OSCE Foreign Ministers’ Meeting: It’s a matter of survival

The OSCE was founded to bring about détente in Europe. In the current crisis, it is proving to be weak. The dispute over today’s meeting of foreign ministers shows once again how paralyzed the OSCE is.

Security and stability in Europe – 57 states from Canada and the USA to Europe and Russia to Mongolia are organized in the OSCE with this goal in mind. It is the only security organization that brings all these states together. But in the continent’s greatest security crisis since World War II, the OSCE does not play a crucial role.

Even before this year’s OSCE foreign ministers’ meeting in Lodz, Poland, there was a scandal. Poland refused to allow Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to participate because he was on the EU sanctions list. In addition, Russia has broken all principles of the Helsinki Final Act, the founding document.

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow replied that Poland had caused “irreparable damage” to the OSCE. Instead of Lavrov, the Russian ambassador to the OSCE is now leading the delegation.

Growing tensions since Putin took office

The tensions date back to the beginning of the new millennium, when Vladimir Putin took power in Russia. Since then, Russia has accused the OSCE of focusing too much on election observation, human rights and the development of democracy instead of focusing on security policy.

Other authoritarian states were only too happy to join the accusation. In 2007, Putin claimed that the OSCE was becoming a “vulgar instrument” designed to serve the foreign policy interests of one or more countries.

With the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, work in the OSCE became even more difficult. In 2016, the then OZSE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier stated in an interview tagesschau.de a “cold war atmosphere”. At that time, there was no longer a joint assessment of the facts about Ukraine.

In 2014, it was possible to set up an observation mission for Ukraine within the framework of the OSCE and to negotiate the Minsk agreements for Ukraine. But these became obsolete at the latest when Russia annexed the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts this February, three days before the major attack on Ukraine. At the end of March, the observation mission was discontinued under pressure from Russia.

missions failed

In other cases, too, the OSCE was unable to prevent renewed outbreaks of violence. This concerns the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2020, war broke out between the two countries, which Azerbaijan won.

After that, it no longer recognized the OSCE’s “Minsk Group” negotiation format. It sharply criticized the dispatch of an investigative team to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan in October.

The EU steps in

An EU observation mission is now on site. In this case, Azerbaijan agreed, not least because it is banking on gas deals with the EU. EU Council President Charles Michel mediates between the conflicting parties.

The EU also stepped in in the case of Georgia. Since the 1990s, the OSCE has been involved in the settlement of the conflict over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia. But in 2008 war broke out with Russia. The EU negotiated the peace, and to this day it operates an observer mission that patrols the border lines with South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The OSCE had to withdraw.

It’s about survival

The EU is thus taking on stabilization tasks that are the responsibility of the OSCE. The EU is also restricted – Russia is preventing the complete implementation of the peace agreement on Georgia. But in view of the conflicts in Eastern Europe and beyond, it is not being paralyzed from within like the OSCE. And it has economic and political agency.

The OSCE, on the other hand, finds itself increasingly in an existential crisis. The question is how countries that see themselves as a threat can work together. That was already the case almost 50 years ago, when the “Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe” (CSCE) contributed to the peaceful end of the Cold War. But at that time it was a useful instrument for the implementation of goals for both East and West.

This is how the CSCE survived the end of the Cold War and was transformed into an organization in 1994. It received a secretariat and institutions for the development of democracy, among other things. However, the organization was not given enough room for manoeuvre. With the principle of unanimity in all decisions, each participating State is, as it is still said today, able to paralyze the OSCE.

Power games threaten existence

This affects far more than the establishment and continuation of missions. In 2020 there was already a leadership crisis. At that time, the 57 states could not agree to extend the terms of office of the Swiss diplomat Thomas Greminger as OSCE Secretary General and three other top posts. Part of a solution was then the German diplomat Helga Schmid as Greminger’s successor.

There is currently a debate about which country should take over the OSCE chairmanship in 2024. Russia is fighting against the candidate Estonia. In order to find a compromise, Estonia would have to withdraw its candidacy.

A way out of the deadlocked budget negotiations is even more urgent. In addition to Russia, countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan are blocking the present draft. No new projects and activities can be started without agreement. If there is no solution by the end of the year, there is a risk of incapacity to act.

Work now on a post-war Europe

The organization would be suitable for developing a plan for a post-war Europe in the interest of all states. In a paper on the OSCE, political advisor Walter Kemp demands that the OSCE should be an actor and not a product of change. The key point would be security policy measures aimed at renewed trust between states.

This includes the modernization of the “Vienna Document”, which contains rules such as the announcement of military exercises and the stationing of armed forces. Added to this would be the question of security guarantees, particularly for states such as Ukraine.

However, with the further chapter on arms control, the question arises as to whether such a global issue, in which OSCE states such as the USA and Russia are increasingly looking to China, can still be reached without agreements being reached with the leadership in Beijing. But here, too, the OSCE would offer opportunities for understanding – it already maintains relations with Asia.