The End of the ‘Post-Soviet Space’: The Changing Geopolitical Orientations of the Newly Independent States

In the fifteen years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the geopolitical space occupied by the former Soviet Union and often dubbed the 'post-Soviet space' has undergone far-reaching political, economic and social change.

The weakening of the Commonwealth of Independent States as an integrative structure, open competition between the economic interests and macroeconomic projects of the Newly Independent States, both as individual competitors and as smaller groups, and rivalry between old and new interstate organizations have broken up the post-Soviet space into new geopolitical entities.

Both the presence and the influence of 'extra-regional' actors (such as the EU and NATO as well as the United States, China, Turkey and Iran) in the former post-Soviet space are increasing significantly. This development coincides with and challenges Russia's attempts to reclaim the status of regional superpower.

The 'colour revolutions' in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan were of an 'anti-post- Soviet' nature, and sought to purge the Newly Independent States' ruling elites and political-economic systems of residual 'Sovietism'. Relatively new interstate organizations such as the reconstituted GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova) and the Community of Democratic Choice are contributing to the centrifugal tendencies by seeking to break ties with Moscow and redirecting their policy towards the West.

The configuration of the military/security balance is changing. The Collective Security Treaty Organization, which comprises seven post-Soviet states, has rekindled attempts at political-military integration. It provides mechanisms for regional crisis response and peacekeeping as well as for collective defence.

Neither the West nor Russia has so far adapted to this new geopolitical configuration. New 'dividing lines' - political, military and economic groupings in Northeastern Eurasia (the former post-Soviet space) - have already emerged and demand a corresponding change in the policy of the great powers.