Revising old lessons in a new situation

At the height of the Cold War, as the scenario of a war that could have rendered Europe uninhabitable was entirely conceivable, the states of Europe overcame their ideological differences at several conferences in Helsinki. Twenty years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, people believed that the confrontation had come to a definitive end. Today, fifty years after Helsinki, we are back to square one.

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) took place between 1973 and 1975 in a turbulent environment that saw rapid alternations between détente and setbacks. Undoubtedly one of the most significant events was the end of the Vietnam War with the fall of Saigon and the surrender of the corrupt South Vietnamese government.¹ This marked the end of a bloody conflict that had kept Southeast Asia in suspense since the Japanese invasion in 1940. The images of the sometimes-chaotic evacuation of the last Americans from the US embassy in Saigon in April 1975 became a symbol of the US defeat in a war that had claimed more lives than any other US war since the Second World War and had divided the country.² In the light of the “domino theory,” there were concerns in Washington – and probably elsewhere – that the whole of Southeast Asia could now fall under communist rule. These fears must have been confirmed by events in neighbouring Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, captured the capital Phnom Penh during those very days.³ Cambodia was on the brink of genocide, comparable only to that in Rwanda, until Vietnamese invasion troops put an end to the killing of the Stone Age communists in 1979.⁴ Also in 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon. Throughout the year, the collapse of the Portuguese colonial empire progressed, accelerated in November by an unsuccessful coup attempt in Lisbon and culminating in December with the Indonesian invasion of East Timor.
  In addition, the series of proxy wars in Africa continued when the South African army intervened in the civil war in Angola with the approval of the United States. Closer to Europe, the Turkish Cypriots on the island of Cyprus proclaimed the Turkish Federal State of Cyprus, which to this day is recognised by only a few countries.
  But there were also signs of hope and détente: Franco’s death and the restoration of the monarchy brought an end to the era of fascism in Spain. In December, an agreement was reached between East and West Germany on the expansion of transit routes to Berlin. And the protagonists of the Cold War, the USA and the USSR, carried out their first joint space mission, the Apollo-Soyuz project. Somehow, both sides had come to realise that certain lines should not be crossed in this struggle.

A success for everyone

In the difficult context of the Cold War and colonial wars, a series of meetings took place from 3 July 1973 onwards, which made history as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Thirty-five states took part, including member states of both NATO and the Warsaw Treaty (also known as the Warsaw Pact), as well as neutral countries. The conference culminated in the signing of the Helsinki Final Act on 1 August 1975, which contained important commitments in three areas, often referred to as “baskets”:⁵ The first basket contained principles of inter-state security such as respect for territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs and the peaceful settlement of disputes. The second basket focused on cooperation in economics, science, technology and the environment, while the third basket dealt with issues of cooperation in the humanitarian field, human rights and the facilitation of contacts across bloc boundaries. Today, it is reasonable to ask whether the numerous travel sanctions imposed by the EU, which make travel to and from Russia and Belarus more difficult, do not constitute a violation of the spirit of the Helsinki Final Act.
  Both sides considered the conference a success because they got something they were interested in: for the East, especially the GDR, the CSCE was an important step towards international recognition and confirmation of its territorial sovereignty. Poland, which had been awarded territories of the German Reich in the course of the westward shift after the Yalta Conference, had to be interested in the inviolability of borders. In 1945, Poland, which was heavily agricultural in the interwar period, gained Silesia, one of the most important industrial areas of the economic giant Germany, and with Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin, three of the most important ports on the Baltic Sea.⁶ Other Eastern European states that had had to cede territories as a result of the war, such as Hungary and Romania, may have considered this to be of somewhat less value.
  For the West, the CSCE was a success because it included concessions from the East in the area of human rights. The Helsinki Final Act was seen by many as a step forward in terms of protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, even though its actual implementation in the Eastern Bloc countries was initially slow in coming. Nevertheless, the Helsinki Final Act provided dissidents and civil rights activists in Eastern European countries with a legal basis for their demands for greater freedom and democracy. In addition, the Helsinki Final Act provided for closer cooperation between states in the economic, scientific, technical and cultural fields. However, at the heart of the Helsinki Final Act are the ten fundamental principles that are intended to regulate the behaviour of states towards one another.⁷

