Dr. Arne C. Seifert: "Helsinki, the Principle of Peaceful Co-existence..."

"Helsinki, the Principle of Peaceful Co-existence and their Relevance for Stability and Common Security"

First of all I wish everyone present here all good for that still young new year 2011, good health and for us all successes in realizing our common goal: expelling war causers into the bars and strengthening peace in the Middle East and our common region.

Also very cordial thanks for the invitation to inform here about aspects of the Helsinki process, the principle of peaceful coexistence, its origin, mechanisms and results.

I believe it is highest time, to remind of that principle and the positive role it has been playing in overcoming the threat of war in Europe as well as internationally.

It is also highest time because the ostracism of war as means of international politics as it could be reached through the paradigm of peaceful coexistence, has been canceled again after the Cold War period ended. Especially the Near East and Afghanistan became in the last decade scenes of several wars. As a result of that the situation becomes increasingly unstable in these regions and thousands of people dy. Also the phenomenon of terrorism represents a new danger.

Finally, we here in Europe must become conscious of the fact that the states of Europe and the Trans-Atlantic Alliance are not only involved in these new conflicts. We belong to their causers!

Everything speaks for that that we are confronted with a new conflict quality in the Middle East and Afghanistan, however, also in the relations between these regions and the West. The question consists in how this extremely dangerous conflict situation can be resolved, because it tends to lead us continuously onto the edge of new wars which will have catastrophic effects also on the relation between Europe and your region, my ladies and gentlemen.

Dear colleagues: To be on the fringe of a war that a nuclear would probably have been - that was just the state, in which the two political and military blocks of the west and the socialist camp in Europe, however also internationally, have been for decades faced with. They had to learn to deal with their interest conflicts without resorting to military means.

That the two blocks were able to master. Therefore this experience is and remains valuable. Particularly in the face of the fact that international strength constellation's change in a fast way as well as difficult developments' to be expected, also in the Near and Middle East.

1. About the initial situation which has led to Helsinki and peaceful coexistence

The roots of the East-West-Conflict were deeper than those of every predecessor in the modern European history:

They went back to the incompatibility of the social orders of the conflicting sides that could not have been more contradictory with their in each case capitalist respectively socialist-communist orientation. The objectives of their sociopolitical orientation were mutually excluding, they supported, thus, antagonistic character.

From the great variety of manifestation of form and content that antagonism took, I would like to select particularly the military and international one.

The east-west-confrontation began already shortly after the end of the 2nd world war. The USSR as a victorious power of the 2nd world war, had enlarged its geo- and sociopolitical area of influence in the course of the suppression of the German Hitler fascism to in the middle of Europe to Germany. That meant a massive influence loss for the west and his society model in Europe and s challenge to the capitalist system as a whole. For Germany it meant the division into east and west, later even into two states, each one belonging to one of those hostile systems.

„The USSR was not merely a military powerful country with a very large sphere of influence, it was a revolutionary communist dictatorship and this fact meant that it would never be satisfied with the territorial status qou.”^{^[1]}

About this thesis could be argued because the Soviet Union and in particular the GDR in Helsinki were interested in gaining final legal recognition of that status quo by the western alliance in Helsinki. However, the quotation reflects the assessment of the western superpower.

However, „NATO saw as Europe’s central security problem […] the Warsaw Pact’s supposed ability to launch a surprise attack aimed at the conquest of Western Europe.”^{^[2]}

For the USA in particular the start of the first space capsule, the "Sputnik", by the Soviet Union in 1957, came as a shock because the catapulting of a satellite into the space meant in military respect that the USSR would have also ballistic missiles in future. The east west conflict began to grow from a european one into a global dimension of the bipolarity.

That all the more, since at this time the outlines of a direct military collision between the Soviet Union and the western powers loomed at the horizon of the Middle East.

That was the time of the national independence of your states: the revolution of the Free officers in Egypt (1952); the fall of the Syrian military dictatorship (1954) and the coming to power of the Ba'ath-Party; the Iraqi revolution (1958); the antimonarchic revolution in north Yemen (1962); the Algerian national liberation revolution (1954 to 1962) and the power takeover through a revolution council (1963); the armed liberation fight against the English protectorate in South Yemen (1963 to 1967).

