Reset the OSCE

By Alexander Rahr, Director of the Russia/Eurasia Program, German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin (since 1995)

The year of 2010 will open a new chapter in the post-Cold-War history. As the first post-soviet state Kazakhstan will assume the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and try to promote it to its previous rank of a main security organization in Europe. Even if the Kazakh leadership remains controversial in the eyes of a number of Westerners it could provide the OSCE with new legitimacy and a fresh impetus for the stabilization of the entire Northern hemisphere from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Kazakh OSCE leadership could also enable new ways to secure energy supplies to Europe from Central Asia and offer an important impact for Afghanistan.

When the OSCE was established 35 years ago, its founders intended to make it the nucleus of a united Europe, which would connect its Western and Eastern components. After the end of the Cold War, the OSCE could have become a third pillar for the transatlantic and European architecture and lay the ground for a Common House of the nations of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as Eurasia. This Common House was supposed to base on mutual security, economic cooperation, and joint principles of human rights and subsequently, all former Soviet republics joined the OSCE. But the last two decades witnessed the creation of an European architecture along the lines of how the Western states wanted it to look like. NATO and EU were proclaimed to be more important than OSCE. They were internally strengthened and enlarged to include the former Warsaw Pact countries while the OSCE continued to function only as a platform for common democratic and legal system norms - honestly not enough to serve as a third pillar of Europe's common architecture.

In the next decade, almost all of the former republics of Ex-Yugoslavia are also expected to join NATO and EU. The idea of a truly unified Europe, or West, will then be accomplished. Then there is an even bigger international dimension to the importance of embracing the OSCE rather than dwelling too much on the concern: What will be the fate of European and Eurasian countries on the eastern part of the continent? Will they be abandoned from membership in a future common European House, fall into the hemisphere of China or become absorbed by Islamic realm of the Middle East?

Despite its reputation as being notoriously dysfunctional, the OSCE is needed. In the case of a defeat in Afghanistan, NATO would need to reinvent itself. A successful Afghan strategy is impossible without the support of Russia and the Central Asian republics. Europe will only be able to solve its energy supply problems, if it comprises Russia and the Central Asian states into a multilateral energy alliance.

It is no secret that the EU faces a dilemma, how to proceed with its Eastern policy. Should a European Security and Defense Policy towards the East of continent engage Russia plus all former Soviet republics, or contain Russia and the other authoritarian regimes within their own post-soviet space? Neither of the two Western dominated alliances offer the basis for tight and stable relations between Eastern and Western countries on grounds of equality and mutual appreciation.

The first reason lies in the system itself: European and Eurasian states of OSCE which are not member of NATO and EU are worried that their interests are being neglected because they are not part of the two former institutions. It is therefore logical to resurrect the OSCE as a truly all-European organization. The OSCE has the capacity to supplement NATO in all security-related issues regarding the future of the European continent. Kazakhstan, as the biggest country in Central Asia, could provide important ideas in that regard. Kazakhstan’s wish to convene an OSCE summit in 2010 to discuss these ideas should receive more consideration.

Kazakhstan is a strong regional actor in the eastern prolongation of Europe. After the end of the Cold War, the West promised to take care of the prosperity and stability of former Soviet republics in Eurasia the same way as for the liberated Warsaw Pact countries in the framework of the OSCE. It is only logical, that Kazakhstan will remind its Western partners of these promises. The OSCE can only survive if it combines the interests of all its member states. A failure to revive the OSCE along its original tasks will carry the danger of a new split of the European continent. It is time to think about this geopolitical aspect as well.