A spirit of optimism in the 1990s and
a crash at the turn of the millennium

In 1975, the CSCE made a major, perhaps even decisive contribution to overcoming the Cold War, and so it was a forward-looking move to make it a permanent conference and institutionalise it when the participating states turned it into the Organisation for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in 1994.⁸ With its headquarters in Vienna, it quickly became the platform on which all issues that could in any way be relevant to security were addressed. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Representative on Freedom of the Media, the High Commissioner on National Minorities and the numerous field missions in the participating states dealt with a wide range of issues. The organisation rendered great services in the elimination of old ammunition stocks, particularly rocket fuel, and gained a great deal of experience in the field of confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs).
  After the end of the Cold War, the OSCE could have contributed to the development of a security architecture in Europe, but the window of opportunity was limited. After the failure of efforts to achieve a peaceful division of Yugoslavia, this window quickly closed again.
  The Yugoslav Wars were caused by a complex mix of centuries-old ethnic and religious conflicts and serious economic problems that Yugoslavia had been facing since the 1980s. The declarations of independence by Yugoslavia’s most prosperous republics, Slovenia and Croatia, marked the beginning of a series of conflicts that led to wars: the 10-day war in Slovenia in the summer of 1991, the Croatian War from 1991 to 1995, the simultaneous Bosnian War, and the Kosovo War from 1998 to 1999. Even after the optimism of the 1994 Budapest Summit, the OSCE failed to bring the violence in Yugoslavia under control. Later, NATO’s actions in Serbia in 1999, which violated international law, alienated the then weak Russia in the long term. Russians and Serbs then kept their proverbial fists in their pockets for 15 years, but this had no consequences for the time being. There was little need for crisis management after that because there was no existential crisis in Europe.
  The OSCE was also unable to play a decisive role in the conflicts in the South Caucasus, as demonstrated by Azerbaijan’s aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. Twenty years of negotiations in the so-called Minsk Group had failed to produce a solution.
  It is probably an expression of a one-sided Western perspective when certain commentators claim that Russia subsequently marginalised the OSCE. The issues of environmental protection, gender mainstreaming and similar topics, which were the main focus of the OSCE until 2013, were never the favourite topics of the Russian delegation, but rather those of Western Europeans and North Americans.⁹ Like all other participating States, Russia could have put an end to any OSCE institution or mission by not extending mandates and not approving budgets. However, Russia has only done so in very few cases.

Learning old lessons new

After 2014, the OSCE became a battleground for the looming new Cold War. Since then, the new ideological differences between Western and Eastern Europe have become apparent and continue to dominate discussions in OSCE forums to this day. Meetings of the most important committees have been marked by confrontation and mutual recriminations. Important mechanisms, especially the CSBM, have been weakened and undermined, including by the West. In recent years, virtually every conceivable area of political and social life has been used to wage the conflict between Western Europe and Russia, creating an atmosphere in which a willingness to negotiate is fundamentally interpreted as a sign of weakness. This is currently hampering the search for a negotiated solution to the war in Ukraine. This war has long since ceased to be about finding a solution to the conflicts within Ukraine and with its neighbour Russia, nor is it just about a new security architecture in Europe. Now an ideological war is raging in which the West is striving to impose its values on the European continent in general and to completely crush the power that sees itself as the leader of the rebellion against Western dominance, namely Russia, so that others may never again have the courage to oppose Western dominance of values.
  This is perhaps the legacy of the 1975 CSCE, when two irreconcilable blocs with their social and economic models stood opposed to each other and were prepared to risk the destruction of humanity in order to satisfy the question of how best to meet the needs of the people. The Soviets and Americans had agreed not to cross certain lines and to resolve less existential conflicts pragmatically. Today, the situation is more complex than it was then, because it is no longer two superpowers with their closest allies facing each other, with the majority of states watching their conflict, but rather there are now several states that can threaten the existence of humanity by virtue of their military potential. The majority of the international community has become more self-confident and active than it was in the 1970s, when many of them had just freed themselves from the yoke of colonial powers.
  Even if it hurts some eco- and gender activists, we must now learn to live with the new ideological divisions and then develop a security architecture for a continent that is no longer the leader in world politics in several areas, but which currently harbours the potential for the destruction of humanity. After that, we can seek a pragmatic solution to the conflicts in Ukraine and the South Caucasus – and take preventive action for numerous others in the former Soviet Union that could still become acute.
  The world has changed radically since 1975. Europe’s importance in the world has declined, and the new Cold War in Europe no longer has the global significance that the old one had in the 1970s. The flashpoints of the future are likely to be on the Eurasian continent, and the countries of Eurasia are not prepared to accept Western intervention without resistance, as demonstrated by the mechanisms and institutions that have emerged there in recent years. The OSCE may still have a role to play in resolving the friction conflicts at the points of contact between the transatlantic and Eurasian worlds, but the bloc boundaries will soon be drawn. Then the OSCE will once again become a place where old, distinguished diplomats can enjoy their final years of service and deal with pseudo-problems. The era of rhetorical agitators is coming to an end. •

