As much as one would wish it to be otherwise, the OSCE faces an existential crisis. It was a troubled organization long before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, but it is only now that its very survival is increasingly in doubt. Two sets of questions are being asked in this context.
The first is whether the OSCE can survive, that is, whether it will have a budget, a Chair for 2024, and a Secretary General after Helga Maria Schmid’s mandate expires at the end of next year. The second, and the one to which we want to provide one potential answer, is whether the OSCE should survive, that is, whether it still has a purpose that unites all its participating States.
Finding a purpose for an organization that has been around for almost half a century and has increasingly failed to deliver on its core premises of conflict prevention and confidence building seems almost pointless. And yet, the search for a (new) purpose will be essential in ensuring that the OSCE can survive the current crisis and perhaps in the future re-discover its roots. One of the core elements of European security is unquestionably the relationship between Western states and Russia. But European security goes beyond that.
Against this background, my co-author Anastasiya Bayok and I suggest is that the OSCE’s economic and environmental dimension be put front and center in a new narrative about the added value that the OSCE retains for all its participating States. For too long, this dimension, which encapsulates issues central to the idea
of comprehensive security, and increasingly so, has been the poor relation of the first and third dimension (obvious, for example, from its roughly 3.5 per cent share in the Organization’s overall budget).
As it is also the least politicized of the three dimensions, it could serve as a focal point for the Organization and its participating States to find an acceptable purpose for which to secure the survival of the OSCE. The OSCE and its participating States are in dire need of rebuilding confidence in each other and the Organization as a whole. The second dimension, thus, may well present the best, and last, opportunity to save the OSCE.
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