Next year, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE ) will celebrate its 50th anniversary. Last year, after months of wrangling, its 57 people meeting in Malta managed to agree on a fresh management team.
This is a significant milestone because the OSCE has been without permanent command since the end of the previous secretary general and senior officers ‘ terms in early September. Then again, given that this involved obtaining the consent of Russia and Ukraine, as well as their particular allies and partners,
The OSCE’s new leadership team includes former Turkish envoy Feridun Sinirlioğlu as its secretary standard, and Maria Telalian, mind of the legal section in the Grecian foreign ministry, as director of the individual rights office.
Christophe Kamp, the present French ambassador to the OSCE, may serve as the organization’s high commissioner for minorities, while Jan Braathu, a Norway who has led the organization’s Serbian vision since January 2021, will be its head of press freedom.
This means the OSCE command, for the next three centuries, will be made up entirely from NATO people. Both Russia’s support for this list of candidates and Malta’s decision to renounce an alternate plan that held the OSCE’s rotating seat in 2024 are amazing.
Its recommendation included Kamp and Braathu, but also named the original Macedonian foreign secretary, Igli Hasani, as a possible secretary general, and Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, current Greek ambassador to the OSCE, as nominee for great commissioner.
Both were eventually dropped, largely due to the conviction by Greece and Turkey on their two simultaneously chosen individuals, Sinirlioglu and Telalian.
This indicates that the participating claims are generally more pragmatist, but it doesn’t cover up the organization’s severe flaws. These became clear during the harrowing claims made by foreign officials at the annual supervisory committee meeting in Malta on December 5 and 6 during the period.
Most of these disputes were, of course, about the Russian anger against Ukraine. Russia’s foreign secretary, Sergey Lavrov, accused the West of ignoring what he called the fact that the” Nazi government in Kyiv has, since 2017, adopted a series of rules that exterminate the Russian language in all realms”.
His US equivalent, Antony Blinken, responded by calling out Lavrov’s “tsunami of propaganda”. Blinken thoroughly quotes from Vladimir Putin’s lengthy list of statements that refute the existence of a Russian condition and population.
As was visible from a range of different claims during the ministerial council proceedings, there is no empty support for Russia’s place – except from Belarus. However, an east-west split remains.
The Russian anger was condemned without a doubt by the European Union and all of its member state. But others – Armenia, for example – just frequently referred to the importance of OSCE concepts, without mentioning Russia’s infraction of them.
Russia has made a significant investment in different global conferences over the past few years as part of its effort to alter the existing world order because of its relative isolation in the OSCE. Lavrov, so, used the opportunity to notice the “mutually valuable cooperation” within the framework of several other global bodies.
However, their entire success in advancing Russian passions is in question. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS are probably the most cutting-edge initiatives. However, China dominates these groups. They serve Beijing’s interests initially and Moscow’s a distant following, at best.
By virtue of its 57 participating says, the OSCE is the largest local security institution, and it is also the only one in which Russia and the West frequently communicate.
Lavrov might have remarked that” the OSCE only exists when there is consensus and as long as each state has guarantees that its interests are taken into account.”
However, this should not be seen as a threat to Russia leaving the organization as much as an acknowledgment that the Kremlin has few, if any, viable options to play a significant role in the reform of the European security order.
Part of the solution
Meanwhile, there are high hopes that the incoming Trump administration will prioritize pursuing a resolution of the Ukraine conflict. The OSCE ministerial council erupted in a discussion about the organization’s future role in Ukraine.
The OSCE has a long history in Ukraine and faces a number of opportunities and challenges in supporting the country’s post-war recovery, reintegration and EU accession.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, specifically acknowledged that” the OSCE should play a role in the implementation of the peace formula” advocated by Ukraine. Among the ten points of this plan, the unconditional withdrawal of all Russian forces from territory illegally occupied since 2014 remains Kyiv’s most important, and so far non-negotiable, demand.
Consequently, Sybiha was also unequivocal that there should be no return to the division of Europe into spheres of influence – as there was after the February 1945 , Yalta conference, which ushered in the Cold War, or the , Minsk Accords , of September 2014 and February 2015. In February 2022, Minsk established a flimsy ceasefire that was repeatedly broken before it finally fell apart.
Despite its inherent risks, a deal that rewards the Kremlin for its aggression is increasingly likely given the incoming Trump administration’s strong push for it.
For the time being, a US-mandated ceasefire in Ukraine could bring about a new era of cold war and stability on the continent. However, it also emphasizes that the OSCE and its participating states may have ensured the organization’s operational and administrative survival, but the same cannot be said about the European security order that it is supposed to protect.
Stefan Wolff is professor of international security, University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko, professor of international relations, Jean Monnet Professor of European Security, National University Odesa Law Academy
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.