Helsinki +40: the OSCE in 2015

Address by Ambassador Philip McDonagh, Permanent Representative of Ireland to the OSCE, at the Europaeum Conference at Helsinki University, June 11th - 13 th 2015, on the Crisis in Europe today Helsinki +40: the OSCE in 2015 It is a privilege to introduce the subject of the OSCE at 40 at the annual conference of Europaeum. Included in your vision of European studies are two major propositions: first, the idea of a university must connect with the concerns of society; and second, your enquiries should have a transnational dimension: the Europaeum answers to the needs of an emerging civilisation. Likewise, the comprehensive approach to security of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has, or could have, a civilisational aspect. We cover a distinct area on the map and work closely with partner countries on our borders and other international organisations. The security promoted by the OSCE is values-based: respect for a set of principles, open dialogue in all the main areas of concern, the implementation of shared commitments. Next month, on 10 th July, in Finlandia Hall here in Helsinki, the 57 participating States of the OSCE will hold an informal high-level meeting to commemorate the 40 th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, our foundational document. In 2012, Ireland as the then Chair-in-Office of the OSCE launched the so-called Helsinki +40 process aimed at restoring a shared political vision within the OSCE region by 2015. In 2013, soon after my arrival in Vienna from Moscow, the Ukrainian chairmanship asked me to take on the role of special coordinator for effectiveness and efficiency within the Helsinki +40 process with a brief to look at the institutional issues and try to build consensus around some practical reforms. Your kind invitation to Europaeum s annual conference gives me the opportunity, in my capacity as one of the special coordinators, to try to make sense of where we now stand on Helsinki +40. I will have three main themes in my reflections this morning. First, I will offer thoughts on the OSCE as a regional security organisation and how it fits into the wider search for a shared narrative on peace and security at the global level. Second, I will discuss Ukraine. Ukraine is the litmus test or barometer of the effectiveness of the OSCE as a credible guarantor of European peace and security. Within our region, there is a risk, as someone put it, of a mainly cooperative security environment with confrontational elements turning into a confrontational environment with residual elements of a cooperative culture - a risk, in other words, of something like a new Cold War. Third, I will suggest that we must learn from the Ukraine experience to maintain relevance into the future. And I will outline some proposals for improving the effectiveness of the OSCE. 1

I turn now to first part of my presentation, in which I will try to locate today s OSCE in a historical context. Our regional approach to security cooperation has a strong historical basis and remains relevant in today s increasingly interdependent world. I will build my argument around six points. 1. We have not made a reality of the vision for the CSCE outlined by Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the Bundestag in November 1989 I pause here to offer sympathy and respect to the Chancellor, who I understand is in hospital at this moment. The adapted CFE Treaty signed in Istanbul in 1999 was never ratified. A panel of eminent persons was established over a decade ago to identify the challenges facing the OSCE and reported in mid-2005. The Corfu process that followed the Georgia conflict of August 2008 did not produce any decisive results, nor did the Astana Summit of 2010. I have just re-read two key decisions - the 8-point agenda agreed by the Athens Ministerial meeting of 2009 and 8-point roadmap for Helsinki +40 published at the Kyiv Ministerial in 2013 by Ukraine, Switzerland, and Serbia in their capacity as Chairs-in-Office for 2013, 2014, and 2015, respectively. The thrust of the two documents is the same. But the more recent document is arguably less authoritative it is not an agreed document. Is it fair to say that since around the year 2000 the OSCE has begun to experience a kind of political entropy? 2. I had the privilege of working for five years in the Northern Ireland peace process and witnessing the famous breakthrough in 1998 when hope and history rhymed, as Seamus Heaney put it. In the case of Northern Ireland, historians will not ignore that the British Green Paper of October 1972, in which the main features of today s political accommodation are prefigured, was published a couple of months before the UK and Ireland joined the European Community. At that time, European integration created a context for reconciliation that not existed a century or two centuries before. In the case of Ukraine, the wider context is acknowledged in the Minsk Declaration of 12 February 2015: Leaders remain committed to the vision of a joint humanitarian and economic space from the Atlantic to the Pacific based upon full respect for international law and the OSCE principles. But for the parties to the conflict in Ukraine, this wider context can seem intangible and far away compared to competing agendas right in front of us. My second question is whether there is a potential interaction not a causal relationship but a potential interaction - between the micro of the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine and the macro of a shared European history? If so, Helsinki +40 can help to make the joint space of Minsk believable and thereby add substance to hope. 3. Part of the process of essentialising the OSCE of defining who we are - is to explore the connection between a cooperative dispensation in the wider Europe and the emerging politics of globalisation. Sixty-five years ago, the Schumann Declaration looked forward to a stable Europe pursuing one of its essential tasks, namely, the development of the African continent. Forty years ago, when leaders of states with profound ideological differences dared to sit at the same table in the original CSCE, they had a sense of Europe s obligations to the rest of the world: the division between the First and Second Worlds was a barrier to the progress of the Third World and to the 2

