The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has established security contacts with a number of international structures, but it has failed to establish cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin said this on Wednesday at the conference "Collective Security in a New Era: Experience and Prospects of the CSTO" at the Valdai international discussion club.
"[The CSTO] has positioned itself in the external arena. The organization has established ties with other international [structures] - the UN and a number of others, which are involved in the security sphere - but it has failed [to establish interaction] with NATO," he said. - "It is strange that such an organization as NATO does not recognize the CSTO as a significant player, if not its equal, in the field of security, and believes that the CSTO is a Russian organization, in which the other [participants] just exist.
The deputy minister conceded in this regard that Western colleagues do not fully realize that CSTO members have "a common collective responsibility for their security. "The threat to each of us is unchanged for a number of reasons: because of open borders, lack of visas, and other things," he noted. - We are practically one economic space in terms of the movement of people and ideas, so a threat to one of us is a threat to all others.
Pankin stressed that the CSTO does not include the Middle East, the Far East, the West or the North in its area of responsibility. "The area of responsibility is the CSTO's own space, whereas the area of responsibility of NATO and NATO allies - because NATO [is] also a plume of allies and partners - is global at least because the U.S. area of responsibility is proclaimed to be global. That's the difference," he summarized.
According to Pankin, many southern and eastern partners are signaling that they are willing to cooperate with the CSTO.
"So the demand for the CSTO, it seems to me, is not only for us, the CSTO members. The demand for the CSTO should be in the world arena in a broader sense. Our many partners give signals that they are ready to cooperate. Partners from the south and the east mostly," he said.
"It's probably time for our Western partners to think about the fact that this is not a toy, but a real organization, politico-military, defensive, multidisciplinary, watching what's going on, catching changes," Pankin added.
In addition, continued the deputy foreign minister, it is an organization of six states, which are neighbors and "historically linked by a commonality with a high degree of understanding. "The main thing is not to drive a wedge between us in those issues where we, like any neighbors, living next to each other for a long time, may have either contradictions or differences," concluded the diplomat.
Conducting peacekeeping missions
Pankin said the CSTO should work on further simplification of procedures after the events in Kazakhstan to make peacekeeping missions even smoother and more expeditious.
"We need to learn organizational lessons, of course, how to simplify the procedures, in case of emergency, so that everything would be legally smooth and as quick as possible in terms of deployment and understanding of the tasks," he said. The deputy minister added that the coherence of contingents of CSTO countries, not only in the case of Kazakhstan, but in general, was developed through a mass of exercises and operations, where they worked out "different kinds of interaction and different kinds of counteractions to various terrorist threats, drug interdiction and so on.
"The lesson is that we responded almost instantly. It's probably unprecedented. No one prepared for this, this is not a build-up," Pankin said of the outcome of the CSTO peacekeeping operation in Kazakhstan. He pointed out that an example of the strong inflammatory information background is an attempt of the West to attribute non-existent aggression against Ukraine to Russia.
"In the case of Kazakhstan, we did not have any information background that would allow us to prepare or calculate any such options. Therefore, it was a lightning-quick, well-timed operation. Indeed, it was enough not even to reload the machine gun, but to show that you are there, that you are in solidarity and you are ready. These were very well prepared, let us say, elite units, which showed that one fighter from these contingents is worth a hundred," concluded the deputy foreign minister of Russia.
The CSTO collective peacekeeping forces have been sent to Kazakhstan for a limited period of time to stabilize and normalize the situation in accordance with the decision of the CSTO Collective Security Council adopted on January 6. The CSTO peacekeeping contingent stayed in Kazakhstan, where mass riots took place in early January, accompanied by pogroms and attacks on representatives of the authorities, until January 19. According to the republic's authorities, this experience demonstrated the viability and effectiveness of the organization and its ability to act swiftly.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS