OSCE, R.I.P.
by
Vladimir Socor, IASPS Senior Fellow
This briefing is based on a lecture given at the Central Asia-Caucasus
Institute, Johns Hopkins University-SAIS, Dec. 9, 2003.
The
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe was meant by its own
definition to uphold international security, economic cooperation, and human
rights in countries to the east of Institutional Europe (NATO/European Union).
NATO’s and the EU’s eastward enlargement has dramatically reduced the OSCE’s
scope for action both geographically and functionally. This shrinkage is likely
to continue as more post-communist countries seek to join NATO and the EU. The
OSCE, bound by Russia ’s veto, is unable even to serve as an “antechamber” to
NATO or to the EU for aspiring post-communist countries. The Council of Europe,
the WTO, and other organizations provide such antechambers, where Western
standards and norms of conduct prevail.
OSCE
activities are in essence confined to the “gray” territory where the West’s and
Russia ’s “near abroads” overlap. There, the organization can only be as
effective as Russia ’s right of veto allows. The OSCE’s problem, however, is
not just one of effectiveness, but one of institutional survival. Under
President Vladimir Putin, Russia ’s frequent and bold exploitation of the veto
right --particularly on agenda-topping issues--has paralyzed the OSCE. The
organization is foundering upon the problem of Russia .
Recently
the OSCE has demonstrated two ways to fail. In 2002 it gave in to Russian
demands across the board (Georgia, Moldova , CFE Treaty, Belarus , Chechnya )
and produced “consensus” on that basis. In 2003 it still gave in to Russia on
many issues while balking at ever-greater concessions on other issues. As a net
result, Russia bagged the concessions but still withheld consensus on basic
issues at the OSCE’s year-end conference in Maastricht , displaying its
re-expansion goals with impunity before the organization.
The
Kremlin does not want to kill the OSCE; on the contrary, it prefers to keep it
alive although weak, and to use it selectively in Russia ’s interest when
possible; e.g., for blessing or at least condoning Russia ’s use of force and
the actions of Russia ’s armed proxies, and for being soft to pro-Moscow dictatorships.
Thus, the OSCE faces a dilemma: upholding its declared principles, only to be
exposed as impotent; or quietly collaborating, only to forfeit its raison
d’etre. The organization has tried both of these options, with nearly fatal
results to its credibility in 2002 and 2003.
THE
DUTCH CHAIRMANSHIP 2003
By
all accounts including those of OSCE officials, the organization had reached an
all-time nadir in 2002 with the Porto year-end conference. That soul-searching
remained strictly private, however; OSCE officials never admitted publicly to
the organization’s crisis and the Porto fiasco. When the Netherlands took over
from Portugal as OSCE chairman for 2003, it vowed not merely to rescue the
organization from imminent demise, but to restore it to a prominent
international role and lend it a fashionable shine of multilateralism during
the 12-month term of the Dutch chairmanship.
The
Netherlands ’ prestige, resources, long experience with and commitment to
international institutions --so the reasoning went-- would ensure both a
national success for the Netherlands in the chair and an institutional
resurgence for the OSCE. Its Chairman-in-Office, Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, created in January 2003 a 40-strong special task force of
Dutch diplomats, based partly in The Hague and partly at OSCE headquarters in
Vienna , to steer the organization toward a successful year-end conference at
Maastricht in December. The chairmanship even hoped that Maastricht could see a
summit of heads of state, such as the OSCE is supposed to hold every second
year, although it has not managed one since Istanbul 1999.
In
sum, the Dutch chairmanship came in with inordinately optimistic plans even as
it took over a deeply ailing organization. From that high level of
expectations, the fall it took at Maastricht in December was all the harder.
When
formally taking over the chair in January in Vienna , de Hoop Scheffer
announced an ambitious action program out of Hotel Sacher (home of the
eponymous chocolate torte), from which venue the proceedings moved to the
Vienna Opera for a “Dance Against Violence” gala show. However, in
violence-ravaged Chechnya at that very moment, the OSCE’s office was being
compelled to close down by the Russian authorities, with barely a murmur from
the OSCE.
The
conflict in Moldova/Transnistria, more than any issue, bedeviled the OSCE
throughout the year. The Dutch chairmanship singled out that conflict as the
most amenable to an early resolution from among the “frozen” conflicts in
post-Soviet countries. The chairmanship set for itself the goal of solving that
conflict during the Dutch term, under OSCE aegis, as a crowning achievement of
the Maastricht conference. The U.S. State Department for its own reasons went
along with that goal and deadline. By staking success or failure on that issue
and on a calendar date, the chairmanship unwittingly invited Russian maximal
demands; and when those materialized, the chairmanship tried hard to
accommodate them, before pulling back from the brink at the last moment.
It
is a traditional prerogative of the OSCE’s Chairman-in-Office at year-end
meetings to issue a Chair’s Statement when consensus can not be obtained, and
some fundamental principle must be upheld at least for the record, if not operationally.
De Hoop Scheffer had the opportunity to use that prerogative in defense of the
OSCE’s own covenants when the Maastricht conference ended in
Russia-versus-the-rest disagreement. However, he issued a “Perception
Statement” that sought to satisfy Russia and the rest equally, papering over
and relativizing differences that most countries actually recognized as
fundamental.
This
denouement reflected the Dutch chairmanship’s year-long quest for consensus at
the expense of principle, not to mention Western strategic interests. To be
sure, that quest was fully consistent with the OSCE’s culture; but it caused
this chairmanship to engage in constant splitting of the half with Russia ; or
even to concede entirely on issues that the chairmanship itself had previously
defined as core goals; and finally to open the Maastricht conference doors to
the CIS and its “Collective Security Organization.”