effective functioning of the UN. To anyone who would argue that globalisation has made regional politics less relevant, I would quote Henry Kissinger in the book he published last year: The contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish a concept of order within the various regions, and to relate these regional orders to one another. 4. We need to take account more explicitly of changing conceptions of security. The world is increasingly seen as neither unipolar nor bipolar but as a place of growing complexity requiring elements of consensus at a global level a positive peace based on progress and development. Speaking at the Permanent Council in November, Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon characterized the next fifteen years as an opportunity for humanity to end dire poverty and turn aside the threat of an ecological catastrophe meaning, I think, that to understand the significance of what we do in a particular forum like the OSCE we need situational awareness. Multilateral negotiations aiming to bring greater order to the global economy take place against the background of several particular crises and the emergence of several new transnational threats, including to mention some of the subjects addressed by the OSCE - terrorism, organised crime, and cyber-threats, and trafficking in drugs, weapons, and people. The many crises we face can be compared to volcanic eruptions of which the tectonic causes have not been adequately confronted. 5. In the final chapter of his book, Not Quite The Diplomat, Chris Patten illustrates the nature of power without authority by quoting the key Athenian speech from Thucydides Melian dialogue: We recommend that you should try to get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept The strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept The use or threat of military power is what the people of Melos face in this passage, for Chris Patten the antithesis of justice. The progress that is now being made in relation to climate change demonstrates that Athenians coercing Melians is not a useful paradigm and that international trust and confidence can develop as a rational response to the reality of a situation. We can use the example of the climate change negotiations to promote trust and confidence in other political relationships. The issue is freedom. Freedom and naked power are opposites; freedom and what one might call legitimate authority are correlative. Power coerces us; authority elicits from us a free response because we accept its purpose. Every successful society, including international society, depends on enlarging the space in which authority prevails rules freely accepted by the great majority of people. This transition from relationships based on 3

power to relationships based on authority is what we all experience in our own lives as and when we move from pre-moral reasoning to moral reasoning and position ourselves in different ways in relationship to our parents or clients or hierarchical superiors. Thucydides allows us to see that the politics of power unmediated by authority can take many different forms. Megara was excluded from the markets of the Athenian Empire, Athenian influence was held by the Corinthians to cut across their partly ethnic ties with Corcyra and Potidaea, and Athenian alliances changed the balance of power. In Thucydides, a primary text, let us remember, for the study of international relations, the whole of the Peloponnesian War arguably revolves around the difference between authority and power. The defeat of Persia had led to a state system that by and large commanded consent in the Greek world. Disagreements could in principle be arbitrated, for example at Delphi. But as events moved on, states fell back on naked power to preserve aspects of the system that they regarded as nonnegotiable trade routes, access to markets, existing alliances, domestic political control. 6. Thucydides is famous for the set speeches in which he exposes the inner structure of decision-making. Usually it is a choice between a self-interested action that appears to bring immediate benefits and a standard of justice of which the benefits are longer-term and less easy to measure. The capacity to frame choices accurately to refine the arguments on both sides so that they have as much contact with one another as possible - is an essential indicator both of a functioning democracy and a stable international system. There may be scope for formulating our genuine differences more carefully, to avoid the occurrence of a form of political dissolution where debate no longer has traction, words lose their meanings, and the principal players are isolated each in his own world. I turn now to the second part of my presentation, concerning the crisis in Ukraine. From the vantage point of the Permanent Council of the OSCE, I can report both bad news and good news. The bad news is what is happening in Ukraine, including Crimea. External intervention and armed conflict have become a reality on our continent. Principles that have helped maintain stability in Europe for decades have not determined the course of events. There has been a qualitative change in the perception of threat. As a matter of practical politics we will only be able to move forward together we will only be able to reconsolidate Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security - if we can manage to achieve a durable settlement of the crisis in and around Ukraine. That s the difficulty: the good news is that we in the OSCE are already making a difference. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission is doing its part to facilitate the ceasefire process in Eastern Ukraine and the withdrawal of heavy weapons. By the end of June, the SMM will have 600 monitors in place engaged in a wide range of tasks aimed at restoring peace and stability. The breaches of the ceasefire that are still occurring and the limitations that are placed on the SMM are being addressed within a political process. The Observer Mission at the Russian checkpoints Gukovo and 4

