Commonwealth and Independence in Post-Soviet Eurasia (1998) examines the various attempts to create new forms of integration by the new states of Eurasia. The contributors to this volume analyse in detail how the national elites in the independent states conceived their regional policies. It looks in particular at the Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States, feared by many of the newly-independent nations as being the Soviet Union Mark II.

In the void left by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was created as a structure that would coordinate the foreign and security policies of member states, develop a common economic space, and provide for an orderly transition from the Soviet Union to the

The final chapter relates the evolution of these conflicting loyalties to the global weakening of the nation-state, and distinguishes what is particular to the Soviet state and its demise from more significant questions of analytical importance posed by the collapse of a major contemporary multi-national state.

This book explores post-Soviet Eurasian regional security governance, as embedded in the military alliance of Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). CSTO was established in 2002 and consists of six post-Soviet countries: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Moving studies of regional security governance beyond the so-called Eurocentrism trend expressed, inter alia, via the focus on Western military alliance, such as NATO, this book examines CSTO as a new, post-Soviet form of regional security cooperation by looking at the reasons and drivers behind the establishment of the post-Soviet Eurasian security governance; the organization's institutional design; the military capabilities of its member states; the degree of the members' integration within the alliance; the cooperation pattern adopted by CSTO members; as well as the effect and effectiveness of this military alliance.

Explores Russia's re-emergence as a major actor in Central Asia and the Caucasus - a re-emergence which is limited by the involvement and influence of external state and non-state actors, including China, the USA and foreign energy companies.

The war in Georgia. Tensions with Ukraine and other nearby countries. Moscow's bid to consolidate its "zone of privileged interests" among the Commonwealth of Independent States. These volatile situations all raise questions about the nature of and prospects for Russia's relations with its neighbors. In this book, Carnegie scholar Dmitri Trenin argues that Moscow needs to drop the notion of creating an exclusive power center out of the post-Soviet space. Like other former European empires, Russia will need to reinvent itself as a global player and as part of a wider community. Trenin's vision of Russia is an open Euro-Pacific country that is savvy in its use of soft power and fully reconciled with its former borderlands and dependents. He acknowledges that this scenario may sound too optimistic but warns that the alternative is not a new version of the historic empire but instead is the ultimate marginalization of Russia.