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Bericht von: From 7 to 10 September 2005, the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich (CSS)[1] convened a major international conference on the emergence of today's security system in Europe between 1965 and 1975. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, some 55 leading scholars in the field and ten former diplomats and policy-makers discussed the significance of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) for the redefinition and expansion of the meaning of security. The conference was organized by the CSS as a partner in the Parallel History Project on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP)[2], in cooperation with the National Security Archive at George Washington University[3] in Washington, DC, and the Machiavelli Center for Cold War Studies[4] in Florence. It brought together the most innovative results of recent historical research on the early CSCE process, based on new archival evidence and testimony by contemporary witnesses. The conference ran for three days; 28 speakers presented papers that had been prepared in advance of the conference in draft form, commented upon by the organizers, revised, and distributed to all participants prior to the opening of the conference. During seven sessions, the authors of the papers made 10-minute presentations, followed by comments by a chairperson and general discussion. Panels discussed the role of the two superpowers, the impact of Warsaw Pact allies, and the importance of the European Community and of the neutral states, as well as economic aspects and the influence of the German question. At a concluding oral history roundtable, ten former diplomats and policy-makers contributed to the scholarly debate with personal recollections. Polish Foreign Minister Adam D. Rotfeld and Vojtech Mastny gave introductory and concluding keynote speeches.[5]
The conference opened with then Polish Foreign Minister Adam D. Rotfeld's keynote address on "The Helsinki Process: Status Quo vs. Fundamental Change". Rotfeld cautioned against arguing that Socialism in Eastern Europe had merely collapsed because of the decisions taken in Helsinki in 1975. He emphasized that the transformations in Eastern Europe in 1989/90 were mainly due to the inefficiency of the totalitarian systems and the widespread dissatisfaction in Eastern Europe societies, leading to the emergence of a democratic opposition such as the Polish Solidarity movement. However, the Helsinki process – feeding into Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika – significantly contributed to preventing bloodshed when the Cold War ended. The momentous transformation in Eastern Europe took place within a framework defined by democratic states. The Helsinki process created external conditions for the internal legitimization of a democratic opposition and undermined totalitarian regimes by weakening the principle of non-interference in internal affairs. Reviewing the CSCE/OSCE framework for monitoring the agreed norms and commitments after 1975, Rotfeld called for making the OSCE institutions more effective without destroying the flexibility, "lightness", and relative low costs of the OSCE as an organization. Recalling his encounters with Yuri Vorontsov, the head of the Soviet delegation, at the Belgrade meeting in 1977, Rotfeld emphasized the cooperative atmosphere at the CSCE that allowed participants to address sensitive issues as well. The Superpowers and European Détente In a first session, entitled "The Superpowers and European Détente", intense debate ensued over the extent to which the CSCE was an instrument of the Western European powers, as opposed to that of a disinterested US. To a remarkable degree, the controversy dwelled on the ambivalent role in the process played by US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in particular. Mike Morgan (Yale University), choosing a North American rather than an exclusively US focus, brought to light the notion of "Atlanticism" as a reference point for both Washington and Ottawa. Their first goal, he maintained, was to improve alliance solidarity in a time of West-West turmoil. In terms of methods and expectations, however, these two governments followed different paths. While the US was careful to retain the status quo of power relations in Europe, Canada sought a change of the status quo between East and West and wanted to push for the full extent of what seemed possible. As the first in a series of speakers, Morgan emphasized the late, yet decisive change of Kissinger's attitude in 1975. This reconsideration was examined by Jussi Hanhimäki (Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva). Why did Kissinger become instrumental in hammering out the actual CSCE Final Act when Washington had not considered the CSCE as a goal in its own right for a long time? According to Hanhimäki, two rationales were at work. First, Washington began to link the CSCE with its own détente with the Soviet Union, offering Moscow the CSCE "carrot" in return for a non-aggression policy, for example in the Middle East. Second, the US reckoned there were interesting gains to be made because the Soviet Union wanted and needed the CSCE so much. According to Hanhimäki, the CSCE was therefore a means to an end, rather than a goal, for the US. Jeremi Suri (University of Wisconsin, Madison), likewise evaluating Kissinger's role in the CSCE process, ascertained with reference to Kissinger's writings of the 1950s and 1960s that the secretary of state was in fact intimately familiar with the Europeans' point of view. Also, Kissinger had always been a man not only of realpolitik, but also of moral convictions. How could he then be so