OSCE Si Conflictele

Managing Conflict in Post-Cold War Eurasia:

The Role of the OSCE in Europe’s Security

‘Architecture’

P. Terrence HopmannDepartment of Political Science and Watson Institute for International Studies, Box 1970, Brown

University, Providence, RI 02912-1970, USA.

E-mail: [email protected]

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is one of themost important, but least well known, of the security institutions in the pan-European region since the end of the Cold War. This essay argues that the OSCEhas a vital role to play in providing for European security that is not supplied byany other multilateral institution — NATO, the European Union, the WesternEuropean Union, the Council of Europe, or the Commonwealth of IndependentStates. The OSCE is the only organization that bridges the military and the humandimensions of security. It plays an especially important role in conflict preventionand in trying to seek negotiated solutions in regions that have experienced violentconflict since 1989. The OSCE is most effective when it works cooperatively withother multilateral institutions in the region, and it constitutes a necessary part ofthe network of interlocking institutions that have created a trans-European securityregime since the end of the Cold War.International Politics (2003) 40, 75–100. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ip.8800009

Keywords: OSCE; European security; conflict prevention; security regime

Introduction

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is aregional security organization, recognized as such under Chapter VIII of theUnited Nations Charter. Formed by the Helsinki Final Act, signed in Helsinki,Finland, on 31 July 1975, by 35 heads of state, it was known until 1995 as theConference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).1 Since thebeginning, the CSCE has defined ‘Europe’ very broadly. Its 35 originalparticipating states2 (as well as its 55 current participating states) come fromacross the entire northern hemisphere, including not only all political entitieson the European continent as geographically defined, but also the UnitedStates and Canada as well as the regions of the former Soviet Union, extendingthrough the Far Eastern portions of the Russian Federation and the CentralAsian states that emerged after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Therefore,

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OSCE insiders often refer to ‘Europe’ as extending ‘from Vancouver toVladivostok the long way around’.The CSCE was the only regional security organization to bridge the East–

West divide during the Cold War, and this history has given it a unique role toplay in the international relations of the European region since the Cold Warcame to an end in 1989. From the time negotiations opened near Helsinki in1973, the CSCE established a set of normative principles to guide securityrelations among European states. These principles played an important role inundermining the influence of authoritarian regimes in communist countriesduring the Cold War (Thomas, 2001), and they have played an equallyimportant role in defining the guiding principles of security in post-Cold WarEurasia.In addition, the Helsinki Final Act focused on three substantive areas of

activity: (1) confidence-building measures in the realm of military policy, (2)cooperation in economic, scientific and technical spheres, and (3) cooperationin activities involving the ‘human dimension’ of security, including individualhuman rights and the rights of persons belonging to minorities groups.Therefore, the OSCE has been unique because it formally links threedimensions of security usually dealt with by separate institutions: militarysecurity, economic well-being, and humanitarian principles. In practice, as theorganization has evolved, the economic dimension has declined in relativeimportance, as other institutions such as the European Union have assumed aprimary role in this field. However, the OSCE is still the only major Europeansecurity organization that links the military and human dimensions of securityat the core of its guiding principles.At the same time, the OSCE is often referred to as a ‘soft’ security

organization, because it is based on a political agreement rather than aformal treaty and also because it does not have at its immediate disposalmilitary forces to implement its decisions. To carry out its decisions,therefore, it depends heavily upon the persuasive powers of its participatingstates, on the diplomatic skills of its officials and the professional staffof its missions and field activities, and on cooperation with other institutionsthat do have access to instruments of force (Adler, 1998). To be sure, in 1992the CSCE Helsinki Summit adopted provisions to set up peacekeepingoperations with a mandate from the CSCE, but carried out in cooperationwith multilateral military alliances, such as NATO, the Western EuropeanUnion (WEU), and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — themilitary organization in which some former Soviet states loosely cooperate. Todate, the OSCE has not, however, engaged in any formal peacekeepingoperation, although a High Level Planning Group has been created to planfor possible peacekeeping. If a political settlement to the conflict in theNagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan (see below) is achieved under OSCE

P. Terrence HopmannThe OSCE in Europe’s Security ‘Architecture’

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International Politics 2003 40

auspices, a peacekeeping force might be created to verify and enforcecompliance with it.However, the OSCE has worked closely with the NATO-led peacekeeping

forces in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, and it has cooperated withCIS peacekeeping forces (mostly consisting of Russian troops) in the Republicof Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. In addition, the OSCE has beenresponsible for training and monitoring the work of civilian police forces inlocations such as Croatia and Kosovo. These cases notwithstanding, it is clearthat OSCE’s comparative advantage lies in the diplomatic, political, andhumanitarian dimensions of security rather than in the military domain. Thatis, it focuses more on education, modeling, and persuasion than on the use offorce to accomplish its mission.The bonds among OSCE participating states are based solely on a series of

politically binding agreements rather than legal treaties. As a consequence, theOSCE depends heavily upon obtaining political consensus among itsparticipating states, and it operates largely with the consent of those stateson whose territory it carries out its field activities. This requires itsrepresentatives to exercise a great deal of subtle political discretion, as nostate is legally required to have an OSCE mission operate on its territory, andmissions may be removed if they fail to retain the support of those states wherethey operate. In spite of this limitation, the political power of an organizationof 55 states, including some of the wealthiest and most powerful countries inthe world, has given the OSCE far greater access to operate in regions ofconflict than might have been expected on the basis of its limited mandate.While the organization operates largely on the basis of consensus, it has alsoadopted a procedure known as ‘consensus minus one’ in which it may actwithout the consent of one of its participating states if that state is found to beguilty of flagrant violations of the commitments undertaken as part of itsparticipation in the OSCE (1999, 28–29).Nonetheless, OSCE officials and representatives are often limited in their

ability to speak out about or take action against what many perceive to beviolations of the organization’s norms, and this often leads its critics to accusethe OSCE of failing to meet its responsibilities to uphold the highest normativestandards. However, the reality of a large, multilateral organizationrepresenting a wide range of values and viewpoints is that the OSCE and itsrepresentatives must often speak and act cautiously in an effort to minimizeconflict among its many diverse participating states.This does not mean, however, that the OSCE operates on the basis of a set of

‘minimum common denominator’ principles and policies. Consistent with itsfounding political principles, the OSCE has enlarged and changed its functionssignificantly since the Cold War came to an end in 1989. Not only has theorganization become more deeply institutionalized during this period, but it


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has also extended its normative base to include the basic principles of liberaldemocracy and the rule of law. In addition, it has assumed a wide variety ofnew functions in many of the troubled regions that have emerged in Europeand Eurasia (the former Soviet regions) after the collapse of communistregimes and the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic ofYugoslavia. These have included especially the establishment of Missions ofLong Duration and other offices and assistance groups currently in 19countries and regions where violence has threatened to break out or where ithas actually occurred (http://www.osce.org/field_activities/).3 In light of theexpanded normative foundation of the OSCE, these missions have also playedan active role in assisting transitional states to build democratic institutionsand practices, respect for human rights and the rights of persons belonging tominorities, and a culture that recognizes the importance of the rule of law andlegal process rather than violence as the primary means for resolving politicaldifferences.This essay has two purposes: The first seeks to illustrate the wide variety of

functions and activities that OSCE Missions and Field Activities haveperformed over the past decade. These examples are intended to show thecapability of the OSCE to play a significant, if low-profile role in themanagement of many conflicts that have appeared on the territory of twocollapsed, multinational states, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Thesecond seeks to evaluate the place of the OSCE within the overall contextof European security institutions, seeking to identify its comparativeadvantages and weaknesses, and to suggest ways in which it may complementthe work of other institutions without either competing with them orduplicating effort.

