Session II: Shall GUAM Only Remain an Island?
May 08, 2009
The second session of Friday Hearings convened to look into recent developments within GUAM, both as an institution as well as among its four member states.Drawing and building on that analysis, the gathering sought to provide an assessment of the future the latter developments, and the broader geopolitical context those are embedded in, hold for GUAM at a critical juncture of its evolution.
With its idea first brought to the surface in 1996, during the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Conference in Vienna, Austria, GUAM—a regional organization that brings together Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova—was formally founded at the Strasbourg Council of Europe summit in October 1997. Uzbekistan joined the organization during NATO’s 1999 summit, only to leave it in 2005.
Two issues stood at the core of the rationale that drove the four states to work together within an institutionalized framework at that stage of their post-Soviet evolution: their interest in ensuring Russian compliance with conventional force limits envisaged in the CFE Treaty and the withdrawal of Russian troops from their soil on the one hand, and their quest to find solution to secessionist conflicts three of the four were grappling with on the other.
With GUAM-based institutionalized interaction accelerating the pace, intra-regional economic cooperation, including, in particular, the idea of a Europe-Caucasus-Asia transport corridor, has increasingly come to the focus of the four states’ attention. The latter idea also suited the western strategy of promoting the east-west transport corridor in Eurasia and was—again—viewed by the four partners as another mechanism through which to promote regional security and efficiency.
GUAM’s Achievements
During its Kyiv Summit in May 2006, the GUAM members took steps towards the institutionalization of the organization, with its name changed to the “Organization for Democracy and Economic Development - GUAM”, its charter adopted and its Secretariat established in Kyiv.
All in all, GUAM has now developed several institutions, including a parliamentary assembly and eight working groups focusing on different issues of common interest and concern. GUAM has also developed effective partnerships with the US, Poland, Japan and Lithuania.
While the GUAM member-states failed—due to Russia’s veto power—to achieve much within the OSCE framework, coordination among them worked well in the UN General Assembly, where the four pushed for the resolution recognizing their territorial integrity.
GUAM’s Challenges
GUAM is experiencing a critical period of its existence, with challenges deriving both from the geopolitical environment in which the organization finds itself and from within its member-states.
While GUAM was from the outset very enthusiastic about the possibility to partner up with the west, including on the issues relating to the east-west transportation corridor, and was very assertively outspoken about its intentions in a variety of multilateral forums, these initiatives were met with harsh criticism from the eastern flank on the one hand and western skepticism and reluctance to render support on the other. Russia has always viewed the organization as an anti-Russian, western creation. Responsive to Russia’s concerns, the west, on the other hand, has not been very supportive of GUAM either. NATO turned down GUAM’s proposition to establish a NATO-GUAM consultative forum in a “16 plus 4” format, while the EU was equally unwilling to work with GUAM as an institutional partner and, hence, refused to consider GUAM as a party to projects such as TRACECA. Now, again, instead of working with a full-fledged institution as GUAM is today, the EU chose to launch a new initiative, the Eastern Partnership. Some have argued, therefore, that as an organizational partner, GUAM has never received the recognition it deserved.
Internal developments within the GUAM member-states also pose a challenge to the organization’s continued existence. Three of the four are enmeshed in political controversy and instability: Georgia is still trying to grapple with the repercussions its 2008 war with Russia has brought to bear upon the country’s internal political developments, Moldova is dealing with the aftermath of the recent changes the country has lived through, while Ukraine keeps searching for ways to mollify deep dissension in which the government and opposition have become entangled. The challenging political processes that the three countries are currently going through work to jeopardize their continued commitment to GUAM and the objectives the organization was meant to pursue.
Azerbaijan remains the only stable, consistent and reliable partner within GUAM. Even Baku’s commitment, however, was jeopardized for a while following what came to be known as color revolutions and a new ideological posture that two of the GUAM member-states—Georgia and Ukraine—as well as some western countries, came to display afterwards, developments that bred a feeling of exclusion in the Azerbaijani capital.
The leadership in some member-states, like President Yushchenko of Ukraine, sought to use GUAM as a tool to ensure legitimacy at home (through asserting the country’s leadership within GUAM); other leaders, like President Voronin of Moldova, attempted to use their membership in GUAM as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia. None of these were helpful in terms of ensuring GUAM’s sustainability and long-term effectiveness.
Recommendations and Position Statements
GUAM should try hard to avoid “mission creep”. While the initial rationale for the creation of GUAM was cooperation on the CFE Treaty, as well as in the area of conflict resolution, the organization has quickly lost its focus and ended up dealing with a wide range of issues that were not part of its original mandate. Some of those issues that GUAM is trying to deal with, on the other hand, are part of what constitutes the mission of other existing organizations, like BSEC. GUAM should therefore focus on issues in which it is most effective and on which its member-states share a unanimous position. The organization should set modest and concrete objectives for itself. The experience shows that GUAM is more successful in addressing joint security issues, in the areas of conflict resolution and when acting collectively within broader international institutionalized settings.
GUAM can also serve as an institutional framework for an effective transportation corridor, which makes sense from both economic and security points of view.
Energy cooperation could also serve as an important mechanism through which GUAM could re-invigorate itself. However, GUAM’s existence should not hang on energy alone. Energy cooperation cannot and should not replace GUAM.
Turkey and Kazakhstan should engage in close cooperation with GUAM, one which should be predicated upon the parties’ economic interests.
One participant suggested that the practical way of assessing whether GUAM is a viable entity is to test it with real projects. That is, each member should come up with three project ideas on an annual basis, ones for which they would need support from the other GUAM member-states. If they end up capable of collectively solving each other’s problems in this fashion, the organization will have a future; otherwise, keeping GUAM floating may not be possible or even useful.
Some maintained that the political repercussions of GUAM’s dissolution will be significant, a development that is likely to reflect negatively both on the internal political developments and reform processes within the member-states and on the overall security dynamics in the region, which would suffer from the emergence of a geopolitical vacuum. Others, however, argued that most organizations have a limited lifetime and one should not regret when they complete their mission and cease to exist. What is important, instead, is to learn from a valuable experience in the process: Even when organizations fail, we still have the benefit of learning from their case.