Your young states saw themselves exposed to continuous resistance of the west. England and France planned in 1956 to topple Nasser and began with support of Israel the so called "Three-partied aggression" against Egypt. On the other hand the USSR took position against this aggression sharply.

Especially close to the edge of a direct war led the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy set up by Great Britain through general Kassem on 14th July 1958. When the new Iraqi leadership left the Baghdad pact, the USA and England considered seriously intervening militarily. The Soviet leadership warned against that and started to provide Kassem with military support through Egypt. As Russian sources assess today, the Iraq crisis brought the Soviet Union, the USA and England by a hair's breadth

In the eyes of the West two new international political forces started here to ally - an anticolonial, therefore anti-imperialistic movement in Asia and Africa and the victorious power of the II. World war, the USSR, and its East European allies.

The global range, intensity and danger of the conflict between the two pact systems of NATO and Warsaw Pact escalated even more during the Cuba crisis 1962. The Soviet Union stationed missiles at the entry door of the USA in the Caribbean in response to the deployment of American missiles in Turkey at the entry door to the USSR.

At this time, at the beginning of the sixties, „the areas of influence of the blocks arisen as a result of the Second World War seemed to be unchangable. [...] The Cold war in the form of the absolute confrontation has become, in particular as a result of the Cuba crisis 1962, obviously life-threatening for the two sides", as assessed the situation the former head of the GDR delegation in Helsinki, Siegfried Bock. „Insofar stood the crossing to civilized forms of the confrontation on the agenda as well as searching a new basis for the relationships of the states. [...] The variant, that then was tackled, was actually a resort to the old idea of the creation of an All-European collective security system, which had been discusses and refused already in the twentieth and thirtieth years by the League of Nations in Geneva."^{^[4]}

Dear Colleagues, one needed, however, another decade, to the 1st August 1975 as in Helsinki 35 states of Europe, the USA and Canada signed the „Final Act", which entered into the history of the international relationships as the Treaty on „Security and co-operation in Europe." Also representatives of the Mediterranean Sea from Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia participated as observers in the negotiations.

The time does not allow it, to describe the events and the work that occurred in the years between. The most important thing is:

1. the will of the state leadership to agree. In this connection it has to be recalled, that the plan of an All-European security conference came from the USSR and the Warsaw Pact and had been refused long time in particular by the USA. On the western side, a positive breakthrough could be reached only in 1969 by particular efforts of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany under the government of Brandt and Scheel.^{^[5]}

2. It was to clarify intentions<A[intentions|purposes]>, common interests and contradictions.

4. Mechanisms and instruments had to be elaborated, which made the peaceful cooperation more attractive than war and which made confidence permanently possible.

Ladies and gentlemen, in conversations with colleagues from the Middle East I am quite often challenged by remarks as Helsinki and its principles are a European model and therefore for non-European conditions not relevant.

4. Didn’t, in fact, experiences of the peaceful coexistence and the CSCE-process become worthless in the present international situation

5. Didn’t globalization and the character of new risks and threats in comparison with the conditions and challenges of the east west confrontation between NATO and Warsaw Pact make them actual-invalid?

So that they can form themselves an own answer onto these questions, you allow me please, to offer you three central complexes from the „Final Act" and the realization of the Helsinki process:

The participating States will respect each other's sovereign equality and individuality as well as all the rights inherent in and encompassed by its sovereignty, including in particular the right of every State to juridical equality, to territorial integrity and to freedom and political independence. They will also respect each other's right freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems as well as its right to determine its laws and regulations.

The participating States will refrain in their mutual relations, as well as in their international relations in general, from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations and with the present Declaration. […]Accordingly, the participating States will refrain from any acts constituting a threat of force or direct or indirect use of force against another participating State.

Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force.

The participating States will settle disputes among them by peaceful means in such a manner as not to endanger international peace and security, and justice.

[…] For this purpose they will use such means as negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement or other peaceful means of their own choice including any settlement procedure agreed to in advance of disputes to which they are parties.

The participating States will refrain from any intervention, direct or indirect,

individual or collective, in the internal or external affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction of another participating State, regardless of their mutual relations.

VII. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief

By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, all

peoples always have the right, in full freedom, to determine, when and as they wish, their internal and external political status, without external interference, and to pursue as they wish their political, economic, social and cultural development.