The Conflict Management Functions of the OSCE Since 1992

All OSCE missions are different, and their structure and function depend onthe particular mandate for every mission. The size of missions varies from onlya few individuals to about 300 persons. Larger missions may include specialistson issues such as democratization, election monitoring, rule of law, humanrights, rights of persons belonging to minorities, freedom of the media,economic and environmental affairs, and conflict resolution.Overall mission activity is coordinated by the Conflict Prevention Center,

which in turn is part of the OSCE Secretariat located in Vienna. Missionsreceive their mandates from the OSCE Permanent Council (PC) in Vienna andare responsible for reporting to the PC about their activities and accomplish-ments. Many of the specialized staff members may also coordinate their workclosely with the corresponding OSCE organ. Thus, for example, specialists in


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democratization, elections, and rule of law work with the Office of DemocraticInstitutions and Human Rights (ODIHR); specialists in human rights andrights of persons belonging to minorities coordinate with the High Commis-sioner on National Minorities (HCNM); specialists on media work closely withthe OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media; economic andenvironmental specialists work with the Coordinator of OSCE Economicand Environmental Activities; and conflict resolution specialists function intandem with the Conflict Prevention Center.4

A Head of Mission (HoM) serves as the chief officer of each mission, aposition normally held by a senior diplomat seconded by a participating state.Larger missions may also have a Deputy HoM. Missions also frequently havean administrative officer and a public affairs officer, as well as a staff oftranslators, usually furnished by the host country. The specialized staff variesin size and function according to the mandate of each particular mission. Ihave grouped the OSCE field missions and offices into five major categoriesaccording to their primary activity. However, most missions perform multipletasks, although a few have very specific mandates. For example, the majorityof missions have some individuals working on issues such as democratizationand elections, whereas some other functions depend almost entirely on thedetails of the specific mandate. For analytical purposes, I have emphasized theprimary and unique functions called for in the mandates for each mission,grouped into the following five categories:

(1) Long-term conflict prevention through democratization, strengtheninghuman rights, rule of law, and rights of persons belonging to minorities.

(2) Monitoring, early warning, and conflict prevention to head off incipientviolence.

(3) Mediation during the negotiation of cease-fires in ongoing conflicts.(4) Preventing the re-ignition of violence and assisting the resolution of

underlying issues in conflict situations.(5) Post-conflict security-building.

Below I summarize each of these activities and illustrate with a fewcases how the OSCE has performed each of these conflict managementfunctions.5

Long-term Conflict Prevention

The proposition that democracies generally do not go to war with otherdemocracies has become a widely accepted finding of recent empirical research;further, intra-state or civil conflicts are less likely to occur in societies that havewell-established procedures for the nonviolent resolution of conflicts of interestamong their citizens (Russett and Oneal, 2001, Chapter 1). Therefore, the


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establishment of democratic processes, the creation of governments of laws andnot of individuals, and processes to integrate persons belonging to minoritiesfully into the institutions of the state are together the best long-run guarantorsof peace. Examples of democratization tasks include the missions to Estoniaand Latvia, where the OSCE played a significant role on behalf of largeminorities of ethnic Russians denied citizenship rights in these Baltic States;indeed, these missions were sufficiently successful that they were closed downat the end of 2001. Further, the OSCE has embarked since 1998 upon an effortto defend civil society in Belarus against an authoritarian government that hasreversed that country’s early post-Soviet progress in the field of democratiza-tion. Although it is constantly threatened with expulsion, the OSCE Advisoryand Monitoring Group in Belarus has played a vital role in providinginternational protection for non-governmental organizations and a severelyrestricted political opposition.Problems of democratization have also arisen in the five Central Asian

states that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union with strongleaders in charge of centralized and authoritarian regimes. Therefore, in 1995an OSCE Liaison Office in Central Asia was established in Tashkent, thecapital of Uzbekistan. This effort was enlarged in 1998 with the establishmentof OSCE centers in the capitals of three other Central Asian republics:Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. (The fifth Central Asian state,Tajikistan, has a full-scale OSCE mission operating on its territory with a morespecific mandate in the field of conflict management that will be discussedbelow.) The focus of OSCE efforts in Central Asia has been on stimulatingeducation about democratization and human dimension issues. In each case,numerous seminars have been organized with local political elites and NGOs inwhich there are outside specialists on topics such as criminality and drugtrafficking, attracting foreign investment, regional environmental problems,sustainable development, and security and confidence-building measuresamong ethnic communities and with neighboring states. In addition, theOSCE has worked closely with local universities and other educationalinstitutions to try to institutionalize these topics in their curriculum (http://www.osce.org/almaty/).6

In all of these efforts, it is important to realize that democratization is anextremely difficult and long-term task even in the best of circumstances.Democracy is inherently fragile in all transitional societies, and moreimmediate measures of conflict prevention and resolution will frequently berequired in order to avoid an outbreak of violence that might set back thedemocratization process by a decade or more. The linkage of security topolitical and humanitarian concerns epitomizes the special role that the OSCEmissions have come to play in societies undergoing political transformationsince the collapse of communism.


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Prevention of Violent Outcomes in Potential Conflict Situations

A major function of the OSCE has been to prevent ‘Humpty Dumpty’ from

falling off his wall. The organization’s record in this case is mixed. However,the OSCE has often been blamed unfairly for failing to prevent conflicts. Too

often OSCE inaction was the result of the refusal by one or more of itsparticipating states to take action recommended by OSCE mission heads or

other officials such as the High Commissioner on National Minorities, that is,

by the failure to obtain the consensus that is required to take decisive action.Further, in the early post-Cold War years the OSCE did not have a sufficient

structural capacity to respond to brewing conflicts.Thus, the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were well underway

by the time the first OSCE mission of long duration was sent into the field inlate 1992, following the Helsinki Follow-on Meeting that summer. In the case

of Kosovo, the OSCE was hamstrung by the fact that it had suspended the

Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from participation in May 1992. Althoughthere were many good reasons for this action, it also had the perverse effect of

preventing the OSCE from having any access on the ground in the Kosovo

region until tensions had passed the point of no return. By the time the UnitedStates, led by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, persuaded the parties to accept

an OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission on the ground in October 1998, it wastoo late to realize a peaceful resolution of the conflict. A similar decision a year

or more earlier, however, might have prevented the bloody war and subsequent

international occupation of Kosovo, although of course it is always impossibleto prove ‘what might have happened if...’. However, it is very clear that the

