Failure of Collective Security in Central Asia? The Reasons Behind the OSCE and CSTO’s Inaction in the 2021 and 2022 Border Clashes Between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

This study focuses on the role of membership in collective security international organizations (IOs) as means of prevention of border clashes in Central Asia by taking the case study of armed clashes between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in 2021 and 2022. It concentrates on the reasons behind what this thesis argues as the failure or inaction of two regional IOs of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the prevention and resolution of the said border clashes. During the two waves of the conflict studied here, around 150 people died, many others injured, as well as US$18 million of damages inflicted on infrastructure on both sides. This thesis argues that the role of the said collective security IOs can be decisive in the prevention, but also the recurrence of similar clashes in the future. There are three hypotheses of this study: H1 claimed that the key regional hegemonic power—the Russian Federation—with significant influence in the two IOs, has been preoccupied with its own war in Ukraine and, due to the same, has lost much of its soft power, influence and credibility in Central Asia and thus been both unable and unwilling to intervene in resolving the Kyrgyz–Tajik border conflict. H2 claimed that the United States, in turn, with its own significant influence over the OSCE has shown little interest in the prevention and resolution of the Kyrgyz–Tajik border conflict due to (i) its and its Western allies' preoccupation with assisting the ongoing war in Ukraine against Russia, as well as (ii) the overall disillusion with engagement in Central Asia given the 2021 de facto defeat in neighboring Afghanistan and consequent rise of the neo-Taliban. The last hypothesis, H3, claimed that the internal factors of populism (in Kyrgyzstan) and hypernationalism (in Tajikistan) were key in both escalating the border conflict and not seeking assistance and mediation from the collective security IOs of CSTO and OSCE. Using literature review and expert interviews (N=9) and relying on the theories of Realism and Regional Hegemonic Stability, this study largely confirmed its premises: It failed to reject H1 and H3, while only partially failed to reject H2.