ABSTRACT
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is neither a political alliance nor an economic community, though its activities have elements of both. It was a mechanism for asserting Russian hegemony over the other eleven states. Economically Belarus was dependent upon Russia. The CIS relied on Russia for its security. It was home to a large concentration of military facilities that had been part of the former Soviet Union's defense infrastructure. Russia saw NATO expansion from the beginning as a threat to the balance of power and to its prestige as a great power. Essentially Gorbachev wanted a redesigned federal system, which he proposed to call the Union of Sovereign States. In Central Asia the major conflict was the civil war in Tajikistan. It was a complex war, in which the antagonists differed over political, ideological, ethnic, and regional issues. Russia has used the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh to exert influence over both countries.
