OSCE Shows Eurasian Realignment

Kazakhstan 2010

Summary

The informal Ministerial Conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held at the Ak-Bulak resort near Almaty, Kazakhstan on July 17, 2010 laid the ground for a shift towards the integration of Eurasia into a broader system of security governance and the re-ordering of priorities of the region’s States.

Analysis

The OSCE talks have shown a consensus on the need to revitalize the organization which has been widely regarded as paralyzed since the 1990’s, and which could become a major player in security governance in Eurasia. Its nature as a multi-regional and multi-sectoral organization encompassing the three “dimensions” of human, politico-military, and socio-economic cooperation places it well to acquire a greater role. The upcoming OSCE Summit will be a crucial test for the orientations emerged at Almaty.

As the chances of an agreement to even hold a summit were considered meagre prior to the Ministerial, this decision bodes well for the prospects to resolve the OSCE’s deadlock. Hence, we should expect increased levels of coordination among the organization’s key stakeholders, namely Germany, Russia, and the United States. Conversely, those players which have traditionally kept a low profile in the OSCE, but have the ambition and a legitimate claim to be among the movers and shakers of global governance, should get their preferences straight and pan out a strategy for the upcoming summit.

A Likely Agenda  

As seen at Ak-Bulak, the Kazakh chairmanship has been instrumental in engineering the eventual repositioning and retuning of the OSCE, favouring progress on various files, and successfully lobbying for hosting its first Summit in eleven years, which will be held in Astana on 1-2 December 2010. The following issues, which surfaced at Ak-Bulak are likely to be key items of the Astana Summit’s agenda.

A new European security framework to succeed to the Conventional Forces Europe Treaty is pending. The ministerial sought to provide an informal setting to move forward on the Corfu process started by the Greek Chairmanship the year before as the venue of choice for discussing the matter, which continues to oppose Russia to its European partners bringing negotiations to an impasse.

A solution to Conflicts in the Caucasus is beset by the difficulty of identifying a solution in line with the Helsinki principles of equal rights of the peoples and self-determination, while at the same time satisfying the interests of the opposite sides at the governmental level. The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries held a meeting with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the sidelines of the Ministerial in an attempt to renew efforts to find a lasting solution to the longstanding Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Though the initial reaction came rather late, and tangible results remain to be seen, the crisis in Southern Kyrgyzstan has favoured an alignment of interests among some of the OSCE’s main stakeholders. Moreover, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization predictable coyness and both Russia’s and the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s refusal to heed the Kyrgyz Government’s request for assistance have left a wide gap in the area of conflict management. The German Foreign Minister’s declaration that the OSCE is the international organization to address the Kyrgyz problem well sums up the mood prevailing in the OSCE community.

But the Kyrgyz crisis provided a catalyst to forge a broader consensus for an expanded role of the OSCE in conflict management beyond the specific case in point, positioning it to emerge as the key multilateral player in central Asian security. The OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Suadabayev’s remarks at the Geneva discussions on the need to improve “incident prevention” [1] further suggest the Chairmanship sees this as an area for future institutional development. However, given the still unresolved hurdles to the deployment of the 52 member police advisory group, we should expect the Summit to follow up on the decision taken at the ministerial level.

Dovetailing on this, the OSCE seems poised to also follow through on the goal, identified by the Kazakh chairmanship, to boost cooperation with Afghanistan. While the war-torn country has enjoyed the largely formal status of OSCE Partner for Cooperation since 2004, a call to increase assistance was made at the 2007 Madrid conference. The Ministerial has galvanized consensus on the desirability of such kind of involvement, with particular emphasis on law enforcement and the maintenance of order. Saudabayev further specified the OSCE vision at the July 20 International Conference on Afghanistan in Kabul, emphasising also socio-economic rehabilitation and post-conflict restoration.

Moreover, various sides have called for a renewed agreement on norms. This touches upon both:
The (geo)-political underpinning of the organization, with particular reference to its area of responsibility, given the chairmanship’s goal to turn it into the pivot between Euro Atlantic and Eurasian security.
The overall balance among the three dimensions, for which the Secretary General has invoked a comprehensive review, [2] is also on the table. In line with an ongoing trend, the Chairmanship has taken further steps in diluting and rebranding the human dimension, in favour of a clearer emphasis being laid on the politico-military dimension.

Prospects for the Region

The issues on the table suggest that the OSCE is at a crossroads. While some are ongoing, long-term problems, others are new and emerging ones. Hence, the coming years are likely to see a renewed and increased centrality, if not an actual role for the OSCE, given the strong commitment that member states have expressed in revamping the organization. In the face of the challenges outstanding, the Kazakh Chairmanship’s goal of transforming the OSCE in a pivot between the Euro-Atlantic and Eurasian security systems may well be the vision under which the organization will see new life.

A newfound prominence of the OSCE might marginalize the CSTO and the SCO, while at the same time, squeezing China out of Central Asia’s security affairs. However, in spite of the shared sense of a need for momentous changes, and the display of consensus, friction can also be expected to increase considering the divisive nature of many of the issues at hand, including the question of normative consensus, pitting the Western bloc at odds with an increasingly assertive Eastern one. Therefore, the Astana Summit may just result in the continuation of the status quo, cloaked in minor cosmetic reforms at the management and programme levels.

It presently remains uncertain, whether the forthcoming summit will usher in a ‘Spirit of Astana’ rewriting the organization’s script and fostering a new era of cooperation, or simply exacerbate discord and internal conflict. However, if properly handled, the present critical juncture might define a more open international environment in Eurasia, with the OSCE becoming the site for a prospective great-power concert, tempering the more competitive configuration that the system of regional security governance currently has.

 

Sources:

[1] OSCE Charimanship- Press Release. “At Geneva Discussions, OSCE Chairmanship underlines importance of Incident Prevention and Response Mechanisms”, Geneva, 27 July 2010.

[2] OSCE Secretary General Marc Perrin de Brichambaut. Statement at the Informal Meeting of OSCE Foreign Ministers, Almaty, 16-17 July 2010.

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