strongly at odds with the Europeans when it came to the CSCE? Kissinger's attitude was in line with a parallel reconception of security on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1960s, Suri claimed. While in the US, stability and crisis avoidance, bilateral arms control, and détente for security were the maxims after the caesura of 1962/63, the Western European countries were aiming for integration, consultation, and human rights as exemplified in the European Commission's "Davignon report". Because the Europeans had in the process agreed on an agenda, set up a consultation process, and gained unprecedented momentum, Kissinger felt the need to catch up starting July 1974. His approach was to use the European position to weaken the Soviet position through bilateral channels. In summary, Suri argued, "Helsinki" reflected a moment of flux in the debate on security in the 1960s and 1970s that was not resolved with the Final Act. In his comments, Andreas Wenger (Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich) spotted a difference between the interpretations of Kissinger's repositioning as either reluctance (Hanhimäki) or the result of a learning curve (Suri). The question of whether Kissinger really changed his views was vividly resumed in the discussion and carried over into many of the other sessions and panels. The second panel of this session looked at the attitudes of the second superpower, the Soviet Union. The common difficulty of all contributions was the lack of primary sources. Marie-Pierre Rey (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) discussed the functions of the CSCE for the Soviet Union from 1965 to 1975. On a symbolic level, the original idea had been to finally bring closure to World War II. On a political level, Moscow wanted to fix principles that should govern its international relations in the future and would establish a privileged pan-European dialog. Economically, Moscow expected help for its worsening economic situation and decreasing industrial production. Rey recalled the great risk incurred by Moscow of not achieving the goal of its long-desired pan-European conference. The Soviet Foreign Ministry, she observed, was entirely in favor of the CSCE, since the ministry expected to increase its internal functions. The Soviet leadership, however, was divided on the impact of the conference. Svetlana Savranskaya (National Security Archive, Washington) followed up on the Soviet position on the CSCE, which she described as well thought-out and highly calculated. The Soviet aims, however, did not only concern the borders in Europe, but were equally geared towards a new vision of Europe. Achieving this goal, Moscow felt, was worth many concessions, as Savranskaya made clear. In a close examination of the positions within the Soviet leadership, she spotted no divisions in the Politburo. Secretary-General of the CPSU Leonid I. Brezhnev was willing to go very far and even involved himself personally in formulating the positions. He met bilaterally with Anatoli Kovalev, the head of the Soviet delegation, which was unprecedented. The Politburo as a compartmentalized body could not possibly oppose this strong position held by Brezhnev and Andrei A. Gromyko, the foreign minister, Savranskaya concluded. Yuri Kashlev (Diplomatic Academy, Moscow) underlined Brezhnev's strong views in favor of the CSCE, but qualified them by emphasizing that the main interests of the secretary-general concerned the political-military side of the process. Kashlev emphasized the importance of Kovalev as the driving force behind the CSCE, as the person who persuaded Brezhnev of its importance. Kovalev also initiated the publication of the Final Act. On 2 August 1975, this landmark agreement was made public in 20 million newspaper copies throughout the Soviet Union. Hence, Soviet citizens learned about human rights issues from government channels for the first time. At the heart of the ensuing discussion was the question of power politics vs. public diplomacy. Many emphasized that Moscow's "pan-European dialog" was a tool for sowing discord among the Atlantic alliance, while others stressed that the CSCE period laid the groundwork for the perestroika of the Gorbachev period. Eastern Strategies in the CSCE In two consecutive panels on Eastern strategies in the early CSCE process, six papers shed light on the rather different roles of Hungary, the GDR, Poland, Bulgaria, and China from 1964 to 1975. Douglas Selvage (Office of the Historian, US Department of State, Washington) and Csaba Békés (Cold War History Research Center, Budapest) both analyzed Warsaw Pact preparations for a European Security Conference from 1964 to 1969-70. Based on Hungarian records of the multilateral meetings of the Warsaw Pact, Békés argued that Moscow's allies played a much more significant role in shaping the common policy of the Soviet bloc than previously assumed. After the July 1966 Bucharest declaration, Moscow encouraged Warsaw Pact member states to engage in bilateral negotiations with Western European countries on the issue of a pan-European conference. Hungary, Poland, and Romania used the opportunity to quickly emancipate themselves from the Soviet Union and to present themselves as legitimate partners in international politics. Békés emphasized the hitherto mostly unknown Hungarian-Soviet tandem that successfully mediated between the hard-line Polish and GDR positions and the more conciliatory Romanian stance during the genesis of the Warsaw Pact's Budapest declaration of 17 March 1969. The eventual compromise position involved a serious concession on the Soviet side, as Moscow had to abandon its idea of publishing a general political declaration. In 1969-70, Hungary became