Abstract

The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has often appeared to be more developed and effective on paper than in reality. It has, however, proved to be an important, if limited, vehicle for Russian foreign and security policy, above all in Central Asia. Since its inception, the CSTO has moved away from an early focus on conventional military concerns to a preoccupation with challenges posed by new technologies and the normative conflict with the US and its European allies, a development that reflects Russian political and military predominance within the organisation. Although the CSTO has expanded significantly in its policy scope, structure, and activities since its creation, it appears to remain an organisation with limited capacity either to act or to provide a clear, sustained degree of meaningful foreign policy coordination of the kind envisaged at its founding. Both its growth and its weakness are, to a significant extent, the consequence of Russian domination of the organisation but also of the limits of Russian capabilities and Russian interests in relation to it. The CSTO thus seems likely to remain a politically useful but practically limited instrument of Russian regional power.