OSCE, and particularly the special representative of the Chairman-in-Office,

Ambassador Max van der Stoel, provided substantial ‘early warning’ ofimpending disaster in Kosovo.7 It was the failure of key participating states —

including the United States — to take ‘early action’ in the form of activediplomacy prior to late 1998 that permitted the outcome in Kosovo to be so

violent and the subsequent task of reconstruction to be so enormous.Looking at the other side of the coin, the OSCE has contributed to the

successful resolution of potentially violent conflicts in several regions ofEurasia. Perhaps most notable is the role played by the OSCE in mediating

between nationalistic ethnic Russian politicians in Crimea and the central

government of Ukraine. Such action was critical in reaching a solution to avolatile conflict that could have easily exploded into violence. Russian

nationalists wanted to separate Crimea from Ukraine and perhaps return it

to its pre-1954 status as a part of the Russian Federation, while the Ukrainiangovernment was prepared to do anything necessary to prevent this from

happening.8 Special credit here goes to the OSCE’s first High Commissioner on

National Minorities, Ambassador Max van der Stoel, whose continuing


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intercession using problem-solving workshops, frequently referred to as‘seminar diplomacy’, played a major role in promoting a nonviolentoutcome in this potentially grave situation.9 Ambassador van der Stoel’swork was also backed up by continuous efforts of the OSCE missionmembers in both Kyiv and Simferopol to broker a solution guaranteeingsubstantial Crimean autonomy while preserving the territorial integrityof Ukraine. This effort was especially important due to the strategicsignificance of the region. A war in the mid-1990s between Russia andUkraine would have created a severe international crisis that would haveaffected the vital interests of the entire West, including the United States. Evenif handling the Crimean dispute were the only accomplishment of the OSCE inthe decade of the 1990s, this alone was worth all of the effort and resources thathave been put into the entire organization by the United States and itsEuropean allies.This is, of course, not the only significant accomplishment of the OSCE

during the 1990s. At least until 2001, the OSCE mission to Skopje (the formerYugoslav Republic of Macedonia) played an instrumental role in preventingthat former Yugoslav republic from falling into the kind of violence that hasswept across Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Of course, the resultsof those efforts were placed in doubt as violence expanded in regions ofMacedonia inhabited by large ethnic Albanian populations throughout 2001.Several factors largely beyond the control of the OSCE conspired to push thesituation in Macedonia toward the brink of violence. First, the government ofAlbania collapsed in 1997, followed by looting of most light weapons andmunitions from army storehouses — weapons that made their way intoKosovo and subsequently into Macedonia. Another factor was the removal ofUNPREDEP from the northern border regions when the Chinese, reactingnegatively to Skopje’s recognition of Taiwan, vetoed continuation of the UNforce. Finally, one saw growing ambitions of some ethnic Albanian politiciansto follow up their ‘success’ in Kosovo with a similar effort to split heavilyAlbanian-populated regions of Macedonia off from the rest of the country,perhaps eventually creating a ‘greater Albania’.Fear that violence was imminent, however, led to a rise in nationalism

among the Macedonia majority and greater restrictions on minorities,especially Albanians. At the same time, some parts of the Albanian minority,in the aftermath of the defeat of Serbian forces in neighboring Kosovo, beganto advocate separation fromMacedonia and joining with Kosovo and Albania.Their separatist ambitions were fueled by a ready availability of weapons thatcrossed the border from neighboring Kosovo. As a result, violence flared up inthe spring of 2001 between Albanians near the border areas and theMacedonian armed forces. After a cease-fire was negotiated in the OhridFramework Agreement of August 13, 2001, several units of NATO troops


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entered Macedonia to disarm the parties, following which the armed forceswere withdrawn. At the same time, the OSCE enlarged its mission inMacedonia to a total of 210 unarmed monitors, protected by some 1000soldiers from France, Germany, and Italy (http:// www.osce.org/publications/survey/survey01.htm). While its mandate remained basically unchanged,the necessity for intensive conflict prevention at the local level had beenclearly indicated by the outbreak of violence and the increased radicaliz-ation of the two communities that lay behind the violence. Recent eventsin Macedonia have seriously challenged what was previously regarded asone of the more successful preventive diplomacy missions. Nonetheless,the OSCE Spillover Monitoring Mission in Macedonia, with some timelyhelp from NATO and the continued engagement of the OSCE HighCommissioner on National Minorities, had managed by the middle of 2002to head off the escalation of violence and to prevent Macedonia fromproceeding down the violent path that had overtaken Bosnia-Herzegovinaand Kosovo.10

Cease-fire Mediation

Once violence breaks out in a country, the OSCE role has generally beenlimited. One exception, however, was the first war in Chechnya that startedwith the Russian military assault in December 1994. Shortly afterwards theOSCE PC created the OSCE Assistance Group to Chechnya, which set upoperation in Grozny in 1995. Russia, as a country that still clings to its self-image as a great power, was of course reluctant to permit any presence by amultilateral organization on its soil. Therefore, it was somewhat surprisingwhen the Russian government permitted a small OSCE ‘assistance group’ to beestablished in the very vortex of the fighting. Under the able leadership of thesecond HoM, Ambassador Tim Guldimann of Switzerland, the OSCEexpanded its activity beyond monitoring human rights violations and warcrimes and assumed a role as an active mediator between the Chechen leadersand officials in Moscow. Guldimann’s shuttle diplomacy, involving numeroustrips between Grozny and Moscow, was largely responsible for setting up themeeting at Khasavyurt between Alexander Lebed and Zelimkhan Yanderbievthat brought an end to fighting and a withdrawal of Russian troops fromChechnya in August 1996 (Hopmann, 2000b).In January 1997, the OSCE assumed the major role in preparing,

conducting, and monitoring the presidential elections in Chechnya, in whichAslan Maskhadov was elected. Nevertheless, the internal situation inChechnya quickly degenerated into anarchy, with frequent violence directedat outsiders, even those representing international humanitarian organizations.This was followed by a renewal of Russian military action against Chechnya in


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1999, after the OSCE Assistance Group had moved its offices to Moscowowing to fear about the safety of mission members if they remained inChechnya. Tragically, this also resulted in a decline of OSCE influence over theparties, and extensive efforts to re-establish a mediating role for the OSCE,undertaken at the Istanbul Summit in November 1999 by the United States andseveral other countries, failed to bring results; indeed, only in June 2001 did theOSCE Assistance Group finally return to Chechnya. This tragic outcome,however, should not cause us to overlook completely the potential for theOSCE to play an important mediating role, even in the midst of violentconflict, as it did in Chechnya in 1995–1996.

