Vladimir Vasilievici KARYAKIN

In conditions of NATO expansion in the sphere of Russian interests, aggravation of geopolitical concurrence for access to Central Asian energy resources and world instability caused by the global economic recession the Russian administration is focusing efforts on building up the military components of integration processes on the post-Soviet space. Right after the August war 2008 with Georgia the president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has pointed out the necessity «to intensify military cooperation» within the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). The implementation of this idea started in 2009. There was this year a series of CSTO summits with participation of seven states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. A final chord was a session of CSTO which took place on the 14th of July when the presidents of these states signed the agreement on creation of Collective Forces of Operative Reaction (CFOR) within the CSTO.
The Trans-Caucasian and European military directions are already protected by the Russian-Armenian and Russian-Belarus forces. The current order of the day is to settle a question of Central Asian security. As well as in the case of CFOR, the main striking forces will be in the places for permanent deployment. The questions of their equipment and combat training will be decided by national commands. Joint operations of CFOR/CFRD will be planned by the CSTO Staff Headquarters . For CFRD are planned to include the tank and artillery units, as well as the naval forces of the Caspian CSTO states.
Effective strength of future military CFRD group this not been spoken about but if to take into account that in the Russian-Belarus military group includes all military units of Belarus and Russian troops on the western direction than the five-sided military fist in Central Asia can became impressive. According to the Kremlin point of view on CSTO, planned the CSTO military group that will be formed in Central Asia must be comparable to NATO.
Together with the discussions about CSTO-NATO ways of cooperation practical problems of expansion of the American military presence at the Central Asia being solved in Washington. According to Eurasia Net portal, the Pentagon is going to deploy in this region the 3rd Group of American Special Operations Force (SOF) that acted in Afghanistan before. As the PR SOF officer captain-lieutenant Fred Quibble has informed, the given variation of regional orientation reflects changing in the general political-military environment of region .
The proficiency of American commandos and the history of their activity arouse suspicions that their main objective is reinforcing the American military presence in Central Asia, rather than providing regional security and professional training of the local soldiery. It’s absolutely clear, those USA reinforcements in this region contradicts Russian and Chinese interests. Taking into account that most of the Central Asia countries along with Russia are CSTO members and have CFOR of their own.