The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is not so politically mature nor has it reached the “political and functional consensus” as to set itself tasks and accomplish them like, say, NATO does, Dr. Archil Gegeshidze, Senior Fellow at the Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (GFSIS), told NEWS.am. According to him, the CSTO has its formal attributes, but it would not be serious to view it as a counterbalance to NATO.

As regards the CSTO’s potential for ensuring security of one of its members in case of threat, Gegeshidze said that, “if we call a spade a spade,” we have to guess at whether Russia will defend a state in danger, as “none of the other CSTO member-states is in fact capable of defending others.”

Since Russia has its own priorities and relations with other states, including ones that are not CSTO member-states, it will not necessarily defend a CSTO member-state to the detriment of its own interests, Gegeshidze said. In this context, he pointed out that even NATO has no consensus on this issue, “and there no guarantee that the article will be practically applied.” As regard the CSTO, the Georgian expert pointed out that the only hope is that Russia will really be guided by the CSTO declaration and principles rather than by its national interests.

“The evidence of CSTO’s bankruptcy is that its members have no common values and foreign-policy guidelines. So it is a fragile organization, and security guarantees are in fact in the air,” Gegeshidze said. Comparing it with NATO, the expert said that the CSTO is “worse consolidated,” and with NATO’s geography considered, “NATO member-states have much better and more realistic security guarantees.”