Global Security
| 24 July 2010
In recent times, OSCE has become a paradox: the Organization has in fact consolidated its tendency to slide toward irrelevance at the precise time when its aims have proved to be the most current. The strategies of the main players within the OSCE have failed to infuse new effectiveness in the organization.
The United States, during the Bush Administration, consolidated the trend to favour the use of the Organization as an instrument for democratic transition in the Euro-Asian region and for the U.S. policy of democratization in connection with the events of September 200l. Despite providing 70% of the Organization’s budget, and accounting for the vast majority of its participating states, the EU has had little influence in the dynamics of the OSCE, decided mainly by bilateral agreements between the USA and Russia. The latter in particular, sees the Vienna-based Organization as an instrument of Western interests and has moved from an appreciation of its role in the nineties, to its current skepticism.
| 07 June 2010
The Baltic States' troubled history with their giant neighbour to the East and nearest nuclear power is well known. Since their admission to NATO, their relations with Russia have been colder than at any other time since the end of the Cold War. Some of the reasons for this is not of their making. Rather, it is the persistent mistrust of NATO and the West, stemming from decades of Cold War, which converges, in their case, with what they call fifty years of foreign occupation and Soviet/Russian domination.
It must be said, in fairness, that Russia also has a right to her own security, and it views with concern and hostility the enlargement of NATO to its borders and the deepening of Allied defence initiatives aimed at making its newer members more militarily capable. As a result, Russia has attempted to neutralise the border areas and establish some political and perhaps strategic breathing space between it and "continental" NATO. In this brief, I will not dwell on the psychological injury that the loss of the Baltic States represents for the Russian political class. Neither will I dwell on the Baltic States' inherent right to self-determination and independence and its significance for the population of those States.
| 10 May 2010
However, nobody can deny that George Bush senior promised, on the West’s part, that NATO would not take advantage of the situation by expanding eastwards. The European citizens, in particular, and the world citizens at large, naturally nurtured high expectations that the Cold War was approaching its end and that the demise of the East-West confrontation which troubled the old continent since the end of the catastrophic Second World War would soon be an accomplished fact.
| 02 March 2010
The year 2009 was one of renaissance in Russia’s foreign policy. After the Georgian crisis of August 2008, Russia faced isolation in the international community. Russia’s relations with the United States, NATO and EU went into a freeze. Even the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) refrained from fully supporting domination by Russia.
Russia is once again being wooed by all. Several factors have contributed to this. The United States and NATO are entangled in a costly and seemingly unwinnable war in Afghanistan. They had to approach Russia for help in transferring military and non-military supplies to Afghanistan. The global financial crisis hit the developed countries hard. Russia was also hit, but managed to come out of it relatively less hurt thanks to its large foreign exchange reserves. Russia has played the energy card deftly to bolster its position. The West also needs Russian support in the UN Security Council on Iran and North Korea.
| 18 February 2010
President Obama standing in a Prague square on an April day in 2009, by a telecast speech to millions of people around the world, raised their hopes by stating: “So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
This call by American and many other world leaders has been echoed for decades since World War II’s first explosion of a nuclear bomb, revealed its tremendous destructive powers. In fact, The United Nations General Assembly’s very first resolution in January 1946 called for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons.” In 1968, this global wish was given serious hope by the signing of The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Two years later, in 1970, the Treaty came into force after all the State signatories to the treaty also obtained their national legislative ratifications. NPT is the only and the largest multilateral treaty on nuclear non proliferation and disarmament. With 188 state signatories, it is only four countries (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) short of the full UN membership.