How can we achieve peace in Europe?

Just over a year ago, when addressing the Geneva Security Forum in preparation for the Swiss Chairmanship of the OSCE, I was asked to describe the key security challenges facing the European region. I described the overall situation as “magmatic”, continuously developing, expanding, and difficult to define. In fact, a growing number of new security challenges have appeared on the agenda of international and regional security organizations in recent years. They cover a wide and diverse range of issues such as violent extremism and terrorism, organized crime and corruption, climate change, energy security, poverty and migration. Often these challenges are interlinked and manifest as truly global phenomena. While adding to the complexity of the international security agenda, they have also tended to gradually shift attention away from more traditional security challenges, though they often overlap and reinforce one another.

At the OSCE, on the eve of Swiss Chairmanship, we had developed a good degree of awareness of the complexities of comprehensive security in the 21^st century. Then, events in Ukraine precipitated the worst crisis in European security since the end of the Cold War. For many years, we had wrongly assumed that Cold War-style confrontation was a thing of the past. Now, suddenly, we find that fundamental principles have been violated, such as the inviolability of borders and territorial integrity, which underpin the global order and are enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act, the founding document of the OSCE. Moreover, new interpretations of the relationship between these principles are emerging, causing some to believe that we now need to go back to basics and focus on the very foundations on which our security is built.

For sure, within the OSCE we have seen a hardening of positions, growing distrust and deepening divisions over the past year. We also have to contend with the inherent ambiguity at play when different actors refer to the same principles and commitments but do not interpret them in the same way. This ambiguity is in fact turning into a fundamental challenge, undermining our common endeavours. In effect, the crisis in and around Ukraine has come as a stark reminder that in war and peace nothing can ever be taken for granted.

So, what can we do about this?

For one, the OSCE is already playing its part in helping to manage this new situation. By virtue of its inclusive membership – including both Ukraine and Russia, the United States, the members of the European Union and other key stakeholders – the OSCE offers a platform for continuous dialogue where European states have been able to maintain communication, discuss their differences and arrive at a joint response to the crisis in and around Ukraine.

What counts more than anything in the present circumstances is stabilization of the still volatile situation on the ground. The good offices of the OSCE Chairmanship, which passed from Switzerland to Serbia in January 2015, will continue to play a role at the highest political level. Through the participation of the OSCE Chairmanship representative in the work of the so-called Trilateral Contact Group and with efforts employed by OSCE personnel on the ground, the Organization can help the sides secure practical implementation of a meaningful ceasefire.

The fact that the OSCE membership managed to rally behind a common project – primarily the fielding of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine but also a number of other significant initiatives intended to defuse tensions and pave the way for longer-term solutions – demonstrates the OSCE’s political and operational potential in these times of division. Of course, stabilizing Ukraine will be an effort which can only succeed in close cooperation with other international actors.

Finding a common trajectory for this stabilization would give us the necessary space to address the fundamental issues that, if left unresolved, will continue to undermine European security and curtail our ability to jointly confront other important challenges to regional and global security. What we urgently need is a process that would see a reaffirmation of the ground rules of state behaviour and ideally, greater clarity of their interpretation.

This year, as we commemorate the anniversary of the 1975 signing of the Helsinki Final Act, we need the same kind of political courage we saw 40 years ago when leaders from opposing sides sat down at the same table and engaged in dialogue to prevent a new war. As the only regional platform for dialogue that brings together all the key players involved in the Ukraine crisis, the OSCE is prepared for courageous dialogue yet again.

Author: Lamberto Zannier is Secretary-General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Image: An image of Ukraine’s national flag REUTERS/Alexandr Kosarev