When
de Hoop Scheffer takes over as Secretary-General of NATO in January 2004, it is
to be hoped that he will adhere to NATO culture even more closely than he did
to that of the OSCE, and that he will help uphold Western strategic interests
with even greater persistence than he showed in accommodating Russia at the
OSCE.
BELARUS
At
the year-end conference in Maastricht , the Belarusan delegation--representing
the last Soviet-type dictatorship in Europe --was justified in its official
statement to praise the good cooperation between the OSCE and the Belarusan
government. Such praise reflected the OSCE’s consent to emasculate the mandate
of its Minsk Office. From 1997 until 2002, that German-led Mission --with
significant U.S. support--had actively assisted pro-Western political forces
and advised the dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka to introduce political reforms.
During 2002, Lukashenka forced the mission to close down by evicting all of its
diplomatic staffers, one by one, from the country. The OSCE took the
humiliation silently.
In
early 2003 the Mission--now downgraded to Office--reopened with a new mandate, changed
as per Lukashenka’s and Moscow’s specifications, which: eliminated the OSCE
catchwords “democracy” and “human rights;” required the Office to coordinate
all actions with the authorities; severely restricted its ability to fund
politically-related activities; allowed the Belarusan government to decide at
the end of each 12-month period whether to prolong or terminate the Office’s
existence. The U.S. State Department made little fuss because, at that
juncture, it was courting Russia for support--which never came--on Iraq . Thus,
Lukashenka and the Kremlin succeeded in taming the OSCE in Belarus .
At
Maastricht , the U.S. , the European Union, the Baltic states , and some other
countries criticized “the continuing deterioration” of the situation in Belarus
in their official statements. OSCE Chairman-in-Office de Hoop Scheffer,
however, failed to mention Belarus in his “Perception Statement” (see Part 1).
CHECHNYA
In
2003, the OSCE was to all intents and purposes run out from Chechnya by Russia
. The organization only had a tiny Assistance Group of six international staff,
basically stuck in the Chechen small town of Znamenskoye with very limited
access to the scenes of atrocities in Chechnya . The mandate from 1995 through
2002 had authorized the Assistance Group to: promote a political settlement of
the conflict in Chechnya ; oversee and report upon the situation with respect
to human rights; deliver relief supplies.
At
the Porto conference in December 2002 Russia refused to prolong the Assistance
Group’s mandate unless it were totally changed. It wanted to eliminate the
political settlement-promoting and human rights-overseeing functions, and to
limit the Group’s role to delivery of relief supplies and accommodation of
refugees (thus in effect asking the OSCE to bear some of the financial costs of
Russian military crimes against civilians). The U.S. and other Western
countries agreed to give up the political role; accepted an increased
relief-supply role, but insisted on retaining a human-rights role for the
Group. In response, Russia unilaterally terminated the Group’s activity in the
night of December 31, 2002-January 1, 2003, and giving the Group until March to
pack up and leave Russia , which the Group did.
When
the Netherlands took over the OSCE’s Chairmanship in January 2003, de Hoop
Scheffer announced that reopening an OSCE office in Chechnya with an adequate
mandate was one of the “high priorities.” The Chairmanship soon gave up,
however. The OSCE merely declined to monitor the March 2003 “constitutional
referendum” and the October 2003 “presidential election,” both staged by
Russian authorities in Chechnya . By declining to monitor those exercises, the
OSCE was also able to claim that it could not criticize them. The world may
have been horrified by confirmed reports of mass-scale atrocities against
Chechen civilians; but not the OSCE as an organization.
At
Maastricht , the U.S. and other countries ( Latvia notably among them) did
deplore the crimes. However, de Hoop
Scheffer failed to mention Chechnya in his “Perception Statement” (see above);
thus from January to December, Chechnya turned--at least at the declaratory
level--from a high priority into a non-issue.
Previous
OSCE Chairs-in-Office had displayed greater consistency with respect to
Chechnya . Thus at the December 2000 year-end meeting in Vienna, when Russia
vetoed a draft statement that had called for an independent investigation of
alleged crimes against Chechen civilians, Chairwoman Benita Ferrero-Waldner
(Austria’s foreign affairs minister at the time) made reference to that
proposal in the Chair’s Statement. In June 2001, the Romanian Chairmanship
under Foreign Affairs Minister Mircea Geoana had actually succeeded in bringing
the OSCE’s Assistance Group back to Chechnya , after a hiatus of two-and-a-half
years. The Dutch chairmanship turned out different, however.
C F E
TREATY
The OSCE’s year-end conference in Maastricht could
not adopt a final Ministerial Declaration because Russia withheld consensus on
its only section that mattered: that on ratification of the Adapted Treaty on
Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) and the associated Istanbul Commitments.
Except for these two paragraphs, the draft final document was so
platitude-filled and meaningless that many delegations feared a severe
embarrassment to the OSCE were it to adopt such a final document without the
only section of any significance. Russia ’s veto in Maastricht capped several
months of futile negotiations on that section in the Permanent Council in
Vienna .
The Treaty and the Commitments are OSCE documents.
At Istanbul in 1999--the last summit of heads of state it was able to hold--the
OSCE had approved the Adapted CFE Treaty, along with a set of Russian
obligations to close the military bases in Moldova and Georgia, withdraw the
troops from those countries, and observe overall CFE ceilings for the southern
flank which includes such militarized areas as Chechnya and the
Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict theater. Russia had accepted those Istanbul
commitments as an accompaniment to the CFE Treaty; but it repudiated them after
Vladimir Putin had become president, and now officially seeks to keep those
forces in place indefinitely.
