OSCE—What Is It? Will It Succeed?

By Awake! correspondent in Portugal

AFTER World War II, a power struggle arose between Western democratic capitalist countries and the Eastern Communist Soviet bloc. Each bloc developed its own security organization: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East.

By 1975 the Cold War had thawed enough for 35 States, including the United States and Russia, to sign what came to be called the Helsinki Agreement. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was born. It was a multilateral forum for dialogue and negotiation between the two blocs.

At the Budapest Summit in 1994, the CSCE changed its name to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Today, it is composed of 54 participating States, including the United States, Canada, and all the countries of the former Soviet Union.

Its Objective

The objective of the member nations of the OSCE is to guarantee the security of Europe as well as to foster the implementation of human rights, disarmament, democratic freedoms and the management of regional conflict.

A summit meeting of the OSCE was held in Lisbon, Portugal, on December 2-3, 1996. At first, attention was focused on NATO, since several NATO members, including the United States, are in favor of the expansion of NATO to include more nations from Central and Eastern Europe. But rather than support the enlargement of NATO to include former Eastern bloc allies, Russia and some of her former Eastern bloc allies want the OSCE to become the forum for matters of European security.

The Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, said at the meeting: “We are in favor of strengthening the OSCE, which is the only place in Europe where all States can work together. It is the best international place for discussing security and defense.”

The radiant afternoon sun seemed to create a climate of general optimism at the close of the summit, despite the comments of the press regarding its nebulous results. Whatever success or failure the OSCE may realize, peace lovers everywhere can be assured that true peace and security will soon be realized earth wide under the rule of God’s Kingdom.—Psalm 72:1, 7, 8.

[Picture on page 31]

The Cultural Center of Belém, in Lisbon, Portugal, where the conference was held