Eradicating the Seeds of Terror
Europe's Organization for Security and Cooperation has an impressive record at pre-empting the conditions that lead to terrorism in Europe and Eurasia
By Robert Barry
Washington – One organization left over from the Cold War era is uniquely positioned to deal with conditions that breed terrorism in Europe and Eurasia. After the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) transformed itself into an operational entity with some 4,000 people in field missions in 19 countries of the region.
In recent years, these OSCE missions have helped to end civil war in Tajikistan, constrained conflict in Ukraine, Macedonia, Moldova and Georgia and played a major role in building civil societies in the aftermath of the conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo.
These long-term resident missions play a unique role because they either deal with the consequences of the conflicts, or pre-emptively deal with specific issues at the local level, defusing conflicts before they erupt.
This is the most effective way to deal with conditions that breed terrorism. An expanded OSCE role in Central Asia and the Caucasus would help control the threat of radical Islam and political and economic instability. Yet the OSCE is opposed in some quarters in the United States by those who wrongly see it as a rival to an expanded NATO, the European Union or the Council of Europe. None of these organizations is focused on the missions undertaken by the OSCE, nor are they able to do the important tasks now done by the OSCE.
For example, whatever direction NATO takes after it enlarges and establishes the NATO-Russia Council, it is in no position to do conflict prevention or post-conflict "peace building" in former Soviet republics that are not NATO members. Nor does the Council of Europe include members from Central Asia. The EU could conceivably play a larger role among non-NATO countries and those that are not in the Council of Europe, but the EU has decided against involvement in Central Asia
Created by the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE is particularly suited to help achieve U.S. goals. It is the only universal European security forum that includes the United States, Canada and the Russian Federation as full members. It advocates a comprehensive approach to security that emphasizes human rights and economic development as well as military security issues. And it includes other non-EU, non-NATO members such as Switzerland that play a major role in peace building.
The OSCE has another distinct advantage that makes it a highly useful foreign policy implement: it is more agile and far less expensive than comparable international organizations.
As members of congress considers the implications of the Bush administration’s sharply reduced request for peacekeeping funds in 2003, they must understand that military pre-emption cannot remove the root causes of terror. Instead, we must rely on our long-term values – democracy, the rule of law, modernization, education and the development of market economies. This must be accomplished in a multilateral framework, and in much of Eurasia the OSCE is the only available choice.
Meantime, the OSCE must reform internally if it is to maintain support from member states. These reforms must include greater decentralization of management and more effective political guidance to field missions. Russia needs to be drawn into a more cooperative relationship, particularly in Central Asia. And in places where OSCE goals have been met, or where host governments make this impossible, missions should be closed and their resources transferred elsewhere.
With U.S. leadership, these reforms can be accomplished and the OSCE can become the tool of choice to deal with many of the challenges that shape the post-September 11 world. This is no time to cut funding to the one European regional security organization that offers economy, flexibility and universal membership.
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Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert Barry is former head of the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and a board member of the British American Security Information Council. His "The OSCE: A Forgotten Transatlantic Security Organization?" was recently published by BASIC and is at http://www.basicint.org.