Collective Security Treaty Organisation

• IAS NEXT, Lucknow
• 08, Jan 2022

Reference News:-

The Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has dispatched troops to help quell mounting unrest in Kazakhstan as the police said dozens were killed trying to storm government buildings.

What’s happening in Kazakhstan?

Long seen as one the most stable of the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia, energy-rich Kazakhstan is facing its biggest crisis in decades after days of protests over rising fuel prices escalated into widespread unrest.

About Collective Security Treaty Organization:

It is an intergovernmental military alliance (six countries) that came into effect in 2002.

Its’ origin can be traced to the Collective Security Treaty, 1992 (Tashkent Treaty).

The headquarter is located in the Russian capital of Moscow.

The objectives of the CSTO is to strengthen peace, international and regional security including cybersecurity and stability, the protection on a collective basis of the independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the member states.

Composition:

Current CSTO members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan.

What the membership entails?

CSTO membership means that member states are barred from joining other military alliances, limiting, for example, their relationship with NATO.

Most importantly, membership presumes certain key security assurances – the most significant of which is deterring military aggression by third countries.

In the CSTO, aggression against one signatory is perceived as aggression against all.

It however remains unclear whether this feature works in practice.