NEWS ANALYSIS: OSCE - it’s mostly about Russia

Political clock cannot be pushed forward

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By Kari Huhta
     
      The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe is often a useful for measuring what is possible in international relations at any given time.
      At the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in Helsinki, the answer was that not much is possible in Europe today.
      This was not the only result of the meeting, but it probably was the most important. The silhouette of international relations has been hazy over in recent months, and now the outlines became a bit clearer.
      The most important, and most frequently repeated reason for the uncertainty is the war between Georgia and Russia that took place in early August.
      Another reason is the international diplomacy that followed the war. In it, various initiatives and proposals have caused confusion and rushing around, which might have been mistaken for progress.
     
In Helsinki it was seen that a very short time had passed since the war in Georgia, and that the situation is not yet ready for the kind of progress that Finland was hoping for during its year chairing the OSCE.
      The Helsinki meeting was held too early, in a way.
      A month ago Finland began its attempt to get the meeting to approve a common political declaration.
      Considering the pace of recent events, that is a long time, and it could not be clear at that time, what possibilities would ultimately exist.
     According to nearly all assessments, the attempt to reach a political declaration was a good effort. In the attempt, Finland tried to avert all of the traditional pitfalls of the OSCE.
      Finally, when the first corrected version of the third draft failed for lack of unanimity on Friday morning, it was seen that in politics, only the possible is possible.
     
On the basis of a single reading the text does not appear to be very upsetting. The 56 member states of the OSCE would have committed themselves again to values that they have committed to many times before.
      In addition, however, Russia would have had to accept the obligations of the treaty on limiting conventional weapons, which it has frozen, and to endorse the strengthening of OSCE observers in the entire conflict area of Georgia.
      This would have required progress in solving these problems earlier, or somewhere else. No such progress had occurred, so the declaration failed over opposition from Russia.
     
It became quite clear again that ultimately, the OSCE is all about Russia.
      The Helsinki meeting was a place where Russia was able to put forward, in a slightly detailed manner, its demands for a new security policy order to a big group of other countries, including the United States.
      The aftermath will focus on what the proposals put forward in Helsinki by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov really mean, and how the answers should be interpreted.
     
One first impression is that the security initiatives of Russia are not the work of a systematic heir to the great red machine, it revealed considerable confusion.
      Time and time again, ever since last spring, Russian leaders have given assurances that the details of the blan carrying the name of President Dmitri Medvedev will soon come out.
      This did not happen even now. There was just an announcement of a plan and the main principles.
      One of the most interesting lessons to come from the Helsinki meeting was that if the ranks of the West are often confused, things do not seem to be exactly in order in Moscow either.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.12.2008


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Stubb regrets failure to reach declaration at OSCE meeting (8.12.2008)

KARI HUHTA / Helsingin Sanomat
kari.huhta@hs.fi