Written evidence submitted by Philip Remler (MUO0007)

SCOPE

I can only provide information with regard to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and only with regard to the times I was seconded to OSCE field operations or otherwise interacted as part of the OSCE. These have been three:

April 1995-August 1995 Political officer seconded to the first cohort of the OSCE Assistant Group in Chechnya during a period of active armed hostilities, seeking a peaceful resolution to the Chechnya conflict in the Russian Federation and dealing with humanitarian and human rights issues.

1996-1998 Deputy in the U.S. Department of State office of the special negotiator for conflict resolution in the Newly Independent States (of the former ), working as part of the OSCE Minsk Group and, from 1997, as part of the U.S. co-chair as the Minsk Group attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Karabakh conflict. I had previously participated in Minsk Group negotiations in Geneva in 1993, based on my position then as political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Baku, .

December 2007-January 2012 Head of Mission seconded to the OSCE Mission in , dealing with all issues, including efforts to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Transdniestria conflict.

As is evident, the experience is largely in conflict resolution, and exclusively in field operations and the sui generis Minsk Group. I have no special expertise with regard to institutions such as the OSCE Secretariat, Permanent Council, the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, or other affiliated institutions, though I interacted with them frequently. I will limit myself therefore to the three periods outlined above.

VALUE OF OSCE FIELD OPERATIONS

The value-added of OSCE field operations is the combination of both neutrality and expertise. Only the UN possesses both these qualities, but unlike the UN Development Program, which oversees the UN’s principal field operations, the OSCE is a political organization.

With the emergence of new states from the fragments of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, a host of inexperienced actors appeared on the international scene. What became the OSCE Permanent Council was one of very few places where delegations of these new states interacted as equals with older, often more powerful states. The new states therefore welcomed the field presences of the OSCE as a way of helping them navigate the international arena – especially as they were beset by severe problems such as civil war and ethnic separatism.

The OSCE field presences represented all the participating States and did not take geopolitical sides. Some of the new states had already chosen – or were in the process of choosing – geopolitical sides; they were still willing to work with the OSCE as well as with the nations they wished to befriend. Some were trying to avoid taking sides; these states found it easier to work with the OSCE than with large states whose agenda they distrusted.

On that basis the OSCE field operations were on the ground early, worked closely with host governments and over time developed great expertise on a wide range of issues. In some cases the OSCE presence was the international community’s only presence on the ground. One such case was the OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya, deployed to Grozny in April 1995, the only permanent international presence during a time of intense military hostilities. “The Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office on the conflict dealt with by the OSCE Minsk Conference” has had a field presence in the Karabakh conflict’s war zone since 1996 and is the one political representative of the international community to maintain constant contact with the Stepanakert authorities.

Unlike national embassies, whose diplomats are usually generalists, the OSCE field operations often attract area experts from academia and civil society, long acquainted with the host countries, to work as officials. They often serve in those presences for long periods – as long as OSCE rules allow – making their expertise in the country unmatched. One can point to the current OSCE Head of Mission in Chişinău, Moldova: Claus Neukirch wrote a doctoral dissertation on the Transdniestrian conflict, the primary issue of the Mission in Moldova. He served in the Mission in various capacities, including as Deputy HoM when I was there, speaks fluent Romanian and Russian, and is deeply embedded in Moldovan society. He was one of several equally specialized experts at the Mission in that period. Owing to the secondment of such accomplished figures, the level of expertise at the OSCE Mission in Moldova has matched or exceeded that of much larger diplomatic missions, including the U.S. and Russian embassies and the EU delegation. This is a pattern which has repeated itself throughout the OSCE region.

The combination of assets – neutrality and expertise – have allowed OSCE field operations to be effective over the long term in a number of valuable areas: in mediation that helps to produce ceasefires (as in Chechnya) and to prevent conflicts from flaring up into active hostilities; in post-conflict state-building and establishment of the rule of law; and in monitoring and promoting better observance of human rights, including minority and gender rights. Over decades, OSCE field operations have had successes in all these fields in the Balkans, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

I can speak in detail only of the operations in which I served, when I served in them. The OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya was deployed to Groznyy on 25 April 1995, in the midst of active armed conflict. Mission members crossed between the lines regularly – rarely in armored vehicles and never with enough personal protection – to help the sides conduct negotiations. They regularly experienced firefights and artillery barrages. Eventually, the OSCE house in Grozny became the site of ceasefire negotiations. Assistance Group members were dispatched to ensure the safety of Chechen officials, including Aslan Maskhadov, as they crossed active front lines to attend negotiations. At the end of July 1995, at the OSCE mission, the first ceasefire was reached between the two sides. Apart from the negotiations, Group members also engaged in humanitarian and human rights efforts.