OSCE officials often stated that Russia had
“solemnly undertaken the Istanbul Commitments to the OSCE’s fifty-four member
countries.” However, the organization turns out to be unable to take a position
on the violation of those commitments, because any response is subject Russia
’s veto.
The Adapted CFE Treaty is unratified because Russia
’s Istanbul Commitments are unfulfilled. Moscow calls for ratification of the
Treaty in order to extend its applicability to Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania ,
the territories of which were not covered by the original CFE treaty. Russia
wants to bring the three Baltic states within the treaty’s purview so as to
place caps on possible NATO or U.S. force deployments there. The U.S. , and
NATO collectively, take the position that Treaty ratification, and thus the
Baltic states ’ accession to a ratified Treaty, are contingent on fulfillment
of Russia ’s Istanbul Commitments. Thus, the offer of Baltic accession
constitutes an incentive to Russia to comply with its obligations on the
southern flank.
In the run-up to Maastricht , however, several
influential European governments --including that of the Netherlands , whose
Foreign Affairs Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer doubled as OSCE
Chairman-in-Office--began seriously considering ratification of the CFE Treaty
without fulfillment of Russia ’s Istanbul Commitments. Several governments even
began intimating privately at the OSCE’s Permanent Council in Vienna that
Georgia would be responsible for the CFE Treaty’s unraveling, if it insists on
linking the treaty’s ratification to the Istanbul Commitments’ fulfillment.
Pressure began building on Georgia to settle for a mere promise by Russia to
fulfill those commitments by some future deadline, instead of actual
fulfillment. These moves undermined the incentive for Russian compliance on the
southern flank as a quid-pro-quo for treaty ratification and Baltic accession
to the treaty. Moscow was confirmed in its belief that it could win on both
flanks.
At Maastricht , Russia rejected any notion of a
“commitment” or “obligation” to withdraw its forces from Moldova and Georgia .
Instead, it took the position that Russia merely has such an “intention,” and
then only “provided that the necessary conditions are in place.” With this
formula, Russia simply turned the tables on the OSCE; for it was the OSCE’s
2002 year-end ministerial meeting in Porto which had adopted that wording, amid
European Union indifference, and at the behest of a U.S. State Department
seeking in vain the Kremlin’s support over Iraq . At Porto , with barely a
dozen ministers in attendance--most countries being represented at
deputy-ministers’ and even lower levels--the OSCE had changed the Istanbul
decisions of the fifty-five heads of state. It had turned Russia ’s obligation
into an “intention,” and introduced the reference to unspecified “conditions”
interpretable at will.
The U.S. , NATO and the EU rallied just two weeks
before the Maastricht conference to present a common front there, insisting
that Russia honor the Istanbul Commitments, and reaffirming the linkage of CFE
treaty ratification to Russia ’s southern-flank obligations. Russia responded
by vetoing the final Ministerial Declaration because of those stipulations. A
disappointed U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his concluding statement
“call[ed] once again for the earliest possible fulfillment of the Istanbul
commitments on Moldova and Georgia .” Some of NATO’s new and incoming members--
Poland , the Baltic states , Romania --most strongly supported this view. The Chairmanship’s concluding statement by de
Hoop Scheffer included a weaker reference to the need to fulfill the 1999
Istanbul Commitments and the linkage to CFE Treaty ratification.
In a concluding statement of his own, Russia ’s
Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Ivanov felt free to insult the OSCE: “[Regarding]
those so-called Istanbul commitments, Russia does not consider itself bound by
any such assessments and recommendations, and deems it unacceptable for the
OSCE to take them into account.”
GEORGIA
Under the OSCE 1999 Istanbul summit documents,
Russia was to: close the Vaziani and Gudauta bases by July 2001, and negotiate
with Georgia toward closure of the Batumi and Akhalkalaki bases and associated
military installations.
Four years later, Russia retains the Gudauta base,
refusing to negotiate about its closure. Russia demands a further eleven years
for closing the Batumi and Akhalkalaki bases, but wants them legalized by
treaty in the meantime; would count those eleven years from the moment of entry
into force of the treaty, which in any case would take years to negotiate;
demands a huge financial “compensation” for the relocation costs; and meanwhile
declines to hold the negotiations because Georgia does not accept such
preconditions. Georgia holds that three years would amply suffice for closing
the bases and relocating the troops and weaponry to Russia .
In the OSCE’s Permanent Council in Vienna
preparatory to Maastricht , and then at the conference itself, Russia withheld
consensus on a statement by the OSCE on Georgia . The draft statement would
have: a) reconfirmed the 1999 Istanbul documents regarding withdrawal of
Russian forces from Georgia; b) called for progress in the negotiations toward
political settlements in Abkhazia and South Ossetia (on Abkhazia, a document
prepared by Germany’s OSCE Ambassador Dieter Boden had been turned down by the
Russian and Abkhaz sides); and c) favorably referred to the OSCE’s Border
Monitoring Operation on the Georgia-Russia border.
The U.S. and other participants in their final
official statements expressed “disappointment” or “regret” over--as they weakly
phrased it--the failure to reach agreement on the documents at the Maastricht
conference (rather than over Russia’s failure, in fact refusal, to withdraw its
forces from Georgia these past four years). Even those implied judgmental
nuances were, however, absent from the Dutch Chairmanship’s final statement,
which sounded even weaker for trying to be neutral. Only the victim, Georgia,
demonstrated integrity by noting in its final statement that “ Russia has
seriously undermined its credibility and placed the OSCE in an awkward
position, denying it the responsibility to address important security issues.”
