News.Kyiv.Me.

By Paul Taylor

PARIS, Nov 9 (Reuters) – Even as tension in Ukraine mounts
anew, veteran diplomats are starting to think quietly about a
way out of the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold
War.

It may seem a poor time to imagine a revamped security
architecture for Europe when a frail ceasefire in eastern
Ukraine is violated daily, raising the stakes in another “frozen
conflict” in the post-Soviet space surrounding Russia.

The United States and the European Union have imposed three
waves of sanctions on Moscow over its annexation of Crimea and
support for pro-Russian separatists in southeast Ukraine.

Yet despite President Vladimir Putin’s diatribes against the
West, neither Russia nor Europe has an interest in a long-term
confrontation that has already damaged both sides’ economies and
could undermine stability across eastern Europe.

So wise heads such as former German ambassador Wolfgang
Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, and Igor
Yurgens, chairman of the Institute for Contemporary Development
in Moscow, who is close to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, are
scouring the diplomatic handbook for a possible exit.

While Ischinger calls Russia’s behaviour in Ukraine
unacceptable and supports sanctions, he believes a strengthened
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe could be a
vehicle for eventually moving beyond the crisis.

In the short run, he wants an international contact group
made up of Russia, the United States, the European Union and the
Ukrainian government to oversee implementation of the ceasefire
accords signed in Minsk in September between Ukraine and the
pro-Russian rebels.

In the longer term, he says Serbia, the incoming chairman in
office of the OSCE for 2015, and Germany, declared candidate to
chair the 57-state organisation in 2016, should work to develop
a new charter on European security.

“The objective should be to strengthen both rules and
institutions, including the OSCE, and to review such projects as
the 2008 Medvedev security treaty proposal,” Ischinger said.

Under Medvedev’s plan, outlined weeks before a brief war
between Russia and Georgia, no nation or alliance operating in
the Euro-Atlantic region would be entitled to strengthen its own
security at the cost of other nations or organisations.

Yurgens, who has criticised Putin’s policy in Ukraine, said
the Medvedev initiative deserved a more constructive response
than it had received.

The West brushed off the proposal at the time because it
seemed a blatant attempt to give Russia a veto over decisions by
the U.S.-led NATO alliance, such as admitting new members or
deploying U.S. missile defences in Europe.

Putin has since taken the opposite route with unilateral
military action in Crimea and by establishing a Eurasian Union,
including Belarus and Kazakhstan, as a Russian-centred
counterweight to the European Union.

The struggle for Ukraine is precisely over Kyiv’s choice to
move towards the EU rather than join that Eurasian Union.

CHILD OF DETENTE

If some statesmen are looking to the OSCE now, it is because
it emerged from a previous era of bloc rivalry to provide a
framework for limiting and channelling geopolitical competition.

Created at a 1975 pan-European summit during a period of
detente in the East-West conflict, the Helsinki Final Act of the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe enshrined key
ground rules including sovereignty, territorial integrity and
chapters on human rights and economic cooperation.

It set a framework for talks that eventually led to a treaty
limiting conventional armed forces in Europe, with
confidence-building measures such as prior notice of military
exercises and the right to send observers to them.

When the Cold War ended, 34 nations solemnly signed the
Charter of Paris for a New Europe, codifying commitments to
sovereignty, territorial integrity but also democracy, human
rights, the rule of law and economic liberty.

“We need to create the conditions for some repeat operation
of the Paris Charter of 1990,” Ischinger said, noting that Putin
had praised the positive role of the OSCE in the Ukraine crisis.

The document pledged “a new quality in our security
relations while fully respecting each other’s freedom of choice
in that respect”. That was taken in the West as an acceptance by
Moscow that former Soviet bloc states were free to join NATO and
the European Union if they chose.

However after 12 central European states joined NATO, Putin
sought to draw a red line against any further eastward expansion
of the alliance to include Ukraine or Georgia. Russian diplomats
have praised the example of Finland, which remained neutral and
friendly towards Moscow in security terms while pursuing
economic integration into Europe.

In Western eyes, Moscow’s military seizure of Crimea was a
flagrant breach of OSCE principles. In Moscow’s view, it was a
response to the wishes of the overwhelmingly ethnic Russian
population, and a move to prevent its Crimean naval base of
Sevastopol from falling into NATO’s hands.

The Ukraine conflict has reminded governments of the utility
of the OSCE, the only security forum connecting all European and
North American states. At best it serves bridge-building and
face-saving. At worst it is a talking shop paralysed by having
to take decisions by unanimity.

It performs tasks such as observing elections and monitoring
ceasefires, but Moscow barred OSCE observers from Crimea.

How a revised European security charter could stabilise the
countries between Russia and NATO is unclear. Many Western
officials privately acknowledge Crimea is lost, although their
governments will not accept that officially.

The West is unlikely to formally renounce letting Ukraine
and Georgia into NATO one day if they meet the criteria and want
to join. But many Western officials now acknowledge that will be
a distant day, if ever.

Ischinger, who served for more than a decade with
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German foreign minister who was
a tireless promoter of the OSCE over deep U.S. suspicions, said
there was a precedent for dealing with such problems.

“The Helsinki Final Act didn’t settle the final status of
Germany or the Baltic states,” he said, “But it did spell out
that they couldn’t be settled by force.”

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Share or comment on this article

Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.