The OSCE Minsk Group has been conducting negotiations to resolve the Karabakh conflict since 1992. The Minsk Group Co-Chairs did not mediate the ceasefire that has held (with many violations) until today; that was a unilateral Russian effort. However, beginning thereafter the Minsk Group Co-Chairs drafted a peace plan that they presented to the sides in 1997. It was accepted, with some details still to be worked out, by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, President Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia could not bring his country along with him, and he was forced to resign in January 1998. The Minsk Group has continued its efforts to this day.1

The OSCE Mission in Moldova was established in 1993 to seek a negotiated peace in the Transdniestria conflict. For many years the sides talked inconclusively, but there has been no resumption of armed hostilities. Unlike in other conflicts life has returned to a sort of normal, with constant road traffic between the two banks of the Dniestr for trade, family visits, and transit. In 2005 the negotiating format was widened and given the format it retains today: the “five plus two.”2 The OSCE is an official mediator and organizes most of the negotiations. However, shortly after the five plus two was formed, the talks were broken off by both sides. The OSCE Mission worked for years to bring the sides back together, organizing conference after conference and reviving sectoral working groups of the sides that had been abandoned since 2001. Finally, the leaders of the two sides attended a conference in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, in 2011 and agreed to resume official negotiations, which began that year. The Mission maintained its absolute neutrality, not only between the two sides, but also among the mediators and observers; and gave the sides packages to negotiate over. Clearly, peace efforts suffered a blow when two of the mediators, Russia and Ukraine, went to war with one another in 2014. It has been up to the OSCE to revive negotiating efforts, mostly on a package of confidence- and security-building measures. Aside from the negotiations, the Mission also made impressive progress in fields including securing the destruction of banned weapons such as cluster bombs, combatting the rampant human trafficking, and implementing rule-of-law initiatives, among others.

To be sure, the OSCE operations face serious limitations. Field operations are generally small, and have never been deployed before conflicts break out; it would be unrealistic to expect a handful of OSCE observers to be able to prevent states and their proxies intent on opening hostilities from doing so, as we saw in the conflicts in in 2008 and Azerbaijan in 2016.

1 I have described these efforts in detail in: https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1605-Chained-to- the-Caucasus.pdf 2 The “Five” include the parties (Moldova and Transdniestrian authorities) and the mediators (OSCE, Russia, and Ukraine). The “two” are the observers (U.S. and EU). And, of course, all the mediation capabilities in the world by themselves are not sufficient to induce warring parties to come to a peaceful resolution, if they are unwilling or unable to make the necessary compromises. In addition, ultimate OSCE decision-making is by unanimous consensus. Any participating State can use its liberum veto to block any action (including renewing the mandate of a field operation) if it so desires. But especially given those severe limitations, the OSCE and its field operations have proven remarkably effective over decades.

DEVELOPMENTS ERODING OSCE EFFECTIVENESS

Two developments have eroded the effectiveness of OSCE field presences over the last ten years or so. One development concerns the participating States that receive OSCE field presences; the other concerns the States that contribute to them.

1. The New Narrative

The OSCE has always been geopolitically but not morally neutral. It has supported the commitments all participating States took when they joined the organization: commitments to democratic governance, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. Those commitments are aspirational. Everyone understands that all states – even centuries-old Western democracies – fall down in these areas more often than they would like to admit. But the aspiration is important, especially for newer states that stress their commitment to a democratic future.

A counter-narrative, however, has taken hold among a number of participating States, including a number of those that have hosted OSCE field presences. According to that narrative, the commitments named above are used by certain Western countries, working through a fifth column of international human rights and civil society organizations, to subjugate small independent states to a “rules-based international order” whose real purpose is to keep those Western powers on top. This is a narrative heavily promoted by senior officials of the Russian Federation, which challenges both the legitimacy of a “rules-based international order” and the “Western” values that underpin it.3

States in which this narrative has taken hold tend to see the OSCE as a representative of that “rules-based international order” and alien “Western” values, and have started to close or curtail the activities of field presences in their countries. Taking Azerbaijan as an example, the Office in Baku long established there was downgraded in 2014 to a “Project Co-ordinator,” which was then closed in 2015. A number of other states have taken similar actions.