Thus, Maastricht failed to redress the setbacks
that the OSCE’s December 2002 Porto conference--in fact, the U.S. State Department’s
unilateral concessions to Russia during that conference--had inflicted on
Georgia and indeed on Western strategic interests there. Porto introduced the
conditionality to Russian troop withdrawal; it downgraded Russia’s withdrawal
obligation to a mere intention (see above concerning both points); it threw out
of the final document a reference to the host country’s “free consent” being
required for the stationing of foreign troops (as per the CFE Treaty); and it
also threw out the key words “and termination” from the goal of Russia-Georgia
negotiations, making that goal read: “duration and modalities of the
functioning of Russian bases,” as if to imply their continuation, not their
Istanbul-mandated termination. Those four concessions to Russia on troops and
bases at Porto turned out to be irreversible at Maastricht .
Russia also vetoed a favorable reference to the
OSCE’s Georgia Border Monitoring Operation (BMO) by the Maastricht conference.
Such an acknowledgment could have justified maintaining and indeed expanding
BMO’s budget and size. Comprised of unarmed military officers from many OSCE
member countries, including Russia , the BMO watches since 2000 the Georgian
side of the Georgia-Russia border opposite Chechnya , Ingushetia, and Dagestan
. The BMO’s mission is to report on any cross-border traffic by putative
“Chechen and international terrorists.” It was on such allegations that Russia
sought to build a casus belli against Georgia in recent years. In response,
Georgia and its Western partners ensured a steady enlargement of BMO’s
personnel and area of responsibility, so as to tighten security on that border;
and proposed a further enlargement in 2003.
Two considerations motivated Russia to oppose an
acknowledgment to and enlargement of the BMO at Maastricht . First, the BMO
never confirmed Moscow ’s relentless accusations that “terrorist groups” were
crossing the border from Georgia into Russia in the Chechen, Ingush and
Dagestan sectors; thus, the BMO implicitly undermined Russia ’s attempts at
creating a casus belli. Second, the BMO did confirm Russian air raids into
Georgia , even as Moscow was attempting to deny the facts about the air raids.
By its hostility to the BMO at Maastricht , Russia showed that it is more
interested in pressuring Georgia than in enhancing security and stability on
that border.
Only a few days before the Maastricht conference,
Moscow hosted a week-long meeting of the leaders of Georgia ’s secessionist
regions. The Abkhaz, South Ossetian, and Ajar leaders--all of whom are propped
up by Russian troops in their respective areas of Georgia --held
well-publicized meetings with Russian officials. They declared their intentions
to continue cementing the secession from Georgia and links with Russia . At Maastricht , U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell urged member countries to “do everything possible to support Georgia ’s
territorial integrity. No support should be given to breakaway elements seeking
to weaken Georgia ’s territorial integrity.”
Meanwhile, Russia is in the process of annexing
Abkhazia and South Ossetia de facto. In the past two years it has: strengthened
Russian and proxy control of the Georgian side of the border in those two
sectors; established direct transportation and communication links between Russia
and those two regions of Georgia, without reference to the Georgian government;
acquired property there, violating Georgian law and Georgian state ownership;
handed out Russian citizenship en masse to residents of those regions of
Georgia; or granted those residents visa-free travel privileges, while imposing
visa requirements on residents from the rest of Georgia; and demonstrated the
ties between the secessionist leaderships and the locally based Russian troops.
The OSCE is unable officially even to take note of,
much less to take a stand on, Russia ’s de facto seizure of Georgian (as of
Moldovan) territories. The OSCE’s holy of holies--the Helsinki Final Act--along
with the Charter on European Security, Platform for Cooperative Security, codes
of interstate conduct, and any number of other OSCE pacts may forbid
territorial annexations, the use or threat of force to change borders, ethnic
cleansing, and all forms of attack on the territorial integrity of states in
their internationally recognized borders. However, the OSCE’s Permanent Council
in Vienna , the Maastricht conference, and ultimately the OSCE Chairmanship did
and said nothing in the face of Russia ’s latest moves to splinter the
pro-Western Georgia .
MOLDOVA: A BLOT ON THE OSCE’S DUTCH CHAIRMANSHIP.
Moldova topped the OSCE’s agenda throughout 2003.
It also figured near the top of the overall European security agenda since at
least 2002, as a disputed borderland between the enlarging West and the
reemergent contours of a Greater Russia.
The Dutch Chairmanship under Foreign Affairs
Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer aimed to resuscitate the deeply ailing OSCE by
solving (or at least making decisive progress toward solving) one post-Soviet
“frozen” conflict during the Dutch term. It looked at South Ossetia before the
term had begun; but by the time it stepped into the chair, it had identified
the Trans-Dniester conflict as the most amenable to an early resolution. Its
ambitions were high: vindicating OSCE’s “relevance,” hosting an OSCE summit (first
since 1999) at Maastricht to consecrate the settlement, using it to showcase
U.S.-Russia consensus and Europe-Russia “cooperative security,” and collecting
laurels for the Dutch government as peacemaker. Avoiding Russia’s veto by
satisfying its all-too-well-known geopolitical goals in Moldova was key to a
“success” defined in those terms.
All along the Dutch Chairmanship worked closely
with the U.S. State Department and the American-led OSCE Mission in Moldova.
Sorely lacking expertise on the country, the Chairmanship took on board a
ready-made Russia-OSCE-State Department plan to “federalize” Moldova with
Trans-Dniester, placing such a “federation” under mainly Russian oversight.
Drafted primarily by Russia, and publicly promoted mainly by the OSCE Mission
at State Department’s behest, the plan is contained in the July 2002
“mediators’” document and its successive edited versions through October 2003.
Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Yevgeny Primakov’s 1997 Moscow Memorandum
provides the framework and basic parameters for the current project.
