Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe

The CSCE met in Helsinki in 1975, attended by the members of NATO, Warsaw Pact, and the European neutral states. The Helsinki agreement was the outcome of several years of negotiation between the two Cold War alliances and represented one of the notable achievements of détente, given that CSCE works by consent and lacks any system of majority voting. The agreement covered a declaration of principles (including non-violability of boundaries, non-intervention, territorial integrity of states), and three ‘baskets’ of areas of agreement including confidence-building measures such as advance notification of military manoeuvres (basket one), economic and other co-operation (basket two), and humanitarian and human rights cooperation (basket three). While the Soviets emphasized the declaration of principles and basket two, NATO gave greater emphasis to basket three. The end of the Cold War transformed the situation of CSCE, and the meeting in Paris in 1990 concluded the ‘Charter of Paris for a new Europe’, which normalized relations between the European states. In 1995 the CSCE became the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Membership has expanded to over fifty, and includes the states of the former Soviet Union, including the new states of Central Asia. The OSCE played a part in the peacekeeping operation that followed the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and under the Charter on European Security (adopted in 1999) sought to consolidate this role. It is thus a part of the new architecture of European security but its consensual nature prevents it from playing a central role in the development of security arrangements for Eastern Europe.

— Peter Byrd