Donetsk has important symbolic value and provides objective information that contributes to reducing tension on the ground. The political process to implement the Minsk Agreements is centred on the so-called Trilateral Contact Group and its four working groups on security, political, economic and humanitarian issues. The chair of the Trilateral Contact Group works under the authority of Serbia, which is the current OSCE Chair-in-Office. Senior representatives of the OSCE chair the four specialised working groups on behalf of the Trilateral Contact Group. The OSCE has a still wider role in Ukraine. Through the Secretary-General and his team, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the High Commissioner for National Minorities, the Representative for the Freedom of the Media, our project office on the ground in Kyiv, and parliamentary diplomacy under the auspices of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, the OSCE family is helping Ukraine with its national dialogue, constitutional reform, protection of the rights of national minorities, and reconciliation. Though most of the operations I have mentioned are fragile, the OSCE looks like the organisation best suited to bridging growing divides and facilitating cooperative solutions. To paraphrase Voltaire, if the OSCE didn t exist, it would need to have been invented. There are several explanations of the OSCE s recent relevance: We are the only regional platform that brings all the key stakeholders to the table, including Ukraine, Russia, the EU, the United States, all Ukraine s neighbours, and Turkey The OSCE is a versatile and flexible organisation; this is demonstrated, for example, by the many different kinds of field activity carried out by the OSCE and in particular by the very rapid deployment of the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine The OSCE, like the UN, is disinterested; once it agrees to take action, it is legitimate in the eyes of all participating States Because of its 40-year history and very varied activity, the OSCE is a major repository of lore and expertise on a range of subjects, including the recent history of the post-soviet space and the Balkans The problem remains, however, that the present effort to de-escalate tensions and find common ground does not guarantee an exit from the situation in which we find ourselves. Many of us in Vienna believe that the OSCE toolbox will be more effective and a political solution in Ukraine will be more likely to take hold if the OSCE itself has a secure future. I turn now to the third and most difficult part of this presentation: what is to be done? I believe that to essentialise the OSCE we must start with the word dialogue. Dialogue is a core OSCE value and a core democratic value. The Permanent Council is a platform for dialogue. A culture of engagement can gradually transform a series of power-based relationships into what we call a security community an 5

