Collective Security Treaty Organisation:
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) has marked its 30th year, at anniversary summit hosted by Moscow recently.
- Collective Security Treaty Organization 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 headquarters 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.
- Current CSTO members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan.
- 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.