Conflict Resolution after a Cease-fire

Since the major OSCE conflict prevention functions were created after thespate of post-Cold War violence in the early 1990s, a major focus for OSCEmissions has been the effort to broker longer-term resolution of the conflictsthat had produced the previous chain of violence. In addition, the OSCE hassought to prevent the renewal of violence in situations where serious tensionsremain. This has been the major focus of the OSCE missions in Moldova(regarding Transdniestria), Georgia (especially regarding South Ossetia and, toa lesser degree, Abkhazia where the UN has taken the lead role), Tajikistan,and the so-called Minsk Group dealing with the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.In this area, the OSCE record is clearly mixed, and there is probably no

single aspect of the work of the OSCE where performance has fallen so short ofaspirations. On the positive side of the ledger, in none of these regions haslarge-scale violence reappeared since the OSCE missions entered. In mostcases, the OSCE has played a useful role in monitoring the performance ofpeacekeeping forces, mostly from Russia, operating under a CIS umbrella. Inaddition, OSCE activities in democratization, human rights, the rule of law,refugee resettlement, and support for the rights of persons belonging tominorities have assisted local authorities in keeping tensions below the boilingpoint. Perhaps of greatest importance, in each case the OSCE has played athird-party role in keeping lines of communications open and negotiationsunderway between former belligerent factions to try to resolve some of theimportant issues underlying these conflicts. Most of these conflicts havebecome frozen in place: there is no settlement, but also no return to massviolence. These outcomes are no small accomplishment, but they also leaveopen the potential for the OSCE to improve its effectiveness at managingnegotiations to enhance its ability to bring about long-term settlement offrozen conflicts so that life in these divided states may return to somesemblance of normalcy.


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Post-conflict Reconstruction and Security-building

After episodes of significant violence, social relations within society are usuallybadly broken. Hatred, anger, and the desire for revenge become dominantemotions that often reinforce the differences that produced conflict in the firstplace. Rebuilding war-torn societies is often a long and difficult task.11 Itwould not be appropriate to expect Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks, for example,to forget about their long and bitter struggle in a few short years. Thus, one ofthe major challenges facing the OSCE has been to try to assist societies torn byviolent conflict in their efforts to rebuild. NATO and other multinationalforces can help by providing security, both for international personnel and toprevent opposing sides from resuming violence. The EU and other interna-tional financial institutions can assist by contributing desperately neededeconomic aid to rebuild infrastructure and jump-start economies so that theycan begin to grow on their own and thus reduce the poverty that so oftenbecomes a breeding ground for violence. However, in virtually all cases ofviolence in the Eurasian region, the primary responsibility for reconstructingpolitical institutions and developing a democratic political framework forresolving differences peacefully — the most difficult task these regions face —has fallen overwhelmingly on the OSCE.This activity has been the major focus of some of the largest of the OSCE

missions, including the missions in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo.It has also been the primary task of the OSCE presence in Albania, as well asan important function of the missions in Georgia and Moldova (http://www.osce.org/moldova/; http://www.osce.org/georgia/; http://www.osce.org/al-bania/). In many ways, OSCE endeavors in this category resemble those oflong-term democracy-building activities; only here these activities face theespecially difficult challenge of operating in a post-conflict situation. OSCE’sclose cooperation with other security institutions, especially with the UN, NATO,and the EU, is particularly necessary in these regions. In the effort to revive thesewar-torn societies, the OSCE cannot succeed alone, but its contribution isnonetheless essential to the successful accomplishment of this task.

Place of the OSCE in the Context of European Security Institutions

There are a plethora of multilateral institutions working in the field ofEuropean security since the end of the Cold War. Some of these overlap at leastin part with the OSCE in membership and functions; some even compete withthe OSCE to play a prominent role in conflict management in the region.Others cooperate closely with the OSCE in performing their functions, and thecoordinated effort to maintain security in the fragile regions of SoutheasternEurope and post-Soviet Eurasia. Ideally each institution should assume


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specialized functions within an overall division of labor, so that all majorfunctions required to maintain security in this region are being performed byone or another institution with a minimum of overlap and competition.Therefore, it is important to understand what functions can be performed bestby the OSCE and its missions, what may be better accomplished by otherinstitutions, and how the OSCE and other institutions may coordinate theirwork to achieve their common objectives.Unfortunately, most of the security institutions that existed in Europe when

the communist regimes collapsed were largely unprepared to deal with the newsecurity situation. Most were plagued in one way or another by their Cold Warcomposition or mission. The only surviving pan-European institution dealingwith issues of security was the Conference on Security and Cooperation inEurope (CSCE). As a consequence, the OSCE holds a special status in theoverall European security ‘architecture’. No other institution has the sameuniversal participation of all of the states in the region; no other institution hasso closely linked the human dimension of security with political–militaryfoundations of security. No other institution at the regional level has a similarmandate to work in the field of conflict management, and no otherorganization has the capacity to engage in these activities on a scopecomparable to that of the OSCE. All of these factors provide a very centralrole for the OSCE in the European security framework.This section summarizes briefly the major structures and functions of the

multilateral institutions that frequently operate in close proximity to OSCEmissions. In each case, areas of overlap are identified, emphasizing examples ofspecific contexts in which the OSCE and other institutions operate side-by-side.I will emphasize the areas where different institutions frequently coordinatetheir work with the OSCE to create a clear division of labor that enables allessential functions to be carried out with a minimum of duplication of effortand competition, as well as some instances in which cooperation thus far is lessthan might have been hoped for. I will thereby identify those activities wherethe OSCE has a clear comparative advantage relative to other institutions. Iwill also suggest ways in which the OSCE can work effectively in tandem withother institutions to enhance its effectiveness.

United Nations

The United Nations institutionally was very greatly affected by the end of theCold War, especially in the realm of security where the threat of a veto by oneor more of the permanent members was no longer a major hindrance toeffective action in response to threats to security anywhere in the world. One ofthe major new UN activities was in the field of preventive diplomacy, the samearea in which the OSCE sought to establish its credentials within the Eurasian


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region. UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali incorporated the basicconcepts of preventive diplomacy in his 1992 statement entitled An Agenda forPeace. In the period since the end of the Cold War, beginning with SecretaryGeneral Boutros-Ghali, preventive diplomacy has been identified as a principalarea of activity for the UN Secretary General and his staff of special emissaries.Thus, the function of conflict prevention has usually been performed bysenior officials of the UN based in New York or Geneva rather than bymissions permanently stationed in the field, as has generally been the casefor OSCE activity in the field of conflict prevention. The UN SecretaryGeneral frequently offers his ‘good offices’ as a framework for conciliationamong parties to a dispute. As an eminent person of wide internationalesteem, the Secretary General or one of his special representatives is oftenable to enter into conflict situations, to urge the parties to find a settlement,and to provide a third-party framework within which negotiations maytake place.The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague also offers a

framework for the judicial settlement of conflicts that have a significant legalfoundation, but it only deals with conflicts between states. The ICJ thus offersan opportunity for states to settle their differences through conciliation by thecourt or through direct arbitration, in which the court makes a ruling favor ofone party or the other. However, many UN members, including the UnitedStates, have refused to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ, so thatmost cases that appear before the court are entered voluntarily by statesseeking a peaceful resolution of their differences.The United Nations, like the OSCE, has extensive machinery in areas

such as human rights, especially focused around the UN Commissionon Human Rights, supplemented in 1993 by the creation of a HighCommissioner for Human Rights (http://www.unhchr.ch/). Further, a Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection ofMinorities has recently been established. The UN’s Department of PoliticalAffairs includes an Election Assistance Unit, which helps states to conduct andmonitor national elections. And the UN High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR) plays an active role in providing for the basic needs of refugees,especially refugees escaping from regions experiencing violence. UNHCR alsoplays an active role in assisting the return of refugees to their homes in theaftermath of violence or natural disasters. Thus, OSCE field missionsfrequently find that they are working in close proximity to representatives ofUNHCR.In short, many of the functions that have been created in the OSCE,

particularly since 1990, overlap and even duplicate functions that arealso fulfilled by organs of the United Nations. This naturally raises thequestion about when the UN is most likely to be more effective versus