The current project envisages: 1) confining the
negotiations to a “pentagonal” format of: rump Moldova and Trans-Dniester as
coequal parties, along with Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE in two roles:
“mediators” in the negotiations and “guarantors” of the eventual outcome, to
supervise the “federation’s” functioning; 2) legalizing the secessionist ruling
group in Trans-Dniester, and granting it a share of power in Moldova’s central
governance under a “federal” arrangement; 3) drafting a “federal” constitution
in the “mediated” negotiations between rump Moldova’s and Trans-Dniester’s
authorities, and getting that constitution approved by referendum in 2004.
The plan’s first component means direct and
multiple Russian representation, and only a narrow and indirect Western
representation via OSCE subject to Russian veto. This model of “guaranteeing” a
state is nowhere else to be seen in Europe or Asia. The second component means
authorizing foreign minority rule by Russia’s own citizens and agents in
Trans-Dniester, and empowering those exponents of a Greater-Russia agenda
alongside the local Moldovan Communists. This would mean a death sentence on
Moldova, and creation of a Russian-oriented substate entity on the West’s new
border. The third component means holding the “referendum” under the existing
conditions of Communist control over mass media in rump Moldova and a
Soviet-type police regime in Trans-Dniester.
Meanwhile, Russian troops are staying put in
Moldova. In 2003 the OSCE again could do nothing about Russia’s repeated breach
of its 1999 troop-withdrawal obligation. Although the OSCE is the guardian of
that commitment, it excused Russia’s breach by pretending continuously that
Trans-Dniester was preventing Russia from withdrawing the troops. This is
farcical, inasmuch as Trans-Dniester’s leaders are citizens of Russia, many of
them with Russian military and security service ranks, and constantly shuttling
to Moscow for consultations and support. The OSCE’s playing along with this
farce confirmed that the OSCE was powerless to “guarantee” Moldova’s
sovereignty, integrity and security. Moreover, mandating Russia and Ukraine to
supervise the “federation’s” constitutional arrangements and internal
functioning made a mockery of the “democratic” packaging of this project.
In sum, the proposed “federalization” and
“guarantees” would turn Moldova into a Russian satellite on the soon-to-be
border of NATO and EU. Moldova’s pro-Western opposition has branded the
proposed “federalization” a “Russian protectorate.” No Western expert is known
to have endorsed it, outside the OSCE and State Department.
Nevertheless, the OSCE and State Department
alongside Russia--and with Ukraine
passively seconding Russia’s position--sought during 2003 to force the
pace of “federalizing” Moldova under Communist and Russian control, and while
Russian troops stayed on. The OSCE’s Chairmanship made it a top priority to
have this project endorsed at the Maastricht conference.
The Chairmanship’s representative in Chisinau, as
well as the Mission, brushed aside the growing objections from Moldova’s
pro-Western opposition and civil society groups. The Mission had all along
chosen to cast these groups as “retrograde,” “nationalist” and worse; the Dutch
Chairmanship’s representative in Chisinau took this attitude, as well, on
board.
Conversations in March and May with two officials
of ambassadorial rank, responsible for Moldova at two different levels of the
OSCE’s chairmanship, revealed poor background knowledge of the 13-year-old
conflict in Moldova, and inadequate information on the situation on the ground.
These ambassadors candidly admitted to having received only the most cursory
initiation into Moldova’s history, politics and culture after embarking on
their 2003 effort. Some of their views on the current political situation
seemed to reflect the OSCE Chisinau Mission’s and State Department’s biases,
which these Dutch ambassadors had few means to filter: e.g., a vision of
Moldova as essentially a “Russian-speaking” society; and confusion about the
effects of Soviet-era linguistic russification, now regarded with a measure of
approval as modern multiculturalism. These ambassadors took at face value the
Russian military’s obviously understated data on the size of the Russian troop
contingent. While senior OSCE levels seemed to accept a major Russian political
role in Moldova as a matter of course, Dutch and other junior staffers
displayed a lively interest in seeking a genuinely European solution for Moldova.
Poorly advised by his senior officials, de Hoop
Scheffer attempted three months into his term to score a “breakthrough” by
persuading Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and Trans-Dniester leader Igor
Smirnov to attend together a football game in Tiraspol in de Hoop Scheffer’s
presence, there to relaunch the “negotiating process.” Smirnov had, however,
banned Voronin from entering Trans-Dniester almost two years previously and
reaffirmed the ban since then; he now rejected de Hoop Scheffer’s pleas to
admit Voronin, deflating the OSCE’s public-relations hype. The OSCE’s Chairman
did dignify Smirnov by holding official talks with him, however he declined to
attend the football game as “punishment” on Smirnov; and went on nevertheless
advocating the empowerment of Smirnov through “federalization.” Had this
football episode occurred one day earlier than it actually did, it might have
qualified for an April Fools’ story; but it did not qualify because it occurred
on April 2.
The Chairmanship was advised in March and again in
May to take advantage of a “Dutch continuity” as OSCE Chair in 2003 and EU
Presiding Country in 2004, in order to transfer the Moldova dossier to the EU.
In this way, the Netherlands could avoid a premature settlement at Maastricht that
could only be in Russia’s favor, while still collecting the hoped-for laurels
by promoting a better solution through the EU.
In July 2003, de Hoop Scheffer took a first step by
requesting the EU to consider leading a peace-consolidation operation in
Moldova. The idea had originated in the EU’s Paris-based Institute for Security
Studies, and the planning in EU High Representative Javier Solana’s staff.
However, de Hoop Scheffer insisted that any EU-led operation should still
require an OSCE mandate; and that at least the outline of a political
settlement would still have to be adopted by the OSCE as a prerequisite to the
proposed EU-led operation.
