There is something in this article that does not pass "the smell test". How is it that the blessing of NATO is required for CSTO to be a real organization? Or even more interestingly, such a royal condensation that only NATO can bestow --- will make members of CSTO get past their petty local differences? And only such a stern, "real" force can make the little fools work constructively in their own organization and in their own tense neighborhood? And all that, while the same NATO is responsible for making their neighborhood unsafe! Out of Afghanistan come militant ideologies, weapons, drugs --- name it. All that under the watchful eye of the thousands of NATO soldiers and the virtual army of pseudo civilian "civil society", humanitarians and others. If anything, NATO has shown a first class incompetence, and the scourge of conflict is now extending in the previously safe areas in Pakistan. MILLIONS of refugees generated in the recent sweep of once independent tribal areas are the testament of the gross incompetence and irresponsibility. Is it possible that the esteemed journalists cannot see what is really happening, as they are still enamored by the gloss and glitz of anything Western? Countries of CSTO understand that they will either hang together, or hang separately. Should they just wait until the brainiacs of western stratagems turn the policy of the Arc of Instability into the reality? Do they wish their lands to turn into the imperial dusty outposts of lawlessness? I have a bit more faith in the countries of CSTO, and their leadership. Rather then looking at the comings and goings at CSTO and interpreting every tea leaf for possible tragic disagreement, it is more rational to accept that every organization on earth is a dynamic being, with internal contradictions and the mechanisms for resolving them over time. This is true not just of CSTO, but of NATO and any other international organization.