All the principles set forth above are of primary significance and, accordingly, they will be equally and unreservedly applied, each of them being interpreted taking into account the others.

The participating States express their determination fully to respect and apply these principles, as set forth in the present Declaration, in all aspects, to their mutual relations and cooperation in order to ensure to each participating State the benefits resulting from the respect and application of these principles by all.

Dear colleagues, talking about security architecture I am concentrating my attention to conventional arms since this is of major interest also for the Middle East.

Until 2000 a security structure had been created within the CSCE-frame whose key concepts were cooperation, military restraint, transparency, predictability, confidence-building, and crisis prevention. Efforts to achieve military predominance were called into question at a fundamental level.^{^[6]}

While atomic strategic arms remained basically matters of concern of the nuclear powers, the CSCE concentrated its efforts on working out and implementing a “Treaty on Conventional Arms Forces in Europa” (CFE).

Its core was a dense, legally binding CFE system. It limited the five conventional weapon systems that are most crucial for offensive military action, reduced the potential of the Soviet Union to mount a strategic offensive, committed the parties to the reduction of some 60,000 pieces of treaty-limited equipment, averted another conventional arms race, and brought the continent a high level of security stability.^{^[7]} The heart of the regime was its intensive information and verification system.

The CFE system was complemented by a second circle, namely the network of confidence- and security-building measures. It contains a range of measures, including the exchange of information on force strengths and defense planning, a consultation mechanism in case of unusual military activity, the prior notification of large-scale military activities, and a verification regime.

The whole system is the Vienna Document on the resolution of aspects of military security, signed only in 2000, frequently amended, politically binding and applies in the whole OSCE area till today.

1. The first advantage of the CSCE-process consisted in that none of the sides tried to perceive the CSCE as a „European value community". If only one of the sides would have tried to do so, the entire process would have failed. All sides were conscious of that in view of the deep ideological contradictions between the western and socialist-communist camps.

So, everybody saw In the first place the communicating about obligatory rules of a peaceful mutual conduct of states with different, in part contradictory interests'. This strength falls in particular into the weight, when between the opponents exists no sufficient correspondence with regard to their respective values, cultures and civilisatory basics, including religious, as in the case of the conflict around terrorism. The CSCE would never have become a success history, if one of the sides would have striven for the dominance of its values.

2. The second strength of the CSCE process was, that it not only not excluded the continuation of the competition of the two contradictory systems , but that it even opened up new elbow room for that competition. Latter is today in this respect meaningful, that the competition between different social and political systems must not be reduced to that between capitalism and socialism. It exists today also between western and other society models. So also between the western and the Islamic, however also between different Islamic self. The CSCE was able to agree on such political general conditions that were acceptable for each of their competing sides because they allowed each side to stand for its interests and ideals.

3. The third strength of the CSCE process consisted in its peace-formative approaches. The process contained three negotiation and action baskets: next to basket 1 "Principles and security" also basket 2 „ Economic Cooperation" and basket 3 „ Human Dimension". Through the attractive action and contract options of the "Final Act", the principle of „cooperation" became the stimulus for adhering to peace and the principles of the peaceful coexistence. The treaty awarded its signatories with before never known possibilities of the cooperation in the field of economics, of science and technology and of the environment.

4. The continuity of the CSCE-construction can be regarded as the fourth strength of the CSCE-process. „The CSCE became no unique meeting, on which the heads of governments sealed a contract. It developed to a dynamic process, which was directed onto the effort of overcoming the division of the continent"^## It became a value in itselves that did not allow anybody to get out of it if he did not want to lose his face.

With the end of the east west confrontation CSCE's participants transformed the organization into the OSCE. The „Newly Independent States” which had arisen of the decay of the USSR joined the latter one.

The OSCE became thus the greatest existing regional political Euro-Asian organization whose borders reach from Vancouver to China and Afghanistan. She is today a multicultural, multinational, multi-confessional organization to which also belongs to the Islam and its political representatives. Its member states characterize very different political systems. With what the OSCE, however, has its difficulties. As its recent summit meeting showed at the beginning of September in the capital of Kazakhstan, it remains a dynamic organization which is confronted with the challenges of permanent transformation.