Leaving those two decisions up to the OSCE,
however, clearly meant holding them hostage to Russia’s veto. Moreover, the
concept of a “post-settlement” operation would cast the EU in the role of
policing a settlement not of its making, but rather of Russia’s/OSCE’s making,
in this case “federalization.” Within the EU itself, the issue of a
peace-consolidation operation was ultimately sidelined in October, not least by
Italy (the EU’s currently presiding country), Germany and France, countries
whose national leaders pursue special bilateral relations with Russia.
That failure had two consequences: first, it eliminated
a possible formula for turning the Russian “peacekeeping” troop presence into a
multinational one; and, second, it
returned all decisions fully to Russia’s and OSCE. Moreover, at this juncture
in October, the Chairmanship and Mission began acting frantically under
self-generated pressure to produce a “success” if only on paper at the rapidly
approaching Maastricht conference. Thus, they seemed prepared for
ever-increasing concessions to Russia by forcing the pace of “federalization”
while still condoning Russia’s refusal to withdraw the troops. Moreover, they
pressured a reluctant Moldova into still greater concessions to Trans-Dniester
on a “federal” constitution: e.g., in October at the U.N., a communique by de
Hoop Scheffer jarringly announced that he was “impressing on” a still-reluctant
Voronin that he must embrace and accelerate the “federalization.”
The Kremlin now evidently felt that it could aim
for total, rather than predominant, control in Moldova. Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, began mediating
between Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and Trans-Dniester leader Igor
Smirnov, behind the back of the three official mediators who are the OSCE,
Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and Ukraine. The OSCE was aware that the
Kozak negotiations were in progress, but was kept in the dark about their
content. Kozak falsely assured the OSCE that he was working with Voronin on a
document identical to that of the three mediators. Characteristically, Russia’s
Foreign Affairs Ministry continued working with the OSCE and Ukraine toward a
settlement in Moldova on the old basis, knowing full well that Kozak was
negotiating in parallel on a new basis even more favorable to Russia.
In late October 2003, the three “mediators” signed
a final document--in practice a Russia-OSCE document, the latest edited version
of the July 2002 document--as the basis for “federalizing” Moldova. They also
agreed at Russian insistence that the document could only be presented by the three
mediators jointly, not individually. The Russian side immediately blocked the
presentation, in order--as it turned out--to free the table for the Kozak
document.
On November 5 in Voronin's office, de Hoop Scheffer
supplicated him for “something deliverable at Maastricht” on December 1. He
also grasped once more at the straw of trying to set up a Voronin-Smirnov
meeting, so as to enable the OSCE to claim that “the process” was alive.
Because Russia had tied the OSCE’s hands in terms of presenting the “mediators’”
document, de Hoop Scheffer now asked Voronin to endorse it sight unseen.
Furthermore, de Hoop Scheffer maintained (based on Kozak’s assurances to OSCE)
that the Kozak document was identical to that of the “mediators.” Voronin, who
was at that juncture finalizing the document with Kozak, gained full confidence
that the double-cross had worked, and he let de Hoop Scheffer depart
empty-handed on every count.
That same day in Chisinau, as anti-“federalization”
protests were mounting, de Hoop Scheffer met for the first time with civil
society representatives. Attending the first 45 minutes of a scheduled two-hour
dialogue, he heard but (as it turned out) did not listen to their arguments:
these debunked “federalization” and called for withdrawal of the Russian troops
and observance of the constitution as the first priorities. Unable to deal with
those issues, the OSCE Chairmanship and Mission by now only wanted to have
something signed at Maastricht on December 1; the contents seemed to matter
less and less during the final countdown to the conference. Even at the
eleventh hour, the Chairmanship and Mission showed no interest in Moldova’s
pro-Western opposition and civil society.
MOLDOVA BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE WEST AT MAASTRICHT
On November 15 and 17, with only two weeks to go to
the Maastricht conference, Kozak presented and published his Memorandum as a
basis for “federalization” and for discussion at Maastricht. It gave
Trans-Dniester even greater powers--including a grotesquely high numerical overrepresentation
in Moldova’s central authorities--and Russia an even stronger supervisory role
over the “federation,” than the “mediators’” document had envisaged. The
“mediators’” document in its successive versions down to October 2003
corresponded to the “soft” model of a Russian sphere of influence; whereas the
Kozak Memorandum corresponded to the “hard” sphere of influence model. Final
touches were added to the Kozak Memorandum until November 24, with Voronin
initialing each page in approval. In a parallel move, Russia publicly reserved
the right to keep its troops in place until 2020 for “guaranteeing” the
political settlement.
Putin was scheduled to sign the Kozak Memorandum
with Voronin and Smirnov on November 25 in Chisinau. Voronin, however, pulled
back during the night of November 24-25, and in the morning cancelled Putin’s
visit with only a few hours notice. Three factors had intervened: first, strong
intercession with Voronin by Solana on the telephone and by the new U.S.
ambassador in Chisinau, Heather Hodges, in person; second, Voronin’s own,
last-minute reservations on the issue of Russian “guarantor troops;” and third,
a vociferous, broadly based opposition movement going into daily action from
November 24 on, culminating on November 30 with a 40,000-strong mass rally that
sent appeals to Maastricht against “federalization,” for withdrawal of Russian
troops, and for defending Moldova’s constitution.
At that point--barely one month before de Hoop
Scheffer’s inauguration as NATO Secretary-General--he and the U.S. parted
company on Moldova. On November 27 in the OSCE Permanent Council, the U.S. for
the first time openly criticized Russia’s breach of the troop-withdrawal
obligation, rejected the Kozak Memorandum, and criticized the double-cross that
had been perpetrated on the OSCE. This change not only responded to Russia’s
power-grab in Moldova, but reflected incipient second thoughts in Washington
about its overall Russia policy.
