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Shaping a security community

István Gyarmati (Professor and President of the Center for Democracy Public Foundation in Budapest) opens the first panel session of the OSCE Security Days conference noting the increasing division between East and West but also underlines that there is less substance in trans-Atlantic relations.  OSCE has been important in putting forward a broad concept of security, now including transnational threats.  There are increasing challenges to democracy even in Europe.  Francis Fukuyama notes that the crisis of democracy is due in part to shrinkage of the middle class.

Heather Conley of CSIS asks how the OSCE can be effective.  The OSCE needs to be on the side of the global political awakening.  She offers a SLOT analysis:

• Strengths:  The OSCE has institutions concerned with conflict prevention and resolution, press freedom and minorities that are well-adapted to the current situation.
• Limitations:  The OSCE is too widely spread.  Needs to focus to excel.  The economic dimension is not strong.  Is the political military dimension strong, or should it yield to other organization?
• Opportunities:  OSCE can help with democratization, especially in free and tolerant media.  Combating discrimination and promoting tolerance will be important even within Europe.
• Threats:  There is a sense of drift, lack of political will, dispersion of effort, need for consensus.

Here are things the OSCE can do:

1. Promoting tolerance and non-discrimination in an era of social media and economic crisis.
2. Exploring freedom of the media.  OSCE may not be the best vehicle for cybersecurity.
3. Strengthening civil society, with a focus on European youth, who are alienated.
4. Resolving conflict.  OSCE needs to make sure it is not part of the problem, and distinct from the UN and EU.
5. Monitoring mission.  But how does it differentiate itself?
6. Strengthening linkage to Mediterranean partners.  But beware of distraction from primary goals.

Igor Yurgens, Director of the Institut Sovremenogo Razvitiya, opens underlining that we are living in an unusally safe world.  OSCE is not much of a player on security or economy.  It should beef up on economic issues.  It is already important to democracy and human rights, which is where it should concentrate its efforts.  Frozen conflicts are a major issue, because that is where trust is lost (trans-Dniester, Nagorno-Karabakh, Georgia).  There is no substitute for civil society engagement.  He worked for 15 years on reconciliation with Latvia, engaging civil society and business.  This is the kind of effort that is needed:  nongovernmental organizations, experts and business can do more than diplomats.  OSCE should create a “network of the willing.”

Professor Alyson Bailes of the University of Iceland focuses on transnational non-military threats.  Common exposure to these threats does not necessarily mean common experience.  Economic instability, terrorists, cyberthreats, natural disasters vary a good deal across the OSCE.  Not everyone has security forces that they trust, or security forces from neighbor countries that they would trust.  Nor is political will necessarily there to respond to other countries’ problems.  The legal basis may be lacking, even within the European Union.  The OSCE cannot fix all this.  It has limits to its funding, limits to its expertise, and limits to its legal authority. The problems often extend beyond the OSCE area or strike only a part of the OSCE area.  Other organizations may be more appropriate.

What can OSCE do?  Analysis, development of norms, a clearing house for expertise.  OSCE is a relatively privileged area that can set a good model.

A Georgia representative  underlines OSCE’s weakness in the security dimension.  Inviolability of borders and respect for human rights were the pillars of the Helsinki agreement.  The former is obviously a problem for Georgia, 20% of whose territory is occupied by another power.  OSCE as an organization is still strong on human rights, but not all member states welcome that focus.  Are transnational threats attracting attention because they are easier to deal with than the human rights issues that remain important in some OSCE member states?

A Ukrainian representative from an institute for research puts emphasis on OSCE values and civil society engagement.  The Polish ambassador to the OSCE  notes there is pressure on all multilateral institutions, which are having difficulty meeting challenges like youth unemployment.  Core contributions of the OSCE have been conceptual innovations in response to new challenges, including engagement of civil society.  Gyarmati notes a tweet that identifies OSCE’s search for easy transational issues as a mistake.  The U.S. amabassdor underlines the OSCE role in promoting security transparency and confidence, including confidence building measures in the cybersecurity area.

The Canadian ambassador says three quarters of the OSCE iceberg is in the field, Warsaw and The Hague.  Vienna is a hub for expertise on convential arms control.  Shouldn’t we underline the early warning and mediation functions outside Vienna?  The French ambassador underlines that OSCE does not exist in isolation and needs to coordinate with other organizations.  Shaping the security environment is a goal that extends beyond the OSCE.  A German foreign ministry official, noting the safer security environment, asks how OSCE can preserve and improve it.  OSCE has competitive advantage in arms control and disarmament.  In cybersecurity, OSCE can develop confidence building measures.  The Turkish ambassador underlines the value added of a comprehensive security approach that unites East and West.

Conley emphasizes networks in civil society and business.  Yurgens welcomes the idea of OSCE accrediting civil society and thinktanks so that they can be heard by their governments. OSCE should also welcome the professional peacekeeping capacity of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).   Bailes recognizes the importance of resolving the basic security issues but also thinks it is possible to sometimes focus on “easier” issues.  CSTO should be heard at OSCE.

What good is the OSCE?

I’m at the Organization for Security and Cooperation’s “Security Days” conference in Vienna (Austria, not Virginia) today.  This is an effort to open up discussion of OSCE’s future to broader than the usual governmental participation.  OSCE’s origins are in the Helsinki agreement of 1975, which at the time represented an important breach in what we termed then the Iron Curtain.  I’ll speak later in the day on reconciliation as a possible new vision for the organization, which is feeling a bit lacking in this department 24 years after the fall of the Berlin wall.

Ambassador Eoin O’Leary, representing the current chair of the OSCE, opens with emphasis on unresolved security problems and new challenges like terrorism and organized crime, which have to be resolved in an atmosphere of financial stringency.  He is doubtful an overall vision is what is needed.  OSCE needs to solve concrete problems, as it did in Kosovo recently by arranging voting by Serbs in the presidential elections.  Consensus is not always the right way to go–it leads to the lowest common denominator.

Former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, now president of the Foreign Policy and United Nations Association of Austria, underlines the financial crisis, which has relegated security concerns to secondary priority.  There is a need to understand the added value of our security organizations.  The big problem is lack of trust.  There is the re-emergence of separate security communities in the West and the East.  The need is to focus on what unites, not divides.  There are both traditional and new, trans-national challenges.  He emphasizes the role of robots, which make it easier to start conflicts and harder to end them.

We need a bridge to future world governance, built on regional structures.  The OSCE is a natural for building trust in the Euro-atlantic space.  It needs a roadmap to 2015, when OSCE will celebrate its 40th anniversary in Helsinki.  He suggests in particular a code of conduct for state behavior in cyberspace.  He also emphasizes the importance of adapting conventional arms control to 21st century requirements.  Frozen conflicts are a big obstacle to progress in the OSCE area:  trans-Dniester is on the way to resolution, but Nagorno-Karabakh remains a problem, as does Georgia, where the OSCE mission should be deployed in the whole territory.

OSCE has done well to appoint three women as heads of mission this year.  It needs to keep its focus on pluralism and conflict resolution.  Religion is exploited in many situations where the underlying issues are really not religious.  Religion can also have a positive influence.  OSCE can play a positive role in North Africa and Afghanistan.  Mongolia is interested in joining.  Should there be an Asian Pacific version of Helsinki?

The 150 million euros that the OSCE costs represent a minimal expense.  It has lost one third of its budget during the last decade.  There is no good reason to continue in this direction:  OSCE can and should add far more value than its expenses.

That’s the end of the opening session.  Next up:  Shaping a Security Community:  Thematic and Geographic Issues Within a Comprehensive Security Agenda (where do they get so many words?).