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means that all members act strictly in accordance with the law they once swore to, even
if it was not done on purpose.
2. Platform for Defense, or Life and Death of Military Unions
In 1945 well-known Hegelian, Alexander Kojève, wrote an analytical note addressed
to the French government. He proves that sovereign policy cannot be realized in some of
the states during the nuclear epoch [10]. Our future, according to Kojève, belongs to big
quasigovernmental unions. Such, so to say, a negative resume under sociopolitical beliefs
of “early modern” (that states-nations are the greatest “recent” forms of social order; that
industrial societies will make the war an anachronism and etc) is supported actually by
a group of positive projects. 6 years after the creation of the NATO (April, 4 1949) the
Warsaw pact was signed (May, 14th 1955), and 37 years and 1 day later the Contract about
collective security (May, 15 1992) was concluded.
2.1 “Middle-Stage Modern”: Global Suspicion
The “fact” of the “the Yalta’s world” decline, if taken seriously, makes us think, how-
ever, about the basic presumption of the world which is accepted as sine qua non of the
modern world. The Yalta conference held in 1945 “brought” the epoch of “The Thirty
Years’ War” to an end (that is how sometimes the period between the beginning of the
First and the end of the Second world wars is called). According to the signed agreement,
the process of partial denial of sovereignty by some of the states in favor of stable (not
“occasional”) military-political unions was legalized. Existence of two military-political
blocks – the NATO and the Warsaw pact (WP) – was the first stage of the formation of
such associations (let us use the name “middle-stage modern”).
The logic of Yalta is, first of all, the logic of division, setting of new borders inside
Europe (Oder-Neisse) divided into blocks. This model of division is offered also to the
non-European world (world’s periphery), which becomes the successor of Europe and
its internal conflicts. Each block has a superstate as its center and is structured in the
form of the hierarchy of sovereignties controlled by a more rigid one in case of the WP,
and a less rigid one in case of the NATO. Coexistence of nations within military-political
blocks allows not only to neutralize the potential aggression of particular states, but also
to minimize any possibility of attacks from an external aggressor: the attack on any mem-
ber of the alliance is considered to be an attack on the alliance. That is the positive side
of coexistence in alliances, while the negative one is that any regional conflict leading to
a global conflict of both systems - capitalist and socialist, - triggers an arms race and two-
sided distrust and fear.
“Lessening” is sure to be the key word to characterize the transition between forms
of organization of “middle-stage modern” and alliances and misalliances of “late” or “high
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Buffer Forms: to Europe Through Denial of Europe
modern”. The process of lessening is just one of the dimensions characterizing the remak-
ing of the system of interblock confrontation into something different. Both the USSR and
the USA were affected by this process. Though, the loss of hegemony within the WP meant
abrogation of the corresponding project for the USSR and loss of legitimacy of the USSR’s
foreign policy. All the features mentioned above were the signs of the future collapse. Let
us note, without focusing our attention on the reasons for collapse and its peculiarities
that one of false beliefs dominates in Minsk and Moscow, i.e. the abrogation of the Yalta
system demands a step backwards to the policy of national sovereignty. Meanwhile, the
crisis of the Yalta world does not cancel the process of cutting sovereignties out and the
movement from the national-state formations to large (regional ðàã åõñållence) unions.
2.2. “High modern”: Rhizome
The Tashkent Collective Security Treaty (CST) was signed in May, 1992. Ten years later
the CSTO was created on the basis of the CST’s regulatory and legal framework. The CSTO
was planned in order to continue the policy of cutting/indemnifying sovereignties in
measures of security. In this respect, the CSTO is similar to well-known alliances, though
its founders like to emphasize that the organization is not a remake of the WP or a copy
of the NATO. In fact, the NATO itself is not a replica of its previous version, because this
organization’s purposes have been reconsidered in compliance with the changes of the
system of international relations and kinds of threats.
As far as the CSTO is concerned, we also deal with a new arrangement of accents
in the threat list. One of the regulations included into the CSTO Charter should be con-
sidered as the basic one, i.e. coordination and combined efforts against terrorism and
other nonconventional safety threats are among the main goals and activity spheres of the
organization. Confrontation with other military unions or states is not stipulated in the
constituent documents of the CSTO, the organization is viewed as a regional fragment of
the developing world system of security. In a narrower sense, the CSTO goals are to build
a system of collective security measures on the post-Soviet territories and to foster the
military-political integration of the member states for complex measures against threats.
Although it is stressed in the CST that its members “will not enter military unions or join
any group of states” (Article 1 of the treaty), cooperation with the latter is supposed to
take place (Article 8
of the treaty, Article 4 of the Charter) [11].
Some of the members (Minsk, in particular) are likely to perceive the CSTO as a means
of potential protection against massive killings similar to those in Yugoslavia or Iraq. Such
“perspectives” induce commentators to classify the CSTO as “the second edition of the
Warsaw pact”, though being of a comical type, especially if one decides to talk about the
efficiency of the organization.
We can briefly describe the WP’s informal program, which, actually, allowed us to
see the organization in operation. Dethronement or collapse of Dub
ček’s regime (1968)