Neither secure nor co-operative? The potential future of the OSCE

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is nearing its 50-year anniversary in 2025 in a Europe that is neither secure nor prone to effective cooperation. This presents a natural occasion for contemplating the organisation’s past and potential future paths.

The OSCE’s history can be subdivided into roughly three time periods: the Cold War Détente (1970s – early 1980s), normative and geopolitical convergence (late 1980s-1990s), and a period of growing crisis in the relations between Russia and the West (from the 2000s onwards). During the Cold War Détente, in an era of cautious political will to reach workable agreements, especially concerning the most prioritised (hard security) questions, the OSCE’s precursor, the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), showed that it can play a positive, facilitating role provided that the main actors have a genuine political will to attain tangible results. This can then lead to bigger openings on other issues of importance. 

In the 1990s era of rapprochement, with the major actors driven by practical as well as ideological motives to seek better understanding, the OSCE experienced its greatest empowerment. The political goodwill on either side of the (former) divide catapulted the organisation into action, providing fertile ground for expanding its activities, mandates and organisational structure. Finally, from the late 1990s/ early 2000s onwards, there has been a clear diminution of the OSCE’s role that went in parallel with the deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West. The OSCE fell victim to its consensus-based foundation, allowing obstructionist actors – mainly, but not limited to, Russia – to hold the organisation hostage not just in terms of projects and initiatives, but also, at times, its very functioning. Yet again, the OSCE’s effectiveness proved a function of the political will of its participants to cooperate.

Using this historical background as inspiration, this paper presents three potential scenarios for the future of the OSCE and the consequences, in each scenario, for the organisation’s effectiveness in implementing its tools and achieving its goals.

Authors:

Marina Ohanjanyan - Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute

Bob Deen - Senior Research Fellow / Head Security Unit / Coordinator Russia and Eastern Europe Centre at the Clingendael Institute

Kaspar Pucek - Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute