Russian premier Dmitry Medvedev has this week warned that the world is stumbling toward a new Cold War.
Lamberto Zannier, Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, has gone further by cautioning that the new Cold War would not be like its predecessor. It would not be a simple Communist-Capitalist standoff where the rules were known and understood. Zannier’s concern is that Russia is heading into uncharted waters where there are no limits, and as a consequence, there are far greater risks.
Zannier’s remarks have caused some mild concern but even that is more than they deserve. He is speaking as the leader of an organization that has been built on treaty obligations, long-standing analysis and the bland assumption that as long as it trimmed as necessary, the OSCE and indeed European peace could sail along undisturbed.
What Zannier chose not to observe was the fact that the OSCE has ultimately failed in its objective of preserving European peace and territorial integrity. That failure occurred when Russian troops marched into the Crimea in 2014. It might even be argued that its political bankruptcy was already looming in 2008 when Russian troops invaded Georgia. Russia is a member of the OSCE (as is the United States) and therein lay the great value of an alternative platform to bilateral relations between European chancellories and the Kremlin. As tensions rose, for instance in the Balkans as Serbs assaulted Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the high profile public pronouncements by political leaders were shadowed by a quieter, more thoughtful discussion at OSCE level, where there was no need to speak in soundbites.
Nobody made Russia invade Crimea and seek to annex it from the Ukraine. The Ukrainians were in no way threatening Russian interests. The Russian Black Sea Fleet base at Sebastopol in the Crimea was not menaced. It was guaranteed freedom of action by treaty. There was equally little excuse to arm and finance a revolt in eastern Ukraine among ethnic Russians. In both these acts of aggression, Russia has played on the pretended plight of an ethnic minority much as Hitler did in the Sudetenland and Danzig.
Unless Russian troops march out of Crimea and Moscow withdraws its physical, financial and moral support for the rebels in the east of Ukraine, the role of the OSCE has shrunk to nothing. If one member state sees fit to trample the agreed international rules of the game, then the principle of the inter-governmental security operation is traduced. It might serve a useful purpose again, if President Vladimir Putin decides to row back from his disastrous aggression or if his successor one day chooses to abandon the empty bombastic nationalism.
Russia is paying a heavy price for Putin’s territorial adventurism. Sanctions are biting. The oil price crash has dangerously depleted foreign reserves. The currency is collapsing. Outside loans are not available. Those who can are getting their money out of Russia as quickly as they can. Foreign investment is not only at a standstill, it is being slashed.
But perhaps the higher price that Putin is making his people pay is to plunge Moscow back into confrontation with much of the rest of the world. And as the OSCE’s Zannier has said, in the new face-off, there are no clear rules.
