The fundamental changes in the world over the last 20 years could not but affect the European security system, thus giving rise to the need for its transformation. This is underpinned by better environment of Euro-Atlantic politics with diminished demand for confrontational approaches—demand which, it should be noted, was created artificially, including under the influence of the discord caused by the war in Iraq.

European security has deteriorated in all its aspects over the last 20 years. This includes erosion of the arms control regime, atrophy of the OSCE,⁽¹⁾ emergence of serious conflicts and the danger of their uncontrolled escalation, and the attempts to turn frozen conflicts into active ones. Statements like ‘everything is all right, let’s do business as usual’ fail to convince. In my view, key issues to analyse in the current situation are the theory and practice of a comprehensive approach to security, including the future of the OSCE and an integrated and pragmatic solution in the form of a treaty on European security as advocated by Russia.

Recent History: a Brief Overview

When the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, a real opportunity emerged to turn the OSCE into a fully-fledged organization providing equal security for all states in the Euro-Atlantic region. However, this opportunity was missed, because the choice was made in favour of NATO expansion, which actually meant not only preserving the lines that divided Europe into zones with different levels of security during the Cold War, but also moving those lines eastward. The OSCE’s role has, in fact, been reduced to servicing this policy through looking after the humanitarian situation in the area ‘to the East of Vienna’. Such a choice, despite good intentions, had one fundamental methodological flaw: it recognized as a given the fragmented state of European security in the long term, including the systemic divide between East and West. This made the task of creating a system of collective security hostage to exigencies of the current political situation, both in the region and globally. The crises in Kosovo and Iraq, and a more recent crisis connected with Georgia’s military misadventure in August 2008, gave obvious proof of that. Everyone is in dire need of security right now and not in the future—which ought to be shaped primarily through a universal sense of mutual and equally guaranteed security.