indivisible common space in which each participating State will have a stake in the success of the others. But what might this mean in practice in the OSCE in the summer of 2015? Marshall Ney summed up military tactics in the phrase, head for the sound of the guns; the restoration of dialogue in the OSCE must begin with Ukraine. Both the SMM and the Trilateral Contact Group report to the Chair-in-Office. Reporting to the Permanent Council by the SMM and the facilitators of the political process is a matter of noblesse oblige and works well. The Permanent Council has not, however, focused in detail on the time-line or agenda of Minsk; it cannot be said that we shape or inspire the negotiating process. Sometimes a lot of blaming takes place at our meetings which protects the default positions of parties represented in the Permanent Council. A general question we have asked in Helsinki +40 is whether the work of the principal decision-making organs of the OSCE can be made more effective. There might be scope in the present situation for convening one or more joint meetings of the PC and Forum for Security Cooperation with the specific objective of helping the Chairmanship and its representatives in Minsk to frame the principal issues that need to be resolved and some time-lines within the overall deadline set on 12 th February. The sequencing and content of such meetings could be prepared by the chair, at least to some degree, to ensure that the main points are covered within the time available. Two other innovations might also be considered: opening such a meeting to the media so as to generate a constructive interest in the peace process; and convening what we call the Prep Com or preparatory committee immediately following the formal meeting so as to allow for an informal interactive follow-up discussion on some of the questions raised. All this presupposes that Minsk is fully supported by the 57 participating States; and it would depend on a kind of gentleman s agreement to focus a particular day s work on solving problems and not on direct appeals to public opinion over the heads of the other dialogue partners. A second step that could be taken sooner rather than later perhaps at the informal high-level meeting on 10th July is to agree in principle to extend the Helsinki +40 process into 2016, when Germany will hold the chairmanship of the OSCE. It may not be necessary to change the name of the process: stopping the clock is an old CSCE tradition. What is more important is to narrow down the agenda so as to focus on the concepts of dialogue and engagement. Could we use a period of six months to a year to identify in broad terms the subjects that will define our relationships and responsibilities in the OSCE region if progress on Minsk allows us to move forward? This does not mean reviewing or adapting OSCE principles or the balance across the dimensions. There is room for creative thinking within the parameters we have. By creative thinking I mean thinking of which the potential impact might constitute a counterweight to the negative forces that threaten our region. We need to acknowledge that to focus on a handful of niche areas in which our organization is deemed to enjoy comparative advantage does not constitute dialogue or engagement for present purposes. 6

In the first dimension, a dialogue on military doctrines might lead us to question some current conceptions of security. The consequences of military action are less predictable the longer the time-scale in question and the wider the area within which the consequences are measured. Today, with hybrid warfare, governments use disinformation, anonymous attacks on infrastructure, and other forms of subversion to disrupt the narrative that holds another society together. A restored relationship with an opponent, such as the just war theory has always presupposed, is becoming more difficult to envisage. Proliferation, including the proliferation of small arm and light weapons, creates further problems for the traditional conception of a military equation. Five years ago, when it was hoped that the Astana Summit might launch a new action plan in the OSCE, countering post-crisis economic challenges was one of the priorities of the then Chairmanship. There is room for a deeper dialogue on ways to strengthen economic connectivity in the OSCE region. Circumstances permitting, the participating States may share an interest in examining some of the more ambitious proposals that have been advanced in this area. The principle that human rights and democracy in one OSCE state are the concern of all has been fundamental to the CSCE and the OSCE since the 1970s and underlies the work of the High Commissioner for National Minorities and the other institutions and executive structures. Nevertheless, there is room for a discussion on priorities, on the most appropriate mechanisms, and on the relevance of third dimension principles for the good governance agenda in the second dimension on which Ireland put special emphasis in 2012. I do not argue that the major subjects identified within the Helsinki +40 process will necessarily fall to be negotiated or resolved within the OSCE. It is more a matter of situational awareness, to use that term again: establishing the coordinates of where we are. We would come to see, I think, that peace depends on a constellation of factors interacting on one another in different ways which is the insight that underlies the original CSCE conception of balance among the three baskets or dimensions. Our guiding objective should be set in a functional way, in terms of working towards frameworks of governance for the betterment of peoples lives. In this way, freedom of conscience, the free flow of information, the rule of law, and respect for human rights will come to be more widely recognised as important pillars of peace. In OSCE language, we will see more clearly that the first, second and third dimensions are complementary. In parallel with the effort to develop a deeper dialogue among the participating States, it would make sense for Helsinki +40 to begin to tackle some of the institutional issues on which the future of the OSCE depends. We face a wide range of questions. Some would say that establishing a legal personality for the OSCE is the most important question of all. Others would focus on the capacity of the secretariat, in particular the difficulty it might face in future if we need to generate a peace operation on a scale larger than the SMM. Arguably the future of peace operations and the legal status of the OSCE are linked questions. 7