Dear colleagues, I come back to the above mentioned question as to whether experience of the CSCE process can be advantageous also under non-European conditions.

Here my stimulation for the answer that, please, you like to draw yourselves:

1. With the aim of excluding war as a means of politics from the international relations, with the CSCE, the principles of peaceful coexistence and a system of regional collective security, for the first time a practicable set of instruments had been created

The explicit intention<A[intention|purpose]> of state leadership is to be owed that this succeeded. They wanted it and they created the instruments needed for that.

That was, in my eyes, not only a tactical masterpiece. It was and remains an achievement in terms of civilization. However, the leaderships were forced to that, because the previous balance of power did leave them no other choice.

moment when the bipolar balance of power disappeared with the collapse of its previous counter force. It took the 11th September and terrorism as a reason for a basic strategy change: As the value commission of the CDU formulated in 2002: “the East-West Conflict has been replaced by the clash of the values of civilisations, on which global order must rest.”^{^[8]}

In the wake of this strategy change that is based upon the use of military force, profound consequences ensue and the character and self-conception of the international instruments of politics undergo fundamental changes.

Dear colleagues, although the principles of peaceful coexistence are still reiterated by the OSCE, lately in the declaration of its summit meeting in in September in Astana, in it’s strategy vis a vis Asian and African countries the West has abandoned the CSCE principle that security is indivisible and that a state's security cannot be strengthened at the expense of the security of other states.[9]

However, dear colleagues, new upcoming strong powers as China, India, Brazil, also Russia will not allow the West to talk to them with the language of military intervention. These new circumstances demand, that international politics and international behavior have to be adjusted to a new „categorical imperative":

Namely: All sides must go around unconditionally democratically with each other. And this imperative implies also the resort to the principles of peaceful coexistence.

First: In the Middle East, a strong peace movement is needed badly! And the European peace movement has to cooperate with it closely.

Second: we should be pragmatic. For that, we should work out a blueprint of vision, strategy and action that is applicable in practice and can be denied by those only who is outspoken against peace.

Third, needed is a broad coalition of peace activists that can be acceptable for different kinds of ideology, religion, nationality etc.

We should learn from tactics of the CSCE how to escape different ideologies to stop the movement towards excluding war from the political agenda.

In this context, I would like to make it a point that we have to think about how to integrate the “religious factor”, if I may say so, into the peace movement.

Fourth: We must find the correct argument that convinces the European on the street that the so called "war on terror" is not in his interest. Three quarters of the Germans are against the war in Afghanistan. In the public, the so-called antiterrorism-strategy is reflected increasingly more critically. People start to understand that this strategy does not increase their security but reduces it and kills more and more people.

The most important argument is: a European area of stability is not feasible without a stable North Africa, Near and Middle East and sound relations with it as an area of common stability.

[1] Karl K. Schonberg, The Evolution of American Attitudes Toward the Atlantic Alliance: Continuity and Change from the from the Washington Treaty to NATO Enlargement, In European Security, Vol. 9, No.4, (Winter) 2000, p. 6., In: Theiler,Olaf, Die NATO im Umbruch, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 203, p.119.

[2] Hartmann, R., The CFE Treaty, or: Can Europe Do Without Cooperative Security ?, In: Zellner, Schmidt, Neuneck, The Future of Convential Arms Control in Europe, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2009, p. 52.

[3] Naumkin, V.V.,Dva krizisnych goda na Blishnem Vostoke: Opyt sopostavlennogo Analiza, In: Islam i Musulmane: Kultura i Politika, Moskva 2000, p. 671

[4] Bock, S., Die DDR im KSZE-Prozeß, Bock, Muth, Schwiesau, DDR-Außenpolitik im Rückspiegel, LIT, Münster, 2004, p. 102,103.

[5] Genscher, H.-D., Erinnerungen, Siedler Verlag, Berlin, 1995, p. 299.

[6] Hartmann, 54

[7] Ibid

Genscher, p 307

[8] On the anniversary of the 11th September, Resolution of the CDU, Germany, 9^th September 2002, p.2

[9] Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, 91st Plenary Meeting of the Special Committee of the CSCE Forum for Security Co-operation in Budapest on 3 December 1994, Federal Foreign Office, Programme for Immediate Action Series, No. 7, p. 1