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those occasions when the OSCE role should take precedence in dealing withparticular threats to international peace and security. In general, the basicprinciple has been that efforts to deal with threats to the peace should originateat the regional level before coming to the UN, but efforts to take enforcementaction should only be launched with specific authorization by the UN SecurityCouncil.Occasionally, the OSCE has entered into potential conflict situations

without explicit authorization from the UN. For example, when a Chineseveto forced the withdrawal of UNPREDEP forces deployed under a UNmandate in Macedonia, the OSCE was able to enlarge its mission on theground in partial compensation. However, in general the OSCE has sought toobtain UN authorization for all of its major activities. At the same time, theOSCE has often found that it can play a useful role by relieving anoverburdened UN from having to assume too many responsibilities for peacemaintenance in Europe, allowing it to concentrate more on other areas withoutsuch an effective regional organization, including the Great Lakes region ofCentral Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America.There have been occasional tensions on the ground when both the UN and

the OSCE have assumed responsibility for preventive diplomacy and mediationof ongoing disputes. These conflicts have been reduced over the years,however, as the two institutions increasingly have negotiated a mutuallyacceptable division of labor. For example, within the Republic of Georgia, theUN has assumed primary responsibility for monitoring Russian (formally CIS)peacekeepers along the de facto border between Georgia and Abkhazia and forassisting the negotiations between the parties to try to find a peacefulresolution for their differences. At the same time, the OSCE has taken the leadrole in performing the same functions between Georgia and the breakawayregion of South Ossetia. They also share office facilities in the same compoundin Tbilisi and often interact cooperatively on the ground.At the Budapest Summit in 1994, several governments argued for an ‘OSCE

first’ policy with respect to disputes arising within the OSCE region, in part torelieve the UN of additional burdens. However, this effort was opposed byseveral major participating states, and indeed the limited role that the OSCEhas assumed with its largest missions in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, andKosovo has already stretched the OSCE, operating as it does with a smallbudget and limited staff (http://www.osce.org/general/budget/). Therefore, somemutual division of labor between the global and regional organizations willcertainly continue to be necessary in the future. These efforts, however, must beundertaken cooperatively so that neither institution, both strapped for cashand for available personnel, wastes valuable resources in a duplication of effortor, even worse, by competing to garner the limelight in any particular regionexperiencing tensions and conflict.


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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

NATO was founded in 1949, in the early years of the Cold War, as a collective

defense institution, as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The essence ofthe NATO Treaty is found in Article 5, which declares that an attack against

any member of the alliance shall be considered an attack against them all, andthat they may then decide to take collective action, including the use of force,

in their defense against the act of aggression. With the dissolution of the

Warsaw Pact, NATO remained the only significant multilateral militaryorganization in Europe by the end of 1991. Since 1991, NATO has tried nobly

to reconfigure itself to meet the demands of the new security situation in

Europe. It has abandoned virtually wholesale its previous military doctrine,although the new doctrine remains intentionally somewhat ambiguous. Its

doctrine emphasizes crisis management and peacekeeping, and focuses less

than in the past on collective defense. NATO’s major transformation, however,has been visible in two principal areas.First, NATO’s outreach to its former adversaries and previously neutral and

non-aligned countries in Europe through the Partnership-for-Peace (PfP) and

the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) has linked the alliance to itsformer adversaries in the East, as well as the previously neutral and non-

aligned states of the continent, to the Western alliance. The North AtlanticCooperation Council (NACC), created in 1991, developed close consultation

between NATO and the governments of the former Warsaw Pact and former

Soviet states, especially in an effort to encourage them to reform militarydoctrine and practice and to try to instill respect for the Western concept of

civilian, democratic control over armed forces. In 1997 the NACC was

replaced by the EAPC, composed of 44 countries from throughout the entireregion, to provide for broad consultations among all Eurasian states on the

military dimensions of security. The PfP program, begun in 1994, hasessentially permitted all of the states of Eurasia that wished to participate to

join in a program of integrated military activities. Individualized programs

with specific former communist states have included joint exercises, jointparticipation in the Stabilization Force (SFOR) units in Bosnia, and other

military activities at the operational as well as the political level.Second, NATO has begun to engage for the first time in out-of-area

activities including peacekeeping and peace enforcement, often alongside itsnew partners within the EAPC. In 1998 NATO was enlarged to include for the

first time three former members of the Warsaw Pact, namely Poland, the Czech

Republic, and Hungary. This enlargement was generally opposed by Russiaand to a lesser degree by other neighboring OSCE states including Belarus and

Ukraine. In partial compensation, NATO negotiated the NATO-Russia

Founding Act and the NATO-Ukraine Charter in 1997, establishing close


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cooperative relationships between NATO and the two most powerful post-Soviet states. Relations between these countries and NATO have sometimesbeen tense, however, especially as NATO agreed to another round ofenlargement in 2002 that invited Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria,Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The last three are especially controversial inRussia since they bring into the Western alliance not only former Warsaw Pactstates, but three former republics of the USSR.In addition to its connections eastward, NATO has increasingly trained its

troops and developed logistical structures to support peacekeeping and othersimilar functions ‘out of area’ in response to mandates that in principle shouldbe granted by other, more political organizations such as the United Nations orthe OSCE. Thus NATO undertook major responsibilities in Bosnia-Herzegovina to enforce the provisions of the Dayton Peace Accords, alongwith some 20 non-member countries, including 16 PfP participants and fouradditional countries from outside the OSCE region. Since 1999, KFOR inKosovo has consisted of a similar deployment, in which the bulk of the troopscame from NATO countries, but many PfP participants also sent troops andsupporting equipment. In spite of these many important changes, NATO hasthus far failed to escape fully from its Cold War legacy, and the residue of thatpast limits its ability to play a dominant role in Eurasian security into the 21stcentury for four primary reasons.First, NATO is still seen by some members of the public and politicians,

especially in the East, as one of the two Cold War military alliances, and thatimage is unlikely to change entirely. Of course, the decision by NATO to grantRussia a seat in the NATO-Russia Council in May 2002, albeit without a vetoover issues ranging from membership to decisions about the use of force,represented a major gesture by the Atlantic alliance towards its former enemy.However, this will inevitably be viewed by many skeptics as a way of buyingRussia’s acquiescence in the eastward enlargement of NATO, at least into theBaltic States.Second, in spite of the enlargement of the alliance and of the many activities

through which non-members may participate in NATO activities, especially thecreation of the NATO-Russia Council in May 2002, the alliance essentiallyremains a structure dominated by Western Europe and the United States.While Russia now has a seat at the NATO table, it still lacks direct influenceover the most important security decisions taken by the Alliance. Indeed, forthe foreseeable future NATO will inevitably be an organization whose politicaldecisions are taken by an important, but limited subset of European and NorthAmerican states. NATO thus falls far short of being a truly pan-Eurasiansecurity structure. Furthermore, US hegemony within the Alliance is resistedby many politicians in Russia and other former Soviet states, and theseindividuals tend to view institutions such as the OSCE, which are less