By way of argument, I would suggest as a first step looking towards innovations that might serve as the counterpart in institutional terms of a more realistic geopositioning of the OSCE. We might begin, therefore, with the OSCE s interaction with other organisations and institutions. This question has been on the OSCE s agenda since the adoption of a Platform for Cooperative Security at Istanbul in 1999. In 2012, the Irish Chairmanship commissioned a report on the OSCE s relationship with other international organisations. The OSCE is the most evolved regional security organization in the sense of Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. The Secretary-General of the UN is encouraging regional organisations to step up their efforts to coordinate and cooperate more effectively. The SMM benefits from UN support and advice. The OSCE cooperates with the UN on counter-terrorism and may become a platform for the participating States to contribute to the post-2015 sustainable development goals. In this gathering dedicated to European studies, I d like to underline that in European terms the OSCE is quite a small organisation much smaller even than the Council of Europe or the OECD and a minnow (as we say in English) compared to the European Union. The regular OSCE budget, 141 million euro, is less than the technical adjustments made each year to the UN budget. During the Irish Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2012, our Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Eamon Gilmore pointed out that the entire annual budget of the OSCE with its twenty executive structures is less than the cost of a single combat aircraft. Partly as a result of both widening and deepening in the EU, the OSCE has become much less influential in the affairs of our continent than the European Union. The number of OSCE participating States who are members of the EU has risen since 1975 from 9 to 28. Taking into account candidate countries and the like-minded, the EU often speaks in the Permanent Council for more than two-thirds of the 57 OSCE participating States. We in the European Union have a concept of shared citizenship and a common future that goes well beyond the solidarity expected among participating States in the OSCE. We invest more time and resources on the direct EU relationship with individual third countries that are participating States of the OSCE than on the forum of the OSCE itself. I make these points about scale because it means that relatively small steps by us in the European Union - more Ministerial time, a bit more money, a more creative agenda more attention, perhaps, from networks like Europaeum - can make a significant difference in Vienna. I believe that post-ukraine, the European Union is already beginning to develop a more rounded vision of EU/OSCE relations. The forthcoming German and Austrian chairmanships of the OSCE are a sign of this. Many of the issues that arise are quite detailed including the access of OSCE executive structures to EU funding. The Council of Europe is traditionally more strongly supported by the Brussels institutions than the OSCE and has maintained a fairly large liaison team in Brussels for many years. The question arises of establishing a similar but smaller OSCE contact point in Brussels. New York and Brussels each have their own specificity I do not mean to equate the UN with the EU. To develop customised OSCE presences in these and perhaps one or two other important centres might require an increase of a percentage point in the 8

OSCE budget. That has political benefits zero nominal growth, which has become too facile a slogan, would be tempered for a tangible benefit. A further political benefit is that in establishing contact points in Brussels and New York we would demonstrate that the OSCE is not, as some of its critics allege, an organisation that exists only East of Vienna. Finally, the crisis in Ukraine would seem to prove that the OSCE should remain a field-based organisation, capable of common action. For reasons to do with a perceived stigma, our field operations have been contested in recent years by some of the host countries. To develop new forms of field presence, either by a consensus decision or through the Secretary-General implementing existing mandates, would constitute an important political signal that field activity remains part of the OSCE s DNA. A further step, requiring only a minimal increase in the budget, would be to strengthen the capacity of the secretariat to act as a hub for sharing best practice: the field missions can do more to promote good governance if more support is available from Vienna. You in Europaeum know better than me that we need a European vision adequate to the generosity and energy of the young. Effective deliberation in the face of new challenges is what the young generation expects, and this requires us to push out the boundaries of disciplines such as international relations, political science, and economics and to introduce new elements. Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements that first create a de facto solidarity. It is an open question whether these words of Robert Schumann might one day come into play in the development of a security community in the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian space a question or discernment that in terms of the two cultures belongs like so many other important discernments more to the humanities than to science. Perhaps as a first step to meeting the expectations of the young we need to acknowledge Shelley s argument in The Defence of Poetry that not all forms of reasoning are calculating and scientific and not all ideas lend themselves to a mathematical proof. One way or another, I hope that the OSCE and Europaeum will remain natural allies in the service of our common European homeland. 9