the closest collaborator of Soviet détente diplomacy because Budapest – unlike Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin – had nothing to lose from a European settlement, but rather hoped to gain much in further developing contacts with the West. Thus, Békés argued, a "special relationship" evolved between Moscow and Budapest, with Hungary neutralizing excessive Polish, GDR, and Romanian proposals at Warsaw Pact meetings on behalf of the Soviet Union. Douglas Selvage traced Poland's role in the internal Warsaw Pact debates, drawing on newly available Polish, East German, West German, and US sources. Poland mainly sought to use the security conference proposal to unify the Warsaw Pact behind a hard line towards West Germany. In 1964, Poland launched a multilateral project to forestall bilateral negotiations between Bonn and Poland's allies, especially the Soviet Union. When the Soviets transformed the project from a mere propaganda device into a tool to accelerate bilateral negotiations between Moscow and Bonn, Poland sought to defer a security conference and made its own bilateral advances to West Germany in May 1969. In November 1969, Warsaw submitted a new proposal to various Western countries including the United States without informing its Warsaw Pact allies. Selvage argued that the intra-pact debates over a European security conference between 1964 and 1969 were not so much concerned with the notion of a European security conference as with the normalization of relations with Bonn, that is, with Communist sovereignty and the German question. Wanda Jarzabek (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) complemented Selvage's paper on the Polish role in the mid-1960s by presenting an overview over Polish views on the CSCE from 1964 to 1989. In her opinion, Polish archival sources cannot answer the question of whether Rapacki's 1964 idea was an independent Polish plan or whether it was inspired by Moscow. The records reveal that in the multilateral Dipoli talks and during the Geneva negotiations, the Polish delegation concentrated on Basket I (security) and in particular on the inviolability of borders. Jarzabek argued that Poland was satisfied both with the 1973 Helsinki Recommendations and the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. Poland regarded the Declaration of Principles as a success of Polish diplomacy, despite the inclusion of a clause on the peaceful change of borders. Jarzabek also touched upon the follow-up meetings in Belgrade (1977-78) and Madrid (1980-83), where Poland apparently successfully mediated between US efforts to turn the CSCE into a human-rights tribunal (Basket III) and Soviet efforts to focus primarily on the implementation of confidence-building measures in Basket I. After the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981, however, Western sympathy and support for Polish ideas on military détente were replaced by Western denunciations of Poland's poor human-rights record. Nevertheless, the CSCE process allowed Warsaw to participate with increasing flexibility in international politics in the 1980s. Federica Caciagli (University of Rome) added to Selvage's paper by analyzing the role and aims of the GDR in the CSCE process from 1969 to 1975. As Caciagli underlined, the GDR hoped to make the division of Germany irreversible and to use the CSCE process to settle issues not covered by either the 1970 Moscow Treaty or the 1972 Basic Treaty (Grundlagenvertrag). East Berlin hoped to achieve full rather than basic diplomatic recognition by the Federal Republic, and the immutability of frontiers rather than their simple inviolability. The GDR saw the CSCE as a chance to meet the goals it had failed to obtain in the Ostpolitik negotiations and in the political bargain that had been negotiated by the Soviet Union primarily to Moscow's advantage. In a move that was reminiscent of the Polish evaluation, the SED also – somewhat surprisingly – characterized the Final Act as a successful achievement. Despite the undesirable longer-term effects of Basket II and III (and even Basket I), the GDR advanced in the process of emancipation from Soviet Deutschlandpolitik: The division of Germany remained in place for another 15 years; the two German states had participated in the CSCE as two separate states, and as such they were admitted to the United Nations. Whereas Poland and the GDR had vital interests to defend in the CSCE process, Bulgaria – like Hungary – was more at ease with the multilateral détente of the early 1970s. The process of détente in Europe, however, also had important regional aspects in the Balkans, as Kostadin Grozev and Jordan Baev (Cold War Research Group Bulgaria, Sofia) emphasized in their joint paper. The key trends in the Balkan region in the late 1960s and early 1970s were Romania's deviation from Moscow, following similar trends in Yugoslavia and Albania in earlier years, and the strained relations between Greece and Turkey. The normalization between NATO and Warsaw Pact members in the Balkans, the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion in Prague, the China-Soviet dispute, the meetings of US president Richard Nixon with Romanian and Yugoslav leaders, and the escalation of the Cyprus problem all had repercussions on Balkan diplomacy in the early Helsinki process. Common initiatives of Balkan countries, however, were viewed with suspicion in Moscow – the Soviet Union feared the creation of a "regional bloc". Bulgaria actively prepared for a European security conference by exchanging views with and visiting the Nordic and Benelux countries as well as improving relations with neighbouring countries. In the late 1960s, contacts were also established between the Bulgarian