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completely dominated by the United States, as being more legitimate thanNATO as a basis for cooperation on threats to regional security in Europe.Third, at its core NATO is still essentially a military organization that has

taken on some important, but still secondary, political, scientific, and economictasks. For the most part, however, its view of security is one-dimensional,focusing primarily on military security, and it has very little capacity to dealwith some of the most important underlying causes of violence in post-ColdWar Eurasia, which are primarily political, social, ethnic, economic, and evenenvironmental in nature.Fourth, contrary to some initial assurances given to Russia and other post-

Soviet states, NATO undertook military action in Kosovo in March 1999without authorization from either the UN or the OSCE. This especially fueledRussian resentment, as Russia had traditionally been sympathetic to the Serbcause. Thus action was taken on an important security issue where Russia hadsignificant perceived interests without authorization from a multilateralinstitution in which Russia participates and without the consultationprescribed in the NATO-Russia Founding Act. For these reasons, especially,Russia began to return to a theme that it had emphasized in the early post-ColdWar period, namely that the OSCE with its broad membership, not NATO,should become the leading institution to promote European peace and securitybroadly. At the same time, Western leaders continued to place increasingconfidence in NATO rather than the OSCE because of the formerorganization’s ability to employ force when necessary to preserve the peace.The different views of the United States and Russia over the relative priorityaccorded to NATO versus the OSCE underlie many of the tensions thatoccasionally appear in the field where the two organizations operate side-by-side.At the same time, NATO’s major functions clearly do not overlap with the

OSCE’s to the same extent as in the case with the United Nations. The OSCEhas no access to instruments of coercion except through those that can beprovided by the participating states, or military organizations in which theyparticipate, such as NATO and the Tashkent group from the Commonwealthof Independent States (CIS). Therefore, when matters go beyond preventivediplomacy, peaceful resolution of disputes, and cooperative security, it may benecessary to call on NATO. On the other hand, that NATO is both a militaryorganization and excludes certain key states from participation means thatmany political functions required to enhance security and cooperation cannotbe performed by NATO, at least nowhere as well as they can be performed bythe OSCE.Even though NATO’s political functions are limited, especially in the area of

conflict prevention, cooperation between NATO and the OSCE in Bosnia-Herzegovina represents a model that may well be emulated elsewhere. In this


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instance, the OSCE has assumed a lead role in virtually all political and armscontrol measures, whereas NATO has taken the lead in peace enforcement.NATO cannot run elections, promote human rights, assure freedom of themedia, assist in the repatriation of refugees, or engage in many of the otheractivities undertaken by the OSCE Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Were it notfor the OSCE presence, therefore, there would be little improvement in thepolitical conditions which necessitated the IFOR/SFOR deployment in the firstplace and hence no possibility for an eventual military withdrawal. On theother hand, given the tensions and insecurity that existed in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, it would have been impossible for unarmed OSCEmission officers to fulfil their mandate without the security provided by IFORand SFOR troops. Therefore, the joint OSCE and NATO missions in Bosniaillustrate effectively the principle that peace and security can be built best wheninstitutions each specialize in doing what they can do most effectively, dividingthe labor among themselves, and cooperating to assure that all essential tasksare fulfilled with a minimum of overlap and duplication of effort.

The Western European Union (WEU)

The WEU was created in 1948 by the Brussels Treaty, and it served as a vehiclethrough which Western European states managed the rearmament of WestGermany in 1954. At that time its membership consisted of Britain, France,Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, and West Germany. Duringthe Cold War, it played only a minor role, mostly reassuring Germany’sneighbors that it would never again become a threat to their security.Since the end of the Cold War, however, the WEU has become the focal

point for a newly emerging European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI).Beginning with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, the WEU hasincreasingly become the focus for military cooperation among most of theWestern European members of NATO, and the possibility that the WEUmight become the military arm of the EU and its emerging Common Foreignand Security Policy has gained widespread support from many members of theEuropean Union. The so-called Petersberg Declaration issued in 1992following a meeting of the WEU Council of Ministers proclaimed that theWEU might authorize, or even undertake directly, humanitarian and rescuemissions in zones of conflict, peacekeeping, and even active combat as part of apeacemaking operation. Indeed, the government of France argued that thesefunctions ought to be handled solely by the WEU in response to crisesappearing in Europe, while NATO should be restricted solely to Article 5missions of collective defense. Other WEU members resisted this move,however, in large part because of the strong objections raised by the UnitedStates.


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Nonetheless, the WEU has undertaken several military missions in recentyears under the mandate of other international organizations, including thedeployment of naval forces in the Adriatic and the Danube to enforceeconomic sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia andMontenegro). Similarly, most of its members supported Italy when theycreated a ‘coalition of the willing’ to send a small military force to Albaniafollowing the collapse of its government in 1997. Similarly, the WEU, underOSCE auspices, deployed a Multinational Advisory Police Force to Albania toprovide information, advice, and training to Albanian police forces (http://int-serv.weu.int/).The United States has expressed its concern about the WEU becoming too

much of an independent European voice within NATO due to its potential forundermining US leadership of the alliance. Several Western Europeancountries with strong ties to the United States have supported this view.Therefore, although the WEU has been significantly reinvigorated in recentyears, it is unlikely to play a major, independent role in European securityaffairs for the immediate future.

The CIS

In the East, the CIS formed a quasi-military alliance under the TashkentTreaty signed in 1992. However, many of the most important former Sovietstates besides Russia, including the so-called GUUAM group (Georgia,Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova), have refused to join thisorganization. Although it has nominally been utilized for several peacekeepingoperations on former Soviet territory, in reality these operations, like theTashkent group itself, are largely an instrument of Russian policy in which theother member states have thus far played only a minimal role, if any. Althoughsome CIS forces have supplemented Russian troops along the border betweenTajikistan and Afghanistan, elsewhere in the region peacekeeping operationshave been composed almost exclusively of Russian forces. Therefore, the CIS,like the WEU, can at best play a minor operational role under mandates fromother, more politically significant multilateral organizations.

The European Union (EU)

Another major contender for a central role in European security is the EU. TheEU first began to move into the area of foreign and security policy in the early1990s, with an agreement on a Common Foreign and Security Policy reachedas part of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty. This agreement was largely a product ofjoint Franco-German efforts to stimulate deeper integration among the EUmember states across a wide range of activities, including the realm of foreign


