keeping the process alive: the n+n and the csce follow-up from helsinki to vienna

179 Pages·2012·1.33 MB·English

ZÜRCHER BEITRÄGE
ZUR SICHERHEITSPOLITIK NR. 84
Thomas Fischer
KEEPING THE PROCESS ALIVE:
THE N+N AND THE CSCE FOLLOW-UP
FROM HELSINKI TO VIENNA
(1975 – 1986)
Series editor:
Andreas Wenger
Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich
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Series editor:
Andreas Wenger
Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich
© 2012
Center for Security Studies (CSS)
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reflect the personal views of the authors in question.
Layout: Miriam Dahinden
Print: City Druck AG, Zurich
ISBN: 978-3-905696-39-4
ISSN: 1662-3711
ZÜRCHER BEITRÄGE
ZUR SICHERHEITSPOLITIK NR. 84
Thomas Fischer
KEEPING THE PROCESS ALIVE:
THE N+N AND THE CSCE FOLLOW-UP
FROM HELSINKI TO VIENNA
(1975 – 1986)
Series editor:
Andreas Wenger
Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich
CSS
ETH Zurich
To little Frederik, who has brought a whole new experience to life.
CONTENTS
Preface 5
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 10
1 DisappointedHopes:TheFollow-UpinBelgrade1977/78 25
1.1 From Helsinki to Belgrade (1975 – 1977) 25
1.2 The Belgrade Preparatory Meeting (15 June – 5 August 1977) 35
1.3 The Belgrade Follow-Up Meeting (4 October 1977 – 8 March 1978) 42
1.4 Assessment of the Belgrade Results 58
2 LifelinetotheHelsinkiProcess:TheFollow-UpinMadrid1980–83 63
2.1 From Belgrade to Madrid (1978–1980) 63
2.2 Providing a Way out of the Limbo of the Preparatory
Meeting (9 September – 11 November 1980) 78
2.3 Attempts to Negotiate a Final Document – Take 1
(The Informal N+N Non-Paper of 31 March 1981) 85
2.4 Summer Break 1981 and Neutral Bridge-Building (Part I) 94
2.5 Attempt for a Final Document – Take 2
(CSCE/RM/39 of 16 December 1981) 98
2.6 Summer Break 1982 and Neutral Bridge-Building (Part II) 103
2.7 “Last Attempt” for a Final Document
(CSCE/RM/39rev. of 15 March 1983) 106
2.8 End Game – The Brunner-González Negotiations of June 1983 112
2.9 Assessment of Madrid 115
3 BridgetotheViennaMeeting:TheSpecialMeetings
Between1984and1986 120
3.1 CDE I: Talks on Confidence- and Security-Building
Measures in Stockholm 121
3.2 The Non-Military Follow-Up Meetings after Madrid 129
3.3 Outlook on the Vienna Meeting 148
Keeping the Process Alive: The N+N and the CSCE Follow-Up from Helsinki to Vienna (1975 – 1986)
4 Conclusions 151
5 Bibliography 163
5.1 Archival Sources 163
5.2 Published Sources 164
5.3 Participants’ Accounts 164
5.4 Literature 167
5.5 Oral History 174
6 ListofAbbreviations 176
Keeping the Process Alive: The N+N and the CSCE Follow-Up from Helsinki to Vienna (1975 – 1986)
PREFACE
As Switzerland and Serbia are preparing to take over the presidency
of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
in a two-year Chairmanship package for 2014 and 2015 respectively,
this provides opportunity to look back into these countries’ legacies in
the multilateral European security framework. The OSCE nowadays is
an international institution somewhat in the shadows of the European
Union, the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion. Coming to life during a brief period of relaxation of tensions in
the Cold War during the 1970s, its predecessor, the Conference on Se-
curity and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), however, turned out to be
the central forum for East-West negotiations in Europe over the fol-
lowing two decades.
At the time the neutral and non-aligned states (N+N), including
Switzerland and former Yugoslavia, played a particular role in bridging
the gaps in European security talks between the opposing military blocs
of NATO/EC and Warsaw Pact/COMECON. Indeed, as this study
shows, the contribution of the N+N to keeping the CSCE negotiating
process alive in the early 1980s during the most critical years of crises in
the later Cold War period was crucial. Although the geo-strategic and
ideological context is altogether different today, there still might be some
lessons to learn under what conditions European non-alliance member
states can come into play to move multilateral negotiations forward. The
CSCE experience with its open negotiation structure and all-inclusive
thematic approach is a case in point.
