Getting It Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States

by Martha Brill Olcott, Anders Åslund, Sherman W. Garnett

On December 8, 1991, even before the Soviet Union was officially dissolved, the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine met in the Belovezh Forest outside Minsk to lay the groundwork for the post-Soviet era. There they signed what became known as the Belovezh Accords, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Two weeks later, eight other Soviet republics joined the three founding members. In the void left by the collapse of the USSR, the CIS was to become a superstructure that would coordinate the foreign and security policies of the member states, develop a common economic space, and provide for an orderly transition from the Soviet Union to the post-Soviet phase. In reality, the CIS has failed. For Russia, the CIS has not served as a vehicle for exerting control over its neighbors. As an organization, the CIS has not succeeded at reintegrating the post-Soviet states. The desire of the new nations to assert themselves as independent entities has proven more powerful than their urge to replace the Soviet Union with a new system of collective government. Written by three of the Wests leading experts on the former Soviet Union, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of how and why the CIS has failed.

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

Aka Toni Brill (joint pseudonym with her husband Anthony Olcott)

Martha Brill Olcott is a senior associate with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, DC.

Olcott specializes in the problems of transitions in Central Asia and the Caucasus as well as the security challenges in the Caspian region more generally. She has followed interethnic relations in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union for more than twenty-five years and has traveled extensively in these countries and in South Asia. Her book, Central Asia’s Second Chance, examines the economic and political development of this ethnically diverse and strategically vital region in the context of the changing security threats post-9/11.

In addition to her work in Washington, Olcott co-directs the Carnegie Moscow Center Project on Religion, Society, and Security in the former Soviet Union and the al-Farabi Carnegie Program on Central Asia in Almaty, Kazakhstan. She is professor emerita at Colgate University, having taught political science there from 1974 to 2002.

Olcott served for five years as a director of the Central Asian American Enterprise Fund. Prior to her work at the Carnegie Endowment, she served as a special consultant to former secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger.

Soon after 9/11, she was selected by Washingtonian magazine for its list of “71 People the President Should Listen To” about the war on terrorism.

Olcott is the author of Tajikistan’s Difficult Development Path (Carnegie Endowment, 2012); In the Whirlwind of Jihad (Carnegie Endowment, 2012); Central Asia’s Second Chance (Carnegie Endowment, 2005); Kazakhstan: Unfulfilled Promise (Carnegie Endowment, 2002); Preventing New Afghanistans: A Regional Strategy for Reconstruction (Carnegie Endowment Policy Brief 11, 2001) Getting It Wrong: Regional Cooperation and the Commonwealth of Independent States, with Anders Åslund and Sherman Garnett (Carnegie Endowment, 1999); and Russia After Communism edited with Anders Åslund (Carnegie Endowment, 1999).

Reviews

[Spencer Willardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good review of the various aspects of the CIS. It's a bit dated, but book provides a good foundation for understanding relations between the former Soviet states (minus the Baltic states) in the past 15 years.