During the summer of 2008 the Euro-Atlantic community faced a sudden rise in tension in the Georgian crisis, culminating in armed conflict between Russian and Georgian military forces. The OSCE, long involved in this sometimes forgotten crisis, has gamely applied itself to the task given to it by the member states. It has had to overcome many difficulties and has emerged as a complementary actor to the European Union.
The OSCE and the Caucasus Crisis of Summer 2008
The aim of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) has, since its creation as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), been to bring together all countries in the Euro-Atlantic space to discuss Europe-wide security issues in a single arena. For the more senior members of the Organisation, the function and mandate of the OSCE come together under the concept of a Forum. The prime aim of the OSCE is to unite the countries concerned on the principal subject of security in Europe, which is the first ‘basket’ of the Helsinki Final Act.
Origins of the Problem
During the World Policy Conference in Évian on 8 October 2008, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the current President of the European Council, welcomed the idea of President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia to re-examine the entire system of security in Europe with a view to signing a new security pact that would stretch from Vancouver to Vladivostok. He thus proposed calling an OSCE summit meeting in 2009, considering that the OSCE was the only body that brought together under one roof all those concerned with pan-European security, and believed also that the United States should be associated with it.
The concept of a pan-European security treaty is not new, its roots dating back to the years of the Cold War. It was originally an idea of the Soviets, which goes back to well before the creation of the CSCE. In 1954 Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov presented a draft general treaty on collective security in Europe. Through it, Moscow hoped to create a Europe free of US presence and therefore, in a certain sense, rendered neutral. The proposed treaty and its associated institutions would have been open to all European countries, and China and the United States could have had observer status within it. The ever-wary West insisted upon resolution of the German question as a prerequisite. Later, in 1958, then in 1964, the first and second Rapacki plans proposed the creation of a denuclearised zone in Central Europe and a pan-European conference on security in Europe. The latter proposal was adopted by Warsaw Pact countries in Bucharest in July 1966, and in Budapest in March 1969.
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