Keynote Speech by Dr. Paavo Väyrynen, The Foreign Minister of Finland at the dinner hosted by Johannes Koroma, Director-General, Confederation of Finnish Industries, May 21, 1992
Seminar "Redefining the CSCE; Challenges and Opportunities in the New Europe",
21-22 May, 1992, Helsinki Finland
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It gives me great pleasure to address this dinner and your seminar. I am particularly pleased to see that the Confederation of Finnish Industries with a number of Finnish companies has sponsored this important academic meeting on redefining the CSCE in light of the revolutionary changes experienced in Europe during the last few years.
We Finns are proud of our role in the CSCE process. We have worked hard for it since its inception. The CSCE process has been one of the basic elements of our foreign policy. From its earliest stages on we found the idea and goals of the CSCE valuable both for our national interest as well for European unity and security. The history of the CSCE has confirmed its importance, and its progress attests to the validity of assumptions that inspired our thinking.
During the last twenty years Europe has experienced profound changes. As a result many scholars now wonder whether the time of hegemonic wars is over. For the first time in the history of the modern Europe major geopolitical changes have taken place peacefully. This raises hopes that a true transformation has occured, that it can become institutionalized, and that we have passed a true historical watershed in which the spectre of another general war has passed from the scene.
Yet it is important to question the expectation of this lasting peace and the hope that it will persist through its own inertia. It is still more important than ever to discover answers about the policies that can best perpetuate lasting peace. I hope your seminar will generate timely ideas and proposals for the ongoing follow-up meeting of the CSCE that can chart constructive new directions.
Scholars and practising diplomats must maintain close contact with each other if viable approaches are to be found. There should not exist academic or diplomatic ivory towers. In fact, the arena of international relations is well covered by media today. There is no room for ivory towers anymore. Thus I am convinced that the kind of dialogue and debate that will occur at your conference is the best vehicle for improving international cooperation, and, in the final analysis, also international peace.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Ever since the Westphalia system of nation-states was established, Europeans have been trying to build a security order which would bring more civility to their mutual relations. The CSCE represents the latest and most ambitious framework of a process for this goal. Unlike past proposals for cementing international order, the CSCE strives for a community of democratic states through which a peaceful security order might be fostered.
The Helsinki follow-up meeting takes place at a critical juncture of European history. The cold war confrontation has faded away and a new security order is emerging, but its shape has not yet taken on a clear definition.
The Helsinki meeting should provide both a vision as well as concrete means to safeguard the peaceful development of Europe. The CSCE has an indispensable responsibility to safeguard the common values and to set the common goals but alone the CSCE is not efficient in carrying out its mission. As a catalyst and a framework for action and in cooperation with other existing organizations, the CSCE can be a powerful force.
The Charter of Paris constitutes a starting point for the European peaceful order by defining common and unifying values of freedom, human dignity and human rights, self-determination and minority rights. Alongside these, the renunciation of force and the primacy of the rule of law are the essential elements for governing peaceful relations among states and nations.
We have no choice but to build lasting stability, and this is best based on the concept of one continent. Furthermore, we must proceed from recognition of the historic interdependence between Europe and the United States as well as Canada.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to take up some ideas for strengthening the CSCE in conflict prevention, crisis management and peaceful settlement of disputes.
The CSCE must now acquire a greater scope for action. Its cooperative security architecture offers, as German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher has stated in his farewell speech, "the possibility of safeguarding peace in Europe by means other than the obsolete principles of power politics, balance of power or the staking out of spheres of interest".
One idea which has been presented is that the CSCE would develop into a regional arrangement of the kind envisaged in Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter. This goal should be achieved gradually, but it is within sight. The legal and political consequences of this interesting idea needs further elaboration and scholarly research.
The CSCE has been tested in the former Yugoslavia and in the Caucasus. We are all well aware of the flaws of the structures and institutions of the CSCE to cope with these challenges. But we see in these crises the needs for which we must respond, and a vision for what the CSCE can become.
The CSCE, today a process connecting 52 countries, could function most effectively first as an instrument of preventive diplomacy and second as an instrument of crisis management. A peacekeeping role, should other measures fail, ought also become an essential component of these endeavors.
It is important to keep in mind the difference between political conflict prevention and crisis management, on the one hand, which are purely political in nature, and the peaceful settlement of disputes, which entails efforts to apply international law in a defined dispute. This has become evident during the last two weeks, when experts have discussed the proposal to create a European Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, which is another idea I wanted to take up in this connection.
There are those who would like to strengthen the CSCE with legally binding elements such as this Court. But others argue that the uniqueness and strength of the process lies in its ability to use political persuasion in conjunction with, but as a separated complement to, the former approach to preventive diplomacy. The basic purpose of this proposal to strengthen the CSCE merits our support. But thre are some questions that can be raised. First, all the CSCE countries would not necessarily join such a legal institution which could create awkward situation. Secondly, the difference between politically and legally binding commitments is not necessarily decisive in practice.
Finally, another means to enhance the CSCE is peacekeeping. The CSCE without a peacekeeping capability under its guidance would be an institution without credibility in today's Europe. Without a capacity to act to act in crises, CSCE would have a voice, but not an influence. This paralysis must not continue and we are optimistic that results will be reached in the Helsinki follow-up meeting.
These questions, in turn, lead us to the questions of decision-making. Consensus has now in certain flagrant cases been replaced by consensus minus one. The decision not to allow Yugoslavia to participate in the handling of that crisis was taken without its consent. It was not easy to the follow-up meeting to arrive at the decision.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Europe is in the process of re-organizing militarily, politically and economically. Existing components, organizations and institutions should be mutually reinforcing. Lasting solutions can only be found in a co-operative fashion. We need a stronger CSCE and we need decisiveness for its creation.