De Hoop Scheffer’s public statements, however,
formulated a different position, in three points: a) he was officially
informing Voronin that some OSCE member countries would withhold consensus on
the Kozak Memorandum were it to be submitted at Maastricht; b) were Voronin to
sign the Kozak Memorandum preparatory for submission at Maastricht, the
Chairmanship would be “neutral;” c) the Chairmanship favored combining elements
of the mediators’ document and the Kozak Memorandum into a single document on
“federalization.” The OSCE’s Chisinau Mission also called publicly for
combining the two documents into one, for approval at Maastricht.
A Task Force chief of the Dutch Chairmanship sent
out word insisting that this was a brave stand, and demanding credit for it. In
fact, it only meant groping for a “middle way” between the Russia-OSCE document
and the purely Russian document; i.e., between predominant and total Russian
control of Moldova. It was a textbook example of continually slicing the half
with Russia until very little remained of the West’s putative half.
On Moldova as on Georgia, the Maastricht conference
proved unable to overcome the legacy of the December 2002 Porto year-end
conference. At Porto, high-level State Department officials had not only
accepted Russia’s demands to keep forces in Moldova, but went on to arm-twist
the Moldovan delegation into ceasing its resistance. Thus, Russia-U.S. accord at Porto put three
huge holes into the OSCE 1999 Istanbul summit’s decisions on Moldova: it
downgraded Russia’s withdrawal obligation to a mere “intention;” changed it
from unconditional to sweepingly conditional--“provided the necessary
conditions are in place”--thus leaving the interpretation to Moscow’s
discretion; and extended the December 2002 troop-withdrawal deadline to
December 2003, on the false pretense that Trans-Dniester authorities did not
permit Russia to withdraw the troops. Meanwhile, Russia continued evacuating or
scrapping parts of its antiquated, useless equipment stockpiles from
Trans-Dniester.
At Maastricht the U.S. policy was no longer that of
Porto, but the Russian side would not budge from the Porto formulae. Thus,
Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Ivanov and Deputy Minister Valery Chizhov in
Maastricht--as well as Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov in Moscow during the
Maastricht conference--argued that: a) Russia had no obligation to withdraw its
forces; b) its intention to do so was conditional on Trans-Dniester allowing
the withdrawal to proceed, and on a political settlement to Russia’s
satisfaction; and c) inasmuch as Russia did intend to withdraw, and inasmuch as
the necessary conditions were not in place, it would therefore be superfluous
and irrelevant to set a date for withdrawal; and would even offend Russia by
seeming to question its intention to withdraw the forces.
These same Russian officials--including the defense
minister pronouncing at length on this political matter--assailed certain
Western countries for opposing the Kozak Memorandum. They did not publicly name
those countries, but clearly meant the U.S. in the first place. The Russians
decried those countries’ “interference in Moldova’s internal affairs” -- a
vintage Soviet argument, which held that Moscow’s and proxies’ power-grabs were
legitimate while Western objections constituted “interference in the internal
affairs” of countries targeted by Moscow. The two Ivanovs and Chizhov
maintained that the Kozak Memorandum could not be changed and was to be taken
as the sole basis for resolving the Trans-Dniester conflict. Sergei Ivanov
threatened that the evacuation of military equipment might be slowed down or
halted, and that “Moldova’s partition might continue for decades to come.”
Many Western countries--foremost those of the EU,
but also the U.S.--tried hard to accommodate Russia’s demands in the
negotiations on the final document within the Permanent Council, and then at
Maastricht. They did not heed the Moldovan concluding statement’s call for
direct involvement by the EU and U.S. in resolving the Trans-Dniester conflict.
Nor did they support the Moldovan Foreign Affairs Ministry’s proposals to set a
specific deadline on the withdrawal of Russian
troops, or to criticize Trans-Dniester for “human rights violations” and
other obvious transgressions. Most delegations anticipated that Russia would
breach a new deadline--it would be the third--again with impunity, ruining the
OSCE’s credibility; therefore, they avoided setting a deadline. They were
prepared in the final document to ask Russia to withdraw the troops “as soon as
possible, without further delays.” Russia was amenable to this at Maastricht,
even as it was announcing in Moscow its intention to keep the troops in Moldova
until 2020. (Such is Moscow’s idea of
troop withdrawal “as soon as possible” from Georgia as well). Russia
said that it would oppose any criticism of Trans-Dniester on human-rights
grounds, but would accept criticizing Trans-Dniester for blocking the
withdrawal of Russian forces. (With this, Russia sought to make the entire OSCE
as it had made the Chisinau Mission, into an accessory to that farce).
In the event, Russia vetoed (“withheld consensus
on”) the final document on Moldova because most countries insisted on
reaffirming the validity of Russia’s 1999 Istanbul troop-withdrawal commitment
(which Russia has repudiated since then); and because no country would accept
Moscow’s view that the Kozak Memorandum must be the sole basis for resolving
the Trans-Dniester conflict. Not a single country supported these Russian
positions publicly at Maastricht.
The U.S. and the EU arrived at a common position on
Moldova at Maastricht. In statements delivered both during the conference (by
Secretary of State Colin Powell for the U.S. side) and at its conclusion (by
the EU’s Italian presidency in both cases), they called for: a) fulfillment of
Russia’s 1999 OSCE Istanbul commitment to withdraw its forces from Moldova; b)
continuation of the existing, “pentagonal structure” of negotiations between
Moldova and Trans-Dniester mediated by Russia, OSCE and Ukraine; c) creation of
a multinational peacekeeping or stabilization force, under the OSCE’s aegis (it
being implicit that Russian troops would be included).
In practical terms, however, Istanbul is
all-but-exhausted. At Porto 2002, the U.S. and EU (by commission and by
omission, respectively) fatally corrupted the Istanbul commitment (see above).
