The Ministerial Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will meet in Malta on December 5 and 6. Foreign ministers will gather from the 57 OSCE participating states to review and address the security situation in the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian area and to evaluate the OSCE’s activity in general.
The meeting comes at a time when the OSCE is at a crossroads: going through a difficult present and facing an uncertain future full of existential challenges. Next year is its 50th anniversary. It is the only security organisation in which everyone important to the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security architecture sits at one table. We cannot afford to let it die. It will be like closing down the only fire-fighting station in an area with raging fires going on.
The OSCE is denigrated, unfairly, as weak and ineffectual because it has not solved the crisis that led to the Balkan Wars in the 1990s during the break-up of Yugoslavia or the conflicts in the Donbas region starting in 2014 and leading to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Those making these accusations are mostly arsonists blaming fire fighters for the fires started by those in the West who saw the collapse of the Soviet Union not as a golden opportunity to develop the OSCE into a cooperative security architecture for the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian regions but as the right time to take advantage of Russia’s weakness and impose western dominance and hegemony.
The OSCE’s crisis started and deepened when the United States went back on its promise not to extend NATO. This it did in successive waves up to the borders of Russia, ignoring totally Russia’s security concerns.
The OSCE was created 50 years ago, during the Cold War era, to “serve as a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between the East and West”. Three years ago, at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Stockholm, I told my ministerial colleagues: “If we are dissatisfied with what the OSCE is doing, we should stop a moment and reflect about what we are doing to the OSCE, how we are behaving, how we are using it and abusing it. An English proverb says: ‘A bad workman always blames his tools’. A Russian proverb is much more brutal and equally wise: ‘Don’t blame a mirror for your ugly face’.
“Let us not blame the OSCE. Let us not blame the tool. Let us not blame the mirror. The faults, dear colleagues, are not in OSCE but in ourselves. That is where we need to address them. Are we ready to do so?” I was a voice crying in the wilderness.
How enemies become partners
The OSCE will have no future if it is not used for dialogue, negotiation, mutual respect and understanding and instead continues to be eclipsed by NATO and weaponised by a part of it against another part. If the arsonists, who practise politics as the continuation of war by other means, prevail, they will wreck the OSCE and multilateral security organisations like it. For them, diplomacy is the handmaid of the military industrial complex, which has become an integral part of the export sector of the economy in various countries. The armaments industry needs new markets and so needs constant tension and conflicts to justify the purchase of yet more armaments.
The geopolitical environment has become so toxic that simply calling for hostile neighbours to sit together is dismissed as naïve at best and denounced as a betrayal at worst- Evarist Bartolo
It is going to be very difficult to resurrect the spirit of Helsinki that served Europe well in the middle of the Cold War and proved to be a turning point in the easing of tensions between the West and the East. Cooperation and security in the European continent has been torn to shreds. As the West escalates its war against Russia in Ukraine, it is digging the hole it has got itself into, deeper, rather than trying to climb out of it.
The geopolitical environment has become so toxic that simply calling for hostile neighbours to sit together is dismissed as naïve at best and denounced as a betrayal at worst. Real multilateralism and structures like the OSCE have been weakened through the refusal to give diplomacy a chance. Going back on the promise not to expand NATO eastwards and using the Minsk agreements to buy time for the West to arm Ukraine, rather than to include with dignity and full rights Russian Ukrainians in Ukraine, has bred resentment and distrust.
Countries using military power to deal with conflicts end up neither winning wars nor establishing peace. Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya show this clearly. Military expenditure continues to grow. Budgets are always available for the war economy while spending on the climate crisis, development, health and education often face budget shortfalls. This is collective suicide.
Even as enemies, we need to find ways of working together. Even selfishness and narrow interests dictate that we enemies cooperate with each other in multilateral spaces like the OSCE.
As Nelson Mandela used to say and practise: “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” So the continued existence of the OSCE as a forum for Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian dialogue is indispensable for the future if we want to learn to live together and survive.
Last August, the European Leadership Network convened a group of multinational experts to explore the historic, current and future role of the OSCE and its toolbox in maintaining and strengthening European security architecture.
They concluded: “Given the anticipated insecurities and instabilities of the next 10-15 years, including the modernisation of nuclear arsenals and the impact of emerging technologies, the OSCE’s most impactful period may still lie ahead. Its varied toolbox of mechanisms and processes, combined with its unique membership dynamics, could position the OSCE as a crucial player in the future of European and global security architecture.”
As a voice in the wilderness I repeat: give OSCE a chance.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour education and foreign minister.