Mid-life crisis?

• Author: de Brichambaut, Marc Perrin
• Position: Effectiveness of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe - Organization overview

DOES THE OSCE still matter for United States? The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), like its predecessor, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), has never gone down that well with the American public and opinion-makers. Before President Gerald Ford traveled in 1975 to sign the Helsinki Final Act, William Satire wrote an article for The New York Times headlined "Jerry, Don't Go." And Satire was not alone in criticizing the administration for its seeming acceptance of the Soviet Union's desire to obtain recognition of the status quo that emerged in Europe after the Second World War. Many observers in the United States thought that the Final Act would not serve American interests; few believed that its decalogue of principles, including those on human rights, would be respected by the Soviet Union.

In the end, the CSCE outlasted its skeptics and outperformed its critics. Although the conference and its review meetings did not catalyze reform in the Soviet Union or bring down the Berlin Wall, it was an important part of the story of the Cold War's end. The conference quickly took a special place in the long-standing U.S foreign policy objective of locking Moscow into a process of engaging on issues related to fundamental freedoms with the long-term aim of eventually building a "Europe whole and free and at peace."

The CSCE mattered, and the OSCE still matters for U.S. interests. In the 1990s, the OSCE was a key instrument for supporting the transition to democracy underway in the former Soviet bloc countries. Now we are witnessing a slowdown of this process in the OSCE area and the rise of differences between states on the direction of the organization. The OSCE must adapt once again to new realities.

LET US determine first what the OSCE is not. The OSCE is not a non-governmental organization dedicated solely to building democratic institutions. Nor is it a United Nations Development Program-like framework for undertaking multifarious projects. The OSCE is neither a military alliance nor an economic union. It is an association of states and their peoples, united around the aim of building a democratic and integrated continent that is free of war and conflict, where all communities and individuals live in freedom, prosperity and security.

The strength of the OSCE today lies in three interwoven features. First, the OSCE is the most inclusive forum spanning the transatlantic and Eurasian areas, bringing together a collection of states that stretches across the three continents of the northern hemisphere. Every Thursday morning in the Hofburg (the imperial palace which was the setting for the Congress of Vienna), 56 ambassadors meet to discuss long-standing issues and debate new questions. The enlargement of NATO and the EU has made the OSCE all the more important as the only organization that bridges what appear to some as new dividing lines.

Second, the OSCE has developed a solid set of institutions that play a daily role in managing tensions and creating trust among participating states--through the Secretariat in Vienna, the quiet diplomacy of the High Commissioner for National Minorities or the multiple activities of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and of the Representative on the Freedom of the Media. Nineteen field activities, which absorb around two-thirds of the OSCE budget (a proportion far higher than in other international organizations), are deployed in 17 countries. The field operations have become important vehicles for assisting states in capacity-building for the rule of law as well as in...