Russia repudiated them in 2001 de facto and in 2003 officially, sticking to
Porto after the U.S. and EU had reversed their Porto stance. Even when these
two main actors revived the Istanbul commitment at Maastricht, they stopped short
of setting a timeframe for fulfillment because they anticipated continuing
failure. In sum, Istanbul is basically a pious wish by now, the OSCE patently
lacking the means or even collective will to turn it into a reality. Only the
U.S. and EU have the means to pursue this issue with Russia directly; but have
not seriously done so, thus far.
Sticking to
the “pentagonal structure” is a weak, improvised defense against the Kremlin’s
attempt to cut out the OSCE and make a direct deal with Voronin on the basis of
the Kozak Memorandum. The “pentagonal structure” itself was Primakov’s recipe
bequeathed to the OSCE for consigning Moldova to Russia’s sphere of influence.
It is illegitimate in itself, as well as the relict of a past that has been
overtaken by NATO’s and EU’s enlargement. Defending the “pentagonal structure”
is fully in character with the OSCE, but is incompatible with Western interests
because it would empower Russia in a “federalized” Moldova along a
400-long-kilometer sector of this new Euro-Atlantic border.
The OSCE’s Dutch Chairmanship and American-led
Mission--the latter reflecting State Department policy on this issue--excluded
Romania from any role in shaping the settlement in Moldova. It did not seem to
matter that Romania had become a valued U.S. ally, NATO invitee, and EU
candidate. They also seemed to ignore Romania’s close kinship to two-thirds of
Moldova’s population, long border with Moldova, and unique role as Moldova’s
sole overland link to institutional Europe. In every respect, Romania has more
legitimate interests and better qualifications than Russia’s or Ukraine’s in
shaping the political and security outcome in Moldova. Still, the OSCE
persisted in excluding Romania, while empowering Russia in Moldova, and
accepting Ukraine in Russia’s tow. This attitude underscores the OSCE’s
readiness to allow Russia to trump Euro-Atlantic interests in this sector of
the West’s new border.
Romania is now in charge of this border as an
incoming member of NATO and EU. In his speech at Maastricht, Foreign Minister
Mircea Geoana asserted that Romania has more valid concerns regarding the
situation in Moldova than any of the “pentagonal” format’s members; he called
for changing that format and for a direct involvement of the U.S. and EU.
Geoana reminded the OSCE that Trans-Dniester’s leaders and those of
secessionist areas in the South Caucasus are local dictators who should not be
treated as representing local populations; he urged the OSCE to offer these
populations the opportunity to choose freedom; and, because (as he put it)
“containment is not the solution,” he called for hands-on engagement by NATO
and EU in solving the Trans-Dniester and South Caucasus conflicts. Thus,
Geoana’s speech amounted to a wakeup call to the OSCE.
The Dutch Chairmanship had seen its top goal for
Maastricht--an agreement on Moldova--thwarted by Russia and Trans-Dniester,
ultimately through the Kozak Memorandum. By then, the Chairmanship’s initially
high ambitions (see above) had shrunken to a face-saving quest for some
document on Moldova, even if meaningless or indeed damaging, as long as it
could be presented as a “consensus” result of Maastricht. This is why de Hoop
Scheffer went in for concessions of his own to Russia on the Kozak Memorandum
(which he deemed partly acceptable -- see above), on the troop issue and on
“federalization.”
In his opening address at the conference, de Hoop
Scheffer lauded equally the mediators’ joint efforts and Russia’s separate
efforts; this, after the Kozak Memorandum had so grossly double-crossed the
OSCE. He emphatically praised the work done toward a new constitution of
[“federalized”] Moldova; this, about constitution-drafting by a primitive
Communist government and a Soviet-type dictatorship in Trans-Dniester, with
Russia in the saddle and a helpless OSCE lending cover. His opening address
unjustifiably failed to mention the issue of Russian troops; and wrongly
credited Russia (alongside OSCE) with proposing international guarantees,
whereas Russia only proposed Russian guarantees. The unjustifiable omission and
the wrong crediting fit within the common logic of giving in to Russia. On this
basis, de Hoop Scheffer exhorted the conference to issue a consensus statement
on Moldova.
After Russia’s winner-take-all insistence had thwarted
that consensus, de Hoop Scheffer’s Perception Statement perceived that most
ministers at the conference had welcomed and urged the drafting of a federal
constitution. In fact, this was not mentioned by any of the ministerial
conference statements posted on the OSCE’s website. (Moldova in its first
statement mentioned drafting a federal constitution, but eliminated this
reference from its concluding statement, which called for EU and U.S.
involvement). De Hoop Scheffer called for a constitutional referendum on both
banks of the Dniester to be held in 2004, presumably being fully aware--though
without mentioning it--that the Communist Party and the Russian-installed
authorities enjoy overwhelming control of the mass-media and state apparatus on
either bank.
Under this Chairmanship as under its predecessors,
the OSCE did nothing whatsoever by its own criteria for a democratic opening in
Trans-Dniester, that lethal mixture of foreign military rule, ethnic-minority
rule, Soviet-police rule, and mafia rule. The Dutch Chairmanship, however,
actually pressed for legalizing those authorities and giving them a share of
the central power.
Unnecessarily turning itself into a prisoner of the
December 1 Maastricht deadline, and staking too much on the issue of Moldova,
the Chairmanship ended up a hostage to Russia in terms of declaring success or
acknowledging failure at the year-end conference. OSCE “success” in Moldova
through “federalization”--complete with a communist-style “referendum”, and
with Russian troops in place--would create a Russian satellite and serious
security problems in this sector of the new Euro-Atlantic frontier.