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policy. The actual formulation at Maastricht, however, was quite vague,stressing primarily the desire of the European states to move towards a jointpolicy in matters of foreign affairs and defense. No operational content wasdecided and no new institutional structures were created to implement this newpolicy, which in fact has largely been the responsibility of the governmentholding the EU chair at any particular moment in time.The limitations of the Common Foreign and Security Policy in its early years

were perhaps best indicated by the failure of the EU to agree upon anycommon response to the multiple crises in the former Yugoslavia beginning in1991, especially in Bosnia, in the absence of clear American leadership as thecrisis was developing (Woodward, 1995, Chapter 6). Since that time, thecommon foreign policy has been implemented more in a procedural context;for example, the EU generally makes joint statements about variousinternational issues, for example, in the OSCE Permanent Council. However,to date, the EU has taken only limited operational action in foreign or defensepolicy.The EU has several major drawbacks that hinder its ability to take a leading

role in providing security for Europe in the post-Cold War period. First, itsmembership is limited mostly to states in Western Europe, and the UnitedStates and the Russian Federation are unlikely to become members for theforeseeable future. For better or worse, it is almost impossible to imagine thatan organization can be effective in promoting pan-European security withouttheir participation.Second, the EU remains primarily an economic organization. Although the

integration process has advanced a great deal since 1958, the EU has still failedto complete its mission of promoting full economic integration, as evidenced bythe difficulty of gaining universal acceptance for a single currency. Progress inother sensitive issues, where the claims of national sovereignty still remainstrong, has been even slower, especially in matters of foreign policy andnational defense. Although the Common Foreign and Security Policy hastaken on considerable substance in recent years, going well beyond the simplerhetoric of the early 1990s, it still falls well short of constituting an independentpolicy extending beyond the limitations imposed by the member states, so thatintegration in the security sector still lags well behind that in the economic andother functional areas.Third, while the EU has adopted a significant program of economic

assistance ‘out of area’, initially to developing countries, especially in Africaand more recently in Central and Eastern Europe, its political–military roleoutside of its geographic borders has remained limited. The diplomatic effortsthat it undertook to prevent and subsequently to bring an end to fighting inseveral former Yugoslav states provoked internal dissension within the EU,especially between Germany and other member states, and largely failed to


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achieve significant results (Woodward, 1995, 183–189). In short, the CommonForeign and Security Policy remains a goal for future cooperation in the realmof security within an expanding EU region, but it does not currently provide asound base on which to construct a pan-European security edifice.The EU is most effective at promoting peace and security in Europe when it

focuses on its comparative advantage, namely in the economic domain. Thedynamism of its economic integration serves as an attractive magnet to all ofthe former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It, and otherrelated financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstructionand Development, can provide valuable assistance to alleviate some of theeconomic and social conditions that provide the seedbed for violent conflict todevelop in the first place. In this way it may provide an essential supplement tothe conflict prevention work of the OSCE, which lacks direct access tosignificant economic resources to carry out its tasks in this region.The OSCE missions may also call upon the support of the EU when dealing

with the many candidate countries seeking EU membership, several of whichhave also had OSCE missions stationed on their territory. For example, inEstonia the effort to meet the criteria for being placed high in the priority listfor EU expansion probably encouraged the government to cooperate moreactively than it might have otherwise with OSCE demands regarding thetreatment of its large minority group of ethnic Russians. Finally, in severalinstances such as in Macedonia, EU Monitor Missions have operatedalongside OSCE missions on the ground with very similar mandates. In thesecircumstances, however complex they may be, it behooves both organizationsto try to negotiate a workable division of labor. Since many such missions aretypically understaffed, an agreed division of labor may make it possible for thetwo institutions to work side-by-side to accomplish their respective, ifoverlapping, mandates more effectively.In summary, conflicts between OSCE and EU mission members have

occasionally occurred in regions where both institutions have overlappingmandates. One of the most essential tasks, therefore, of mission members maybe to negotiate workable arrangements on the ground, even when theirsuperiors have failed to do so in their respective secretariats.

The Council of Europe (CoE)

The CoE has also become an important actor in some aspects ofEuropean security policy, especially with regard to the human dimensionof security. Indeed, there is probably no other institution working in theOSCE region with such a similar mandate, especially in the fields ofthe development of democratic governance and the furtherance of humanand minority rights.


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Established in 1949, the CoE, consisting initially of 10 member states,drafted the European Convention on Human Rights in 1950, and created theEuropean Court of Human Rights in 1959 at Strasbourg. Its statutes requirethat its members ‘must accept the principles of the rule of law and of theenjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights andfundamental freedoms’ (Council of Europe, 1996, 12). It has also taken aleading role in promoting European cooperation in spheres of culture,education, environment, parliamentary democracy, and social policy. It hasthus focused almost entirely on the human dimension as an essentialcomponent of security.During the Cold War, CoE membership consisted exclusively of Western

European democracies. Currently its membership has expanded to 40 states,including 16 former communist countries from Central and Eastern Europe.Further, membership in the Council of Europe is a prerequisite for candidacyto enter the more prestigious EU. Neither the United States nor Canada iseligible for membership, largely because the Council has defined its geographicscope somewhat more narrowly than the OSCE. At a Summit meeting ofCouncil of Europe heads of states in Vienna in October 1993, it added to itstasks of promoting democratic development a new set of responsibilities tocombat racism, intolerance, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism, while alsopromoting the adoption of confidence-building measures to avert ethnicconflict, mostly in the new member states to the east.The Council operates primarily by setting up strict criteria for membership.

Thus, unlike the OSCE, which that requires states to affirm their intent to liveup to a series of commitments contained in the cumulative set of OSCEdocuments and monitors their performance in living up to those commitmentslong after they become participating states, the CoE requires its currentmembers to certify that candidates meet the following criteria before they canqualify for participation:

(1) Their institutions and legal system must provide for the basic principles ofdemocracy, rule of law, and respect for human rights.

(2) Their government must include a parliament chosen by free and fairelections with universal suffrage.

(3) They must guarantee free expression including a free press.(4) They must have provisions for the protection of the rights of persons

belonging to minorities.(5) They must demonstrate a track record of observance of international law

(http://www.coe.int/T/e/Communication%5Fand%5FResearch/Press/The%5F Council%5Fof%5FEurope%5Fin%5Fbrief/).

States that fail to fulfill these obligations may be suspended frommembership. For example, Russia’s membership was suspended in 1995 due


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to the behavior of its armed forces in Chechnya. Other former communistcountries that continue to maintain the death penalty as part of their penalcode have also been denied membership, since the CoE considers the deathpenalty to represent a violation of fundamental human rights. However, as ageneral matter of practice, once accepted into membership there are nosanctions for violations of these CoE principles other than suspension. Unlikethe OSCE, once a state is admitted into membership, there are no permanentmissions stationed on its territory. Therefore, CoE monitoring of its membersis quite minimal, unlike the OSCE that has a somewhat lower standard forinitial participation but which continuously monitors and encourages itsparticipating states to rise up to its higher standards even after they havebecome full participants in the organization.The CoE fulfills its role in conflict prevention and the promotion of

democracy using techniques similar to those of the OSCE, but always byemploying experts from outside the country. As requested, staff from a relevantCouncil section in Strasbourg may be sent to states undergoing problemsduring the difficult process of democratic transition to set up seminars, to offerexpert advice, and to run training courses. It is these staff members whointeract most frequently with OSCE mission members who are already on-site.The CoE also monitors allegations of human rights violations in membercountries, and it may refer especially serious potential violations to theEuropean Court of Human Rights.Most of the CoE’s effort goes into working with states that are candidates to

join the Council. It has worked proactively to encourage states throughout thebroadly defined European region to meet its criteria for membership, and it hasprovided them with considerable assistance in advancing to the point wherethey qualify for acceptance. By defining its primary mission as encouraginggood governance as a long-term mechanism for conflict prevention, the CoEhas carved out for itself a role that overlaps with that of the OSCE in manyimportant areas. However, it has often pursued its own agenda in countrieswhere it operates alongside OSCE, with little direct cooperation between thetwo organizations, even when they are mandated to work on similar issues.Consultations frequently have taken place at the highest level in bothorganizations to improve cooperation, but on the ground this cooperationhas often been hard to realize due to the somewhat different interpretation thatthe two organizations have about their primary role.Specifically, the CoE does not undertake an active role in conflict

prevention, management, and resolution, unlike the OSCE. Thus it oftenworks in parallel to the OSCE in the human dimension activities, while leavingthe OSCE to take the lead in more active measures to prevent, manage, andresolve violent or potentially violent conflicts. Thus, close coordinationbetween OSCE and CoE missions is essential in those countries where the


