Foundations and Crisis of the European Peace and Security Order
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STUDY Foundations and Crisis of the European Peace and Security Order WOLFGANG RICHTER May 2015 n In 1990, the European Peace and Security Order of Paris overcame the Yalta order of 1945, replaced confrontation by cooperation. The new order was based on the cornerstones of international law principles, common values and a balance of security interests ensuring strategic restraint. The central objective and promise of the order of Paris was to establish a common space of cooperative security based on equality and reciprocity. n By annexing Crimea and intervening in the civil war in Easter Ukraine, Russia has violated the principles of international law. It was the first annexation of territory of a neighboring country since 1945, which rattled the foundation of the European peace order. Nonetheless, the deeper roots of the conflict cannot be found in Russian action alone. Tensions between the United Stated, a number of other Western states and Russia have been growing since 2001. n While Europe became more and more united under the umbrella of NATO and the EU, the role of the OSCE was ignored and a largely isolated Russia left aside. Such policies contradicted the objectives of the post-Cold War European peace and security order to create a common and undivided OSCE space of equal security without geopolitical rifts. n Whether a return to a cooperative and rule-based peace and security order in Europe is possible will depend on the political will of all major stakeholders to understand mutual threat perceptions, exercise military restraint and seek a new and broad dialogue on all open questions with a focus on the pillars of the order of Paris. It will be crucial to renew mutual security reassurances and find an appropriate balance between the roles of the OSCE, NATO and the EU within the European security architecture. WOLFGANG RICHTER | FOUNDATIONS AND CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN PEACE AND SECURITY ORDER Content 1. Introduction ...........................................................3 2. The Foundations of the European Peace and Security Order ...................3 2.1 Yalta 1945 ...........................................................3 2.2 Helsinki 1975 ........................................................4 2.3 Paris 1990 ...........................................................8 2.4 Istanbul 1999 .......................................................10 3. The Crisis of the European Peace and Security Order ....................... 12 3.1 The New Geopolitics and the 2008 Georgia–Russia Conflict ....................12 3.2 The Failure of “Reset” and the EU Eastern Partnership Policy ...................15 3.3 The Ukraine Crisis. .17 3.4 Summary and Conclusions .............................................21 4. Recommendations .....................................................23 4.1 Implementing the Minsk Ceasefire Agreements .............................23 4.2 Respect for the Principles of International Law ..............................24 4.3 Strengthening the OSCE. 24 4.4 Geopolitical Restraint .................................................24 4.5 Conventional Arms Control. 25 4.6 Missile Defense ......................................................26 4.7 Global Cooperation ..................................................26 4.8 Conclusion .........................................................26 1 WOLFGANG RICHTER | FOUNDATIONS AND CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN PEACE AND SECURITY ORDER 1. Introduction These developments finally allowed Europe to put an end to the order established at Yalta in 1945. On 21 The year 2015 marks the anniversaries of events that November 1990, the Paris Charter, based on Helsinki, fundamentally changed the ideological paradigms, replaced confrontation with cooperation, reunited a political arrangements and military postures governing divided continent and resolved the »German Question«. the European security order – 70 years after World War The new order was based on adherence to the principles II, 40 years after the Helsinki Final Act (Helsinki) and 25 of international law, common values and a balance of years after the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (Paris). security interests as a way of ensuring mutual strategic The current European crisis stimulates us to reflect on restraint. Conventional arms control and the principles the foundations of Europe’s peace and security, analyze enshrined in the Two-Plus-Four Agreement on German the causes for renewed tensions, new or revived threat unification that had been signed two months earlier were perceptions and violations of agreed norms and principles, crucial prerequisites. The Treaty on Conventional Arms in as well as to search for ways out of the crisis. Europe (CFE Treaty) set numerical limitations for NATO and the Warsaw Pact’s successor states and established Agreements made at the 1945 Yalta Conference (Yalta) a geographical distance between NATO and Russia. The enforced the partition of Europe with a divided Germany at main aim and promise of the new order was to establish its heart, established a bipolar world order with spheres a space of cooperative security with a comprehensive of influence of two world powers, subdued national approach to security within the framework of the Organi- aspirations in the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc and led zation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). to permanent confrontation between the two blocs – politically, ideologically and militarily. Despite the frozen The 1999 enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Or- political situation in Europe, repeated crises, the high ganization (NATO) changed the basic assumptions and concentration of armed forces in Central Europe and parameters of the Paris Order, endangering OSCE destabilizing conventional and nuclear arms races and objectives and rendering the limitations set forth in the proxy wars outside Europe demonstrated the fragility of CFE Treaty obsolete. However, a solution was devised at the post-World-War-II order. the OSCE’s 1999 Istanbul Summit: NATO’s first post- Cold-War enlargement was embedded in the Charter Helsinki attempted to manage the consequences of the for European Security, a package of new assurances divide, establish interpersonal contact and stabilize the intended to restrain geo-strategy. In the Founding political situation. It was based on mutual acceptance Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security of the situation, respect for international law and the between NATO and the Russian Federation (the NATO– »peaceful coexistence« of ideologically conflicting and Russia Founding Act) of 27 May 1997, the signatories had globally competing political systems. Although it did pledged military restraint and close cooperation on security not alter the outcome of Yalta, it made the consequences issues, and the Agreement on the Adaptation of the bearable by permitting limited contacts. It also conditioned Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (ACFE partial cooperation. Agreement) replaced bipolar bloc limitations with con- cepts of sub-regional stability. With the 1999 Charter for However, the »change through rapprochement« hoped European Security, OSCE participating States committed for in Helsinki did not materialize quickly. Instead, it to strengthening the organization and creating a common became clear that bold steps to halt the conventional space of equal security without dividing lines. and nuclear arms race were needed to increase stability: Arms control had to become a pillar of the European After 2001, adaptation agreements were either considered peace and security order. But before the Soviet gov- to be of less political interest or were deliberately blocked. ernment recognized its devastating consequences and NATO members made Russia’s fulfillment of »all Istanbul changed paradigms, signaling the readiness to with- commitments«, especially the withdrawal of Russian troops draw from its Central European glacis and adopt a new and peacekeepers from disputed territories in post-Soviet policy of non-intervention and cooperation, another states, a precondition for ratification. With conventional decade of destabilizing arms race and crises had passed. arms control blocked, in 2004 NATO’s second post-Cold- War enlargement to include the Baltic States and the 2 WOLFGANG RICHTER | FOUNDATIONS AND CRISIS OF THE EUROPEAN PEACE AND SECURITY ORDER stationing of United States (US) troops in the Black Sea 2. The Foundations of the European region created new military ambiguities. The OSCE lost Peace and Security Order relevance. The Bush administration’s withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and buildup of strategic missile defense with advanced posts in the new NATO countries 2.1 Yalta 1945 caused more contention. In 2007, after ratifying the ACFE Treaty, Russia suspended implementation of the In 1945, history’s most devastating war, which witnessed CFE Treaty. With Western recognition of an independent severe violations of international law, genocide and Kosovo, the growing US military presence in Georgia and unspeakable mass atrocities, was ended. The founding President Bush’s campaign for NATO membership for of the United Nations (UN), the solemn declarations of Georgia and Ukraine, Russia adopted a more intransigent the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Hu- position toward (former Soviet) breakaway regions in the man Rights, as well as updated norms of international belief that the US was pursuing new geopolitics inimical humanitarian law, were direct outcomes of World War to Russian security interests,