After the collapse of the USSR, a gap appeared among the former Soviet Republics. The creation of the CIS was then supposed to initiate a temporary "political divorce" to get rid of the embarrassing totalitarian legacy as quickly as possible. The CIS thus represented a major geopolitical transition, without however changing the contemporary world order.

Over a period of thirteen years, from 1991 to 2004, this transition evolved, punctuated by the emergence of various geopolitical projects protecting precise national interests. On the other side, Russia was setting forth its ambitions. The aim was to have a monopoly over the geostrategic potential of the CIS by restoring imperial, Soviet, policy. So Russia dusted off and revamped the Soviet national anthem and declared her superiority over the entire region – a line of thinking that is to be found in its National Security Doctrine, set out in January 2000.

Within this ambiguous context, geopolitical projects led by the former Soviet republics rapidly took on the appearance of initiatives destined to counter exterior influences. At least that’s what was observed in 1997, during the creation of GUAM (initially comprising Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaidjan and Moldova) or the Central Asia Cooperation Organisation (Kazakhstan, Kyrghizstan, Tadjikistan and now Russia).

It’s against the emergence of coalitions between Eurasian and continental countries founded on anti Atlantist sentiment – most notably the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation ( SCO) which is on the threshold of becoming a truly regional political and military organisation - that logically and in opposition that the Borjomi declaration was signed by the Georgian and Ukrainian presidents on August 12, 2005.

Fundamentally entrenched in euro-Atalantic integration, this new alliance, also referred to as the Community of democratic choice, aims to support democracy and stability in the geopolitical maritime space bounded by the three Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas.

A fight for influence between the Heartland and the Rimland?

The democratic alliance promoted by Saakachvili and Yuchshenko is first and foremost a « buffer zone » between NATO and the SCO. This initiative can be interpreted as the resurgence of the theory of one of the fathers of modern geopolitics, the Briton Halford Mackinder who expounded in 1904 the theory of the Heartland («continental heart»).

In keeping with this line of thinking, the Community of democratic choice announced in the Borjomi declaration would form the “Western front” of the Rimland of the American, Spykman (Mackinder’s “marginal crescent”). It is effectively the domination of the “Western front” of the Rimland, the notorious buffer States which border Eurasia and are placed on the axis of the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas, which would be the real stake of the power plays between continental and maritime powers.

In keeping with this line of thinking, the Heartland, in which NATO would play a key role, could stretch eastwards to contain the expansion of the Rimland and the SCO. The Eastern front of the Rimland would then stretch southwards, towards India, Iran and Pakistan.

Rethinking the region’s geopolitics

Such a scenario would amount to updating the geopolitical concept of competition between continental and maritime powers to a modern concept of strictly geoeconomic competition. Domination would no longer flow from political and military power, but on the contrary from the control of post-industrial production and new technologies, as well as access to strategic resources (energy and minerals).

Furthermore, although the presence of non-democratic countries such as Belarus and Uzbekistan are harmful to dialogue between the region’s States, the new logic of promoting liberal values could contribute to transform old political rivalries into pacific coexistence favourable to the stability and security of the Eurasian zone.

However, the transformation of the CIS into a vast zone where neo-Atlanticist and neo-Eurasian ideologies compete, also points a finger to the necessity of rethinking the distribution of power inherited at the end of the Cold War, on the basis of the 21st century’s new geopolitical reality.