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two operate side-by-side, but there can be little doubt that the OSCE still hasseveral comparative advantages. First, it has a broader mandate in the area ofconflict, including a more specific role in conflict prevention and resolution.Second, it has a broader base since the participating states are defined on ageographical basis and not according to specific political criteria. The mere factthat the United States participates in the OSCE is itself an extremely importantdifference between the two organizations. Third, it provides a continuous long-term presence through its missions of long duration and other field activities ina large number of OSCE participating states that have not yet fullyconsolidated democratic practices or where threats of violent conflictremain.However, of all the overlapping institutions that make up the web of post-

Cold War European security, the potential for redundancy is perhaps greatestbetween the OSCE and the CoE. This functional overlap thus requires closecooperation so that this redundancy does not become excessively counter-productive in the mutual efforts of the two organizations to promote long-termpeace and security through building democracy, the rule of law, and humanrights.

Conclusion: OSCE’s Comparative Advantage in the European SecurityFramework

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, several states and some analystsadvocated making the OSCE the primary foundation for European security inthe new era. It was a plausible candidate to assume this role for several reasons:

(1) It has the broadest membership, with all states in the region participating.(2) It has the broadest mandate, especially because of the close linkage

between political–military elements of security and the human dimension,including democracy building, encouragement of human rights and therights of persons belonging to minorities, and a foundation built on therule of law.

(3) It immediately developed expertise in conflict prevention, with theinstitutionalization of the Conflict Prevention Center (including itsmissions and other field activities) and the office of the High Commissioneron National Minorities.

It is quite apparent, however, that the thick web of European securityinstitutions that has been modified and reformed over the decade since 1990has not produced a single, dominant institution. Rather, what is emerging is anincreasingly pronounced division of labor among institutions, in which eachinstitution seeks to strengthen its own area of comparative advantage, whilerelying on other institutions to provide the necessary ingredients to build a


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more solid structure for security and cooperation in future relations within thebroad European/transatlantic area.Further, it has become increasingly evident that the interconnected areas of

preventive diplomacy, conflict mediation, and post-conflict reconciliationconstitute the one most important function that the OSCE has carved out foritself. These tasks are not carried out adequately by any other regionalinstitution, and in this area the OSCE capacity generally exceeds even that ofthe single global institution, namely the UN. All of these tasks require effortsto redress the specific grievances that have given rise to violence, as well as toalleviate the structural conditions that make it more likely that conflicts ofinterest will assume violent forms. Thus effective and just governance based onthe rule of law, along with respect for the rights of individuals and of personsbelonging to minority groups, constitute the essential foundations for conflictprevention and post-conflict reconstruction. When disputes do develop,immediate outside assistance by third parties to reduce tensions beforeviolence erupts is an equally important contribution. And continuous on-the-ground monitoring of the efforts to rebuild societies that have experiencedviolence and to create institutions that will alleviate the threat of renewedviolence, is also essential.These are the principal functions that the OSCE has a unique ability to

provide as its central contribution to the overall ‘architecture’ of Europeansecurity. At the same time, these conditions cannot be fulfilled by the OSCEacting alone, in isolation from other international institutions and nongovern-mental organizations. However, the OSCE has a vital role to play in these areas,and in this one area in particular there is no other institution or organization onthe scene that can perform these functions with comparable effectiveness.

Notes

1 This article will refer to the OSCE when discussing the organization in general, or when making

specific reference to its activities since 1995. It will refer to the CSCE when referring to specific

events and actions prior to 1995.

2 States participating in the OSCE are referred to as ‘participating states’ rather than as ‘member

states’. This is done in order to emphasize the political (as opposed to legal) basis for the

organization. It is an organization of ‘participants’ who share in its governance rather than a

formal organization comprised of ‘member states’ like the United Nations.

3 Five mission and field activities have been closed down in the past several years after fulfilling

their mandates.

4 For a summary of the functions of each of these institutions, see http://www.osce.org/structures_

institutions/.

5 Much of this analysis is based on extensive field research by the author at the OSCE

headquarters in Vienna for extended periods of 6 months each in 1992 and 1997–1998, as well as

many shorter visits to Vienna and to a number of the field missions since 1991. A more detailed

account of the work of these missions may be found in Hopmann (1999).

6 See also the parallel websites for Bishkek, Tashkent, and Ashgabad.


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7 Interview with Ambassador Max van der Stoel, The Hague (November 1997).

8 For further details about the role of the OSCE in Crimea, see Hopmann (2000a).

9 See van der Stoel’s (1999) personal account of his role.

10 The author conducted background interviews with senior members of the OSCE Spillover

Mission to Skopje in June 2002.

11 Jentleson (2000, 330–333) refers to this as the ‘Rubicon Problem’ and the ‘Humpty Dumpty

Problem’. The latter refers to crossing a threshold of violence that makes resolution of the

underlying problems even more difficult than prior to the outbreak of violence; the latter refers

to the difficulty of putting societies torn apart by war back together again.

References

Adler, E. (1998) ‘The OSCE’s Community-Building Model’, in E. Adler and M. Barnett (eds.)

Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 132–138.

Council of Europe (1996) The Challenge of a Greater Europe: The Council of Europe and

Democratic Security, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing.

Hopmann, P.T. (1999) Building Security in Post-Cold War Eurasia: The OSCE and US Foreign

Policy, Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace.

Hopmann, P.T. (2000a) ‘The OSCE Role in Ukraine and Moldova’, Studien und Bericte zur

Zicherheitspolitik 1: 25–61.

Hopmann, P.T. (2000b) ‘Can International Organizations Intervene in the ‘‘Internal Affairs’’ of

Powerful States? An Analysis of the OSCE Role in Chechnya, 1995–97’, Paper Presented to the

Convention of the International Political Science Association; August 1–6, 2001, Quebec,

Canada.

Jentleson, B.W. (2000) ‘Conclusions and Lessons’, in B.W. Jentleson (ed.) Opportunities Missed,

Opportunities Seized, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

OSCE (1999) OSCE Handbook (3rd ed), Vienna: OSCE, pp. 28–29.

Russett, B.M. and Oneal, J. (2001) Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence and

International Organizations, New York: Norton.

Thomas, D.C. (2001) The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of

Communism, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

van der Stoel, M. (1999) ‘The Role of the OSCE High Commission in Conflict Prevention’, in C.A.

Crocker et al. (eds.) Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, Washington, DC:

US Institute of Peace Press.

Woodward, S. (1995) Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War, Washington, DC:

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