EUROPE NEEDS A NEW SECURITY STRUCTURE
By Vartan Oskanian

Lragir.am
Dec 1, 2008

A former foreign minister argues that the French and Russian presidents
are right to advocate a summit on a new security arrangement for
Europe.

Two events of great consequence – one throughout the globe and the
other in our region – have rattled the world’s assumptions in the
second half of this year.

The first – the global financial shake-up – has been so broad and
so deep that even the lame-duck status of George Bush’s presidency
proved no obstacle to the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies
gathering in mid-November in Washington to discuss cures.

Today, what started as a local loan crisis is hampering development
worldwide and already promises to lead to a global recession.

Now, everyone is already wondering whether the Bretton Woods 1940s-era
system of international institutions is indeed, as Gordon Brown
observed, incapable of handling the financial challenges of the
21st century.

No one foresaw the potential calamity when the glut of Middle Eastern
oil cash flowed into the US, although in the 1980s and mid-1990s such
extra cash had come to South America and Asia, and there, too, it led
first to bubbles and later, of course, an eruption. When a similar
bubble and eruption shook the US this summer, the response was lots
of finger-pointing, even by those who should have20known better.

The response was the same when the other significant event –
the Russia-Georgia conflict – broke out in August. Although it
was the Georgians and South Ossetians who were most immediately
and directly affected, the repercussions have indeed spread beyond
our region. The long-term effects of this first of its kind clash,
the first instance of use of force at this scale, between states,
will continue to reverberate.

Although accumulated tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi set
off the explosion, the underlying trigger was the issue of NATO
expansion. Talk about bringing NATO’s borders to Russia’s frontier,
in a region with great strategic, historic and economic significance
for Russia, had raised alarm signals.

But just as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were not
equipped to supervise, stop, mitigate international imbalances in
revenue and cash accumulation, so it seems the existing post-Cold War
security institutions are unable to override old security frontiers,
or prevent the exercise of prerogatives to prevent other clashes.

Over the past 400 years from the Peace of Westphalia, to the
Concert of Europe, the First World War and the Second World War,
the world has been through at least four, perhaps five significant
transformations. After each major war and conflict, a new system
emerged, new mechanisms and new institutions were created to regulate
state relationships.

But at the end of the Cold War, the very institutions that contributed
to the defeat of the Soviet Union remained the main pillars of the
so-called new world order.

That situation was tolerated at the time of the collapse, when
Russia was weak, in shock and distracted. Insisting that those same
institutions, particularly those dealing with security, operate the
way they used to is neither realistic nor sustainable.

Because the long, expensive, casualty-ridden Cold War ended without a
shot being fired, we have been more complacent, less thoughtful, less
strategic and far-sighted about the critical post-war period. That has
meant an expansion, almost by default, of a security alliance that
was born to contain an assertive, expansionist, aggressive empire
that no longer exists.

That has meant a Russian proposal to place missiles in Kaliningrad
in response to a US proposal for a missile shield based in the heart
of Europe.

That has meant Russia suspending its participation in the
Conventional Forces in Europe treaty and with it suspending any
promise of balance. This is an untenable formula of a future that is
only imagined in terms of a divided past.

Nearly one hundred years ago, after the first European flare-up of
the 20th century, the Europeans wanted to continue to shape the world
in its old form, and it was the Americans who pioneered their own,
new vision of old geopolitical relationships of power. As a result,
America’s strength20and influence stretched throughout what has been
called the American Century.

>From the League of Nations to the Helsinki Final Act, American idealism
and future vision shaped the world.

Today, America is renewing itself again, and reaffirming its commitment
to remaining strong and influential. At the same time, thankfully,
President-Elect Barack Obama has indicated he will be attentive to
what Europe is saying and to forge an indispensable Europe-America
partnership.

We expect that he will indeed go forward with a review of missile
deployment, the Iranian showdown, the Iraqi and Afghanistan
engagements, and even NATO expansion.

Presidents Sarkozy and Medvedev have even shown the way. Just as
Europeans convinced Bush to host the precedent-setting gathering on
the economic crisis in November, Europe and Russia have now proposed
a summit meeting of the member states of the Organisation for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), this time on this other far-reaching
matter of global significance: security issues and structures. When
ministers from the OSCE meet in Helsinki on 4 December, they should
set the process in motion.

The change that candidate Obama promised the Americans is a change that
can include a vision of a truly new order for an interdependent world.

Vartan Oskanian, Armenia’s foreign minister from 1998 until April 2008,
is the founder of the Yerevan-based Civilitas Foundation.