The Evolution of Russia's OSCE Policy: From the Promises of the Helsinki Final Act to the Ukrainian Crisis

Abstract

In 2015, the OSCE will commemorate two seminal dates: the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act and the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Paris for a new Europe. This study takes these seminal dates for the OSCE as well as the current dramatic Ukrainian crisis as starting points to analyze three questions: How has Russia's relationship and role with/within the OSCE evolved throughout the years? Which role has the OSCE been playing in European security governance? How does the Ukrainian crisis affect Russia's OSCE policy and what does it mean for the OSCE? Studying Russia's OSCE policy is key to understand the OSCE's role as a framework for security governance in Europe with both its successes and failures. In order to answer these research questions, this study uses insights from (regional) security governance literature.

Keywords::

• Russian foreign policy
• European security
• OSCE
• Ukrainian crisis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Frank Evers and Wolfgang Zellner as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the earlier drafts of this article. I also express my thanks to Anastasiya Raevskaya, Nadezhda Matsakova, and Yuliya Samus for their support in research and Elizabeth Hormann for making the writing more eloquent. The first drafts of the essay were presented at the ISA conference in Toronto and at the BISA conference in Dublin in 2014.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ I would like to thank Wolfgang Zellner for this idea of how to present the evolution of Russian OSCE policy.

² This has been done elsewhere: Galbreath 2007; Ghebali 2005a, 2005b; Lynch 2009; Zellner et al. 2007.

³ The scope of these three dimensions has been expanding. The first dimension includes largely ‘hard’ security-related issues, such as conflict prevention/mediation, border management, arms control, and confidence-building measures. The second ‘basket’ includes, for instance, economic development and cooperation, regulation of labor migration, the fight against corruption and financing of terrorism, while the environmental activities relate, for example, to sustainable management of natural resources. The third dimension includes human contacts, human rights, free and fair elections, media freedom, and national minorities.

⁴ Loquai criticized NATO military intervention, contrary to the official German position. This is why he was later dismissed from his post.

⁵ Dogovor mezhdu RF i Respublikoi Krym o priniatii v RF Respubliki Krym i obrazovanii v sostave RF novykh subjektov [Agreement between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on the Accession of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the Creation of New Constituent Entities within the Russian Federation], March 19, 2014, http://eng.kremlin.ru/acts/6903