Cold War Echoes
By Dimitrij Rupel
Washington Post
March 7 2005
Monday, March 7, 2005; Page A19
When my prime minister suggested some years ago that Slovenia should
take on the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2005, I knew it would be a challenge.
Our 55 states face critical security issues that require our full
attention, from terrorism and human trafficking to conflicts in
Georgia, Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh. The OSCE, a pan-European body
spawned by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and of which the United States
is an active member, is uniquely placed to address these challenges.
I did not imagine, though, that I would spend my first few months in
the post haggling with fellow foreign ministers about a relatively
insignificant amount of money. Yet that is exactly what I have been
doing. The OSCE faces paralysis within months because we have been
unable to agree on a 2005 budget or on how much each country should
contribute in the future. The sums involved are relatively small —
the OSCE budget was 180 million euros ($238 million) last year, about
4 percent of the annual budget of the District of Columbia. Running
on provisional budget arrangements, the OSCE is unable to launch any
new activities or implement important initiatives. This is both
absurd and embarrassing.
The budget dispute, of course, masks fundamental political
differences that go well beyond the OSCE. The Russian Federation and
some members of the Commonwealth of Independent States argue that the
OSCE applies a double standard, that the way it monitors elections is
flawed, that too much attention is paid to human rights and not
enough to security.
The United States and the European Union, on the other hand, appear
generally content with the focus on the “human dimension”: upholding
basic human rights and monitoring elections. They rarely bring
significant political-military issues to the negotiating table.
I sense a hardening of attitudes on all sides, and I hear rhetoric
uncomfortably reminiscent of the Cold War. If the impasse continues,
the OSCE’s credibility and its survival will be in jeopardy. Does
that matter? I firmly believe it does.
The OSCE started life in the 1970s as a series of meetings between
two opposing blocs that had the power to obliterate one another. It
provided a forum in which trust was slowly and painfully built. The
result was a series of landmark accords, starting in Helsinki, on
confidence-building measures to reduce the risk of war and on new
common standards for human rights and democratic elections. Without a
doubt, the Helsinki process played a significant role in helping to
bring about a peaceful end to the Cold War.
After the collapse of communism, our leaders reinvented the
organization as an operational body with a network of field offices.
Throughout the 1990s, it played an important conflict-prevention role
from the Crimea to the southern Balkans and helped with post-conflict
rehabilitation in places as diverse as Kosovo, Tajikistan and
Georgia.
The OSCE has achieved much on a shoestring budget. But as the only
security organization that includes the United States, Canada,
Russia, the whole of Europe and the former Soviet Union as equal
partners, it could achieve so much more if participating states
mustered the political will to let it do its job properly.
Countries in transition are crying out for the expertise the OSCE can
provide in training police forces. All countries want to boost their
capacity to fight terrorism, and the OSCE helps by bringing together
experts in protecting airports from shoulder-fired missiles and
making passports more difficult for terrorists to forge. All of us
confront the scourges of human trafficking, organized crime, and
racial and religious intolerance.
Yet many OSCE countries appear to contemplate the organization’s loss
of influence with indifference. Our heads of state have not held a
summit since 1999. So what can be done?
First, Russia should stop blocking the budget and engage
constructively in trying to move the OSCE more in the direction it
wants — by negotiation. It should play a more active role in the
work of the OSCE by sending more Russians to field missions,
providing more election observers and submitting more high-caliber
candidates for top positions.
Second, the United States and the European Union should take Russian
concerns seriously. They should avoid patronizing their partners and
acknowledge that not all Western countries are perfect democracies
with flawless human rights records. They should devote more attention
to the political-military dimension of security, without weakening
OSCE human rights commitments, and stop treating the OSCE as if it
were little more than a nongovernmental organization.
Third, all OSCE countries should devote high-level political
attention to the organization and use it as the effective security
instrument it was designed to be. Lip service is no longer enough.
The writer is foreign minister of Slovenia and chairman in office of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This article
reflects his personal views.