¹ See Takuma Melber: “A stumbling giant. The USA and the end of the Vietnam War”, on the website of the German Armed Forces, 30 April 2025, online at https://zms.bundeswehr.de/de/publikationen-ueberblick/zmg-2025-1-vietnamkrieg-5936738. See also Rolf Steininger: “The Vietnam War,” at the Federal Agency for Civic Education, 21 October 2020, online at https://www.bpb.de/themen/nordamerika/usa/317398/der-vietnamkrieg/.
² More than 58,000 US soldiers were killed in the Vietnam War. Between 1941 and 1945, around 400,000 US soldiers died in the Second World War, and over 36,000 in the Korean War (1950–1953). In 20 years of war – the Iraq War from 2003 to 2023 – nearly 5,000 US military personnel were killed, and around 2,000 in the various wars against terror (Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.).
³ For more on the Khmer Rouge and their leader Pol Pot, see “Vor 50 Jahren: Beginn der Terrorherrschaft der Roten Khmer” (50 years ago: The beginning of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror), at kurz&knapp, Federal Agency for Civic Education, 14 April 2025, online at ttps://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/hintergrund-aktuell/204989/vor-50-jahren-beginn-der-terrorherrschaft-der-roten-khmer/. Daniel Bultmann: “Where have all the Khmer Rouge gone?” At Stiftung Asienhaus, May 2020, online at https://fid4sa-repository.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/4300/1/Blickwechsel_Wo_sind_all_die_Roten_Khmer_geblieben_01.pdf. Frank Thadeusz: “Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot: One of the most bizarre tyrants and mass murderers the world has ever seen,” in Stern, 20 May 2025, online at https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/rote-khmer-fuehrer-pol-pot-einer-der-bizarrsten-tyrannen-und-schlaechter-den-die-welt-je-gesehen-hat-a-3def9831-8009-4d42-88b1-73802eb21c3b. On the domino theory, see Arno Kohl: “Dominotheorie und amerikanische Vietnampolitik 1954–1961” (The Domino Theory and American Vietnam Policy 1954–1961). A case study on the role of role models in international politics, dissertation, Freiburg i.Br. 2001, online at http://www.hpgrumpe.de/viet_nam/Dominotheorie%20und%20amerikanische%20Vietnampolitik%201954%20-%201961.pdf. Mike Shedlock: “White House Hysteria: New Domino Theory, Putin Won’t Stop With Ukraine”, in Mish Talk, 20 December 2023, online at https://mishtalk.com/economics/white-house-hysteria-new-domino-theory-putin-wont-stop-with-ukraine/. Images: “How the domino theory came into the world,” in Die Zeit, n.d., online at https://www.welt.de/geschichte/gallery126651874/Kalter-Krieg-Wie-die-Domino-Theorie-in-die-Welt-kam.html.
⁴ An overview: “Rwanda conflict,” Conflict Archive of the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, online at www.sozialwiss.uni-hamburg.de/publish/Ipw/Akuf/kriege/283ak_ruanda.htm and United Nations Security Council Report, Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, on the United Nations website, 16 December 1999, online at https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/POC%20S19991257.pdf.
⁵ The signatory states were the NATO countries Belgium, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the Warsaw Pact countries Bulgaria, the GDR, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. They were joined by Albania, which had previously withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact, Austria, the host country Finland, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Malta, Spain, Liechtenstein, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco and the Vatican City State (Holy See).
⁶ See “Data on the 20 largest Baltic Sea ports”, online at https://www.ihk.de/schleswig-holstein/standortpolitik/wirtschaftspolitik/wirtschaftspolitische-positionen/maritime-wirtschaft/verkehrsmarkt-ostsee/daten-der-20-groessten-ostseehaefen-6073036.
⁷ The Helsinki Final Act is published on the website of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1 August 1975, online at https://www.osce.org/helsinki-final-act. The 10 Helsinki Principles include sovereign equality and respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty, the renunciation of the threat or use of force, the inviolability of borders, the territorial integrity of states, the peaceful settlement of disputes, non-interference in internal affairs, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief, the right of peoples to self-determination, cooperation between states and the fulfilment of their obligations under international law in good faith.
⁸ Unlike the OSCE Ministerial Council, which takes place every December and is attended by the foreign ministers of the participating states, the 1994 summit in Budapest was attended by heads of state or government. See “Fourth Heads of State Summit, Budapest” on the OSCE website, 5–6 December 1994, online at www.osce.org/who/timeline/1990s/11. For the memorandum and security guarantees, see “CSCE Budapest Document 1994, The Path to Genuine Partnership in a New Era”, corrected version of 21 December 1994, online at https://www.osce.org/files/f/documents/5/1/39554.pdf and Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 5 December 1994, online at https://www.forumostwest.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Budapest-Memorandum-on-Security-Assurances_primary-source.pdf. See also “Illusions and broken promises in the conflict over Ukraine,” at Global Bridge, 28 February 2024, online at https://globalbridge.ch/illusionen-und-gebrochene-versprechen-im-konflikt-um-die-ukraine/.
⁹ From 2014 to 2020, the author regularly attended the meetings of the OSCE Permanent Council at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna and made his observations.

(Translation Current Concerns)