Page source: http://intersectionproject.eu//article/russia-world/time-helsinki-20-part-i-more-yalta-helsinki
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Author: Liana Fix
Time for a Helsinki 2.0.? Part I: More Yalta than Helsinki
Forty years after the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in August 1975, the provisions of the Helsinki
agreements are today more seriously challenged than ever before. The annexation of Crimea and the conflict
in Eastern Ukraine have called into question the European security order based on the Helsinki principles. In
an attempt to sweep up the shards, the Swiss OSCE chairmanship has launched a so-called ‘post-Helsinki’
process: A ‘Panel of Eminent Persons’, chaired by Wolfgang Ischinger, was tasked to evaluate the OSCE’s
crisis management efforts in Ukraine and to develop broader political recommendations for the future of
European security in the OSCE area. But Russia has its own ideas how a future European security order
should look like – and it resembles more ‘Yalta’ than ‘Helsinki 2.0’.
From a Russian (Soviet) perspective, as Fyodor Lukyanov argues, the Helsinki Final Act 1975 was a
continuation of Yalta and Potsdam 1945: a territorial partition and fixation of spheres of influence, crucial for
Russia’s interpretation of a stable security order. From his point of view, this is what Russia aims to reestablish, not the Soviet Union, as often assumed. The message to the West is clear: Either we agree on a
‘civilized’ re-ordering of spheres of influence in Europe at the negotiation table – or we establish facts on the
ground, as in Ukraine. In the words of a Russian military analyst, Putin is fighting in the Donbas for a table
that does not exist anymore: The table of Yalta.
For Russia, a post-Helsinki process therefore serves two purposes: Firstly, to gain acceptance from the West
for Russia’s perceived spheres of influence – i.e. no further NATO and EU enlargement – and secondly,
acceptance for the (semi-) autocratic domestic political systems in Russia and parts of its neighborhood – i.e.
no more ‘color revolutions’, ‘regime change’ and ‘meddling in internal affairs’, as Western support for civil
society is perceived by Moscow.
For Western states, both demands are difficult, if not impossible to fulfill.
Yalta as a model for conflict-solution in today’s politics is for good reason unacceptable to the West. Any notion
of a ‘concert of great powers’, even if adapted to the 21st century, as a report of the Peace Research Institute
Frankfurt has recently attempted, seems to contradict fundamental liberal ideas of sovereignty, equality and
the freedom of states to choose their alliances. The Congress of Vienna, which is often hailed as a successful
example of peaceful reordering in Europe, is no less questionable as a model than Yalta. Although ensuring a
period of peace for forty years, the congress was in fact an imposition of the will of great powers on smaller
states and a restoration of the conservative political system in Europe, leading in the long run to the outbreak
of the 1830 and 1848 revolutions in France and the German Confederation.
Germany, despite being the most powerful EU member state, understandably – given Germany’s history –
rejects great power politics as remnants of the past. Nevertheless, Russia tries again and again to lure
Germany into this dangerous terrain. At a recent German-Russian conference in Schlangenbad, Alexey
Gromyko from the Institute of Europe called on Germany and Russia to take the lead for a “third Yalta”– a
‘divide-et-impera’ approach that Russia frequently attempts towards the EU and which was rebuked by a
German official, countering that Russia is not only facing Germany, but all of Europe in the Ukraine conflict.
Equally difficult is the idea of tolerating the existing (semi-) autocratic regimes in Russia and parts of its
neighborhood as a new guiding principle for the OSCE. It is not only questionable from a normative point of
view and would represent a serious step backwards from the provisions of the Paris Charter 1990 – it is also
difficult to translate in practical terms. What counts as ‘contestation of the domestic political order’, or in
Russian terms, ‘meddling in internal affairs’? For example, is the work of German political foundations and
their Russian partners, which are already under pressure to register as foreign agents, a violation of the
domestic political status quo? For Moscow, everything that engages civil society and is widely related to
political/human rights is a threat to the regime’s stability. Sergey Karaganov even argued that Germany’s
approach of ‘strategic patience’ in the war in Ukraine could be interpreted as a ‘regime change’ technique.
And even if the West refrains from actively supporting Russian civil society, Moscow will always suspect an
invisible Western hand behind every domestic protest because it fundamentally does not believe in noninstrumentalized protest.
Also, tolerating every political regime within the OSCE, from Belarus to Azerbaijan and Russia, without
criticizing the way they treat their societies, will create an unbearable tension with the liberal norms and
values, the “Über-ich”, of Western societies. Imagine a new protest wave in Moscow and St Petersburg is
violently crushed by security services. For Western governments, it will be impossible to sell this to their
domestic constituencies as “internal affairs”. Furthermore, it was one of the achievements of the Helsinki
negotiators that the Soviet Union dropped its demand to link the provisions of basket three (article 7), which
address human rights and people-to-people contacts, with a reference to ‘non-intervention in internal affairs’
(article 6). The provisions of basket three stood strong and independently on their own in the Final Act. This
was a major step for the universality of those principles, demonstrating independence from the domestic
order, which should not be given up too easily in today’s situation.
Read Time for a Helsinki 2.0.? Part II: Learning from the Past
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Yalta
Karaganov
OSCE
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Russia / World