Collective Security Treaty Organisation

Collective Security Treaty Organisation

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO; Russian: Организация Договора о Коллективной Безопасности) is an intergovernmental military alliance which was signed on 15 May 1992. On 7 October 2002, the Presidents of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan signed a charter in Tashkent founding the CSTO.

Nikolai Bordyuzha was appointed secretary general of the new organization. On 23 June 2006, Uzbekistan became a full participant in the CSTO; and its membership was formally ratified by the Uzbek parliament on 28 March 2008. It suspended its membership in 2012. The CSTO is currently an observer organisation at the United Nations General Assembly.

The CSTO charter reaffirmed the desire of all participating states to abstain from the use or threat of force. Signatories would not be able to join other military alliances or other groups of states, while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all. To this end, the CSTO holds yearly military command exercises for the CSTO nations to have an opportunity to improve inter-organisation cooperation. The largest-scale CSTO military exercise held to date were the "Rubezh 2008" exercises hosted in Armenia where a combined total of 4,000 troops from all 7 constituent CSTO member countries conducted operative, strategic, and tactical training with an emphasis towards furthering efficiency of the collective security element of the CSTO partnership. A 2011 series of training exercises has recently been held in central Asia consisting of "more than 10,000 troops and 70 combat aircraft". Also, Russia has won the right to veto the establishment of new foreign military bases in the member states of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). In order to deploy military bases of a third country in the territory of the CSTO member-states, it is necessary to obtain the official consent of all its members. But, the tightening of rules for opening extra-regional military bases apparently does not apply to existing facilities, such as the U.S. transit centre in Kyrgyzstan, a German air transit facility in Uzbekistan and French military aircraft based in Tajikistan. However, the decision gains importance in the light of reported plans by the Pentagon to redeploy to Central Asia some of the forces that will be pulled out of Afghanistan in 2014.

The CSTO employs a "rotating presidency" system in which the country leading the CSTO alternates every year. Kazakhstan currently has the CSTO presidency.