The current leadership crisis in the OSCE is the latest and most severe extension of this trend. On 18 July, the terms of four leading OSCE officials – the Secretary General, Head of the Office 3 Discussed in greater detail in papers written for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, available at: https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/01/22/russia-at-united-nations-law-sovereignty-and-legitimacy-pub-80753 and https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/08/01/russia-and-cooperative-security-in-europe-times-change-tactics-remain- pub-79611 of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media, and the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities – expired without replacements. Azerbaijan and Tajikistan had opposed renewing the current Representative on media freedom; Tajikistan and had opposed renewing the Head of ODIHR; and negotiations to find a solution ended in stalemate. The objections were precisely over those democratic and human rights commitments that have been cast into doubt by the new narrative. It is clear that participating States that are rethinking the commitments they took when they joined the OSCE will continue to try to erode the OSCE’s institutions and capacity to promote those commitments.

2. The New Disengagement

Over the years, richer Western countries have cut back on the support they give to OSCE field presences. The United Kingdom, for example, used to second large numbers of talented and competent diplomatic, military, and assistance personnel to OSCE field presences. In this regard one can point to Mr. Kenneth Pickles, who served as a military observer with the office of the Special Representative (for the Karabakh conflict) from 2002-2004, and then from 2004- 2012 did a tremendous job as political-military member of our OSCE Mission in Moldova, with a list of accomplishments that would take a book to describe. Just one example: Mr. Pickles single-handedly organized the series of conferences at which we brought representatives of the sides together, including the one in 2011 at which the Moldovan Prime Minister and Transdniestrian leader agreed to resume official peace negotiations. After the financial crisis of 2008, the UK cut back sharply on the number of officials it seconded to the OSCE (although I have been told it has increased its engagement in the last few years). The same pattern has been seen among other countries that had reliably seconded quality personnel in numbers.

Programs, too, were affected by disengagement. The UK Embassy in Chişinău was one of the earliest funders of, and largest donor to, the Transnistrian Dialogues, in which the OSCE Mission also participated. The Transnistrian Dialogues brought together future leaders of both sides in a series of seminars on state-building in areas such as security, rule of law, and minority rights, and was highly effective at creating a large cadre of officials and academics on both sides who were used to dealing with each other on a pragmatic basis. The UK participation in the Dialogues was, however, another victim of the cutbacks after the financial crisis.

The cutbacks by large donor countries have affected personnel issues. OSCE field operations offer a cost of living allowance, not a salary, to almost all of their international employees (the administrative officer at field presences is an exception). Richer countries in general pay their secondees a salary. Many poorer countries do not; some qualified experts from those countries find the prospect of the OSCE’s cost-of-living allowance a lucrative alternative to their low salaries at home. With the cutback in secondment from richer countries, an increasing percentage of candidates for open OSCE positions are now from poorer countries. Many of these candidates are talented experts whose motivations are beyond reproach. Some others, however, are less well qualified and motivated. We should also note that a tide of nationalist populism has left the OSCE, like other international organizations, with fewer friends in high places in its constituent countries. The OSCE is only as effective as its participating States allow it to be, and populist nationalists have tried to minimize its effectiveness. Long ago, for example, proponents of the Jacksonian strand of U.S. foreign policy (populist distrust of the international arena) imposed term limits on individuals’ secondments to field operations or work with the Organization as a whole. Their stated aim was to prevent the development of a permanent bureaucracy of the sort they saw as a negative development in the UN and NATO. The net result was the departure of officials with unique expertise.

ENGAGING WITH THE OSCE

It is not for me to tell the United Kingdom how to allocate its resources in the international arena. I have outlined some factors promoting and eroding the effectiveness of the OSCE. When effective, the Organization has proven to be a force for peace, stability, and the promotion of democratic governance and human rights. If the UK wishes to increase the effectiveness of the OSCE, it will allocate the resources – especially the personnel – that have made a material contribution to the effectiveness of the Organization in achieving those goals.

July 2020