The study at hand meticulously traces the role of the European neu-
tral and non-aligned states in the CSCE history beyond the Helsinki
Final Act of 1975 making widespread use of previously unexplored pri-
vate and public archival material and oral history sources. Its author,
Thomas Fischer, who has emerged once as a young scholar from our
Center, has established himself in the past decade as a leading interna-
tional expert on the neutral and non-aligned states participation in the
CSCE process. Following up on his Neutral Power in the CSCE: The
N+N States and the Making of the Helsinki Accords 1975, I am happy to
present his new study as the latest addition to the Zürcher Beiträge zur
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Keeping the Process Alive: The N+N and the CSCE Follow-Up from Helsinki to Vienna (1975 – 1986)
Sicherheitspolitik. I would like to thank him for his most profound study,
which is once more at the forefront of historical research on the sub-
ject. I am also grateful to Miriam Dahinden for her careful layout work.
Zurich, November 2012
Prof. Andreas Wenger
Director, Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich
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Keeping the Process Alive: The N+N and the CSCE Follow-Up from Helsinki to Vienna (1975 – 1986)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, there are a number of people the author would like to thank
for their help and assistance in the making of this study. In 2008, after
spending four years in Vienna, I had finished a manuscript on the Neu-
tral and Non-Aligned States (N+N) and the Making of the Helsinki
Final Act 1975. I already had in mind a continuation of my research in
the field with a sequel on the bridge-building role of the N+N in the
CSCE Follow-Up Process from 1975 to 1989. Decisive encouragement
for this project came from Odd Arne Westad when I first presented the
tentative hypothesis of the N+N as an important lifeline to the Helsinki
Process in the period of renewed East-West tensions in the later Cold
War at a conference in Copenhagen in late 2007.
After my return from Austria to Switzerland in 2008, it was Jussi
Hanhimäki from The Graduate Institute of International and Devel-
opment Studies in Geneva who helped me “to set up tent” as a visiting
research fellow and lecturer at his institute for the coming years with
my new project. The staff of the International History and Politics Unit
at the Graduate Institute in Geneva gave me a warm welcome and pro-
vided a stimulating surrounding for my research. In particular, I would
not want to omit to thank Valérie von Daeniken on the administrative
side as well as my teaching assistant Bernhard Blumenau for all their
support during my time at the institute.
In 2009, I had the possibility to spend one month at the University
of Helsinki at the invitation of my colleague Juhana Aunesluoma for the
purpose of archival research in the Finnish Foreign Ministry Archive.
Juhana seconded to me his research assistant Sampo Lindgren during
my stay in Helsinki for the purpose of unlocking the Finnish language
materials, which otherwise would not have been accessible to me due to
my lack of knowledge in Finnish. Sampo spent many hours sitting with
me in the archive translating first-hand documentary material. Juhani
and Elisabeth Karppinen, as on previous occasions, lent me the use of
their flat in Helsinki for that stay, for which I would like to express my
heartfelt gratitude. My research in Finland was made possible finan-
cially by a research grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation for
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Keeping the Process Alive: The N+N and the CSCE Follow-Up from Helsinki to Vienna (1975 – 1986)
international short-term visits. Jussi Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad
have helpfully supported this grant application.
In Vienna, my good colleague Erwin A. Schmidl, head of contem-
porary history at the Institute for Strategy and Security Studies of the
Austrian National Defence Academy, as well as the Finnish head of
mission to the OSCE, Antti Turunen, were helpful in setting up oral
history workshops in 2008 and 2009 on the history of the neutral states
in the CSCE follow-up process. In Helsinki, retired diplomat Markku
Reimaa was similarly instrumental in convening a number of former
Finnish CSCE colleagues for an oral history roundtable during my stay
in October 2009.
Another important source for this project came from former Swiss
CSCE diplomat Hans-Jörg Renk. As for my previous project, he let me
use all the private archival materials he retained from ten years of CSCE
diplomacy, including highly insightful notes from the Belgrade and Ma-
drid follow-up meetings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Decisive stimulus also came from three younger colleagues who have
recently followed in the footsteps of my previous research with individ-
ual country studies on the neutral states Austria, Sweden, and Switzer-
land in the CSCE. Benjamin Gilde (Austria), Aryo Makko (Sweden),
and Philip Rosin (Switzerland) have unearthed highly valuable new ar-
chival material in the national archives of these states and have actively
engaged in an exchange over their findings with my previous research.
I would like to thank all three of them for having made available their
yet unpublished PhD theses for my own research for this study. As
Gilde and Rosin have so far published results of their studies in Ger-
man only, I also see my study as a means of drawing attention to these
new important contributions to the field in the non-German speaking
community of CSCE-historians.
Aryo Makko, in particular, has become a dear colleague and trusted
friend over the period of a one-year stay at the Graduate Institute in
Geneva in 2010/11, during which time we regularly discussed our mu-
tual findings and understanding of the information contained in the
source material. Aryo read the whole manuscript of this study and gave
very useful critical comments for the establishment of the definite ver-
sion. Research for this study has also profited from the work of a num-
ber of other colleagues in the field of CSCE history, in particular from
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