achieve a peaceful divorce of the post-Soviet republics to the maximum extent possible, and it has achieved that to a large degree. But it still represents one of several places where these countries can meet and talk about common problems.

            Kaliyev stresses that when the CIS emerged, its members were in most cases not involved in other multi-national groupings large or small. Now that has changed, and so the CIS does not have the unique role it did. That doesn’t mean it can’t play a useful role, but that role is now less than it was.

            Kazakhstan is able to use both the CIS and other organizations,” he says, because “to put it crudely we are in the Russian world, the Western world, the Chinese world, the Islamic world and the Turkic world,” all of which have their own organization. Consequently, the CIS now “isn’t some center of development but remains a working instrument.”