Agrarian People's Union (BAPU) and influential Western Social Democratic, Radical, Liberal, and Christian Democratic parties. In the mid-1970s, Turkey and Bulgaria – as Washington and Moscow's closest allies in the region – silently sabotaged multilateral Balkan cooperation across the East-West divide as promoted by Romania and Greece. Comparing West German CDU/CSU opposition with Chinese hostility to the CSCE, Bernd Schaefer (German Historical Institute, Washington) discovered remarkable similarities in anti-CSCE wording. After the Sino-Soviet border clash in 1969, Mao Zedong opposed European security arrangements because political and military détente in Europe would free Moscow's hands for military action in the Far East. Between 1972 and 1975, Mao Zedong consistently warned visiting Western politicians, including French President Georges Pompidou, Danish Prime Minister Poul Hartling, or West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt not to pursue the European security conference. While such appeals were ignored in the West, Bavarian CSU leader Franz-Josef Strauss had argued since the late 1960s for rapprochement between West Germany and China as a counter-balance to the Soviet Union and Brandt's Ostpolitik. Brandt's provocative publications were read at the highest Chinese government levels. After West Germany had established diplomatic relations with China in 1972, Strauss paid a spectacular 12-day visit to China in January 1975. He subsequently succeeded in uniting the CDU and CSU in voting against the Helsinki Final Act on 25 July 1975, and requested that Bonn not sign the agreement. West European Strategies in the CSCE Two panels dealt with West European policies on the road to Helsinki. Papers focused on the linkage between CSCE and MBFR (Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions), the role of the European Community and of West Germany, Britain, and France in particular, as well as on the individual but important contributions made by Italy and the Netherlands. Helga Haftendorn (Free University, Berlin) explored the genesis of MBFR and its link with the CSCE. NATO's "Reykjavik Signal" of June 1968 was primarily intended to send a strong signal to the public that the West intended to substantiate its ideas on détente after the landmark Harmel Report of December 1967. However, NATO was not ready to negotiate on the basis of the status quo or to put forward concrete disarmament proposals in 1969. Haftendorn described the cumbersome process both within the Brandt government and within NATO to solve the dilemma of developing a force reduction scheme that was negotiable without being disadvantageous to Western security. US interest in MBFR began after Senator Mansfield's call for unilateral troop cuts in May 1971. However, the Soviet Union was not ready to explore MBFR with NATO Secretary-General Brosio, as suggested by NATO in late 1971, but instead proposed that a special CSCE committee deal with MBFR. Despite West Germany's insistence on a linkage between MBFR and CSCE, US and French objections against such a link prevailed. In a secret deal in April and May 1972, Washington and Moscow agreed to deal with MBFR and CSCE separately. In Haftendorn's view, NATO members were unable to arrive at a common position on the substance and procedure of the MBFR negotiations, and once the US took an interest, Washington dominated and controlled the MBFR process (1973-86). Conventional force levels only became subject to negotiations once the East-West conflict had ended. Daniel Moeckli (Center for Security Studies, Zurich) and Ilaria Poggiolini (University of Pavia) both scrutinized the impact of the European Community on the CSCE process. Moeckli argued that, first, the CSCE became a major catalyst for the rise of the EEC as an international actor with its own foreign and security policy, and that, second, the EC-Nine were a key driving force behind the expanding notion of security at the CSCE. For Moeckli, the EC-Nine passed their first major test of European foreign policy cooperation with excellence, as they were the actor group with the biggest impact on the outcome of the CSCE. Moeckli convincingly explained the shift in Western policy coordination of CSCE preparations from NATO to the European Community in 1972, emphasizing French and British opposition to a NATO lead, the decoupling of MBFR from CSCE, and the resistance of NATO members Greece, Turkey, and Portugal against human rights and free movement. While likewise praising EEC foreign policy coordination at the CSCE, Ilaria Poggiolini's analysis added two important aspects to Moeckli's contribution by revealing the transatlantic framework of EEC policy-making and highlighting the difficulties within the EC-Nine (and within the NATO-Fifteen) to speak with one voice. Rather than focusing on the "success story" of European Political Coordination in 1972-73, Poggiolini emphasized the signs of crisis and the weakening of intergovernmental foreign policy cooperation in 1974-75. Sandy Roupioz (Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris) examined both the bilateral relations between Paris and Moscow and between Bonn and Moscow in 1965-69, and the triangle Paris-Bonn-Moscow in the multilateral preparations for a CSCE in 1969-72. Based on archival sources from Russia, France, and Germany, she analyzed the different positions of Paris and Bonn with regard to a European security conference. Early competition between French rapprochement with Moscow and West German Ostpolitik, Roupioz argued, enabled the Soviet Union to keep its project of a pan-European conference alive despite skepticism in Washington and London. France and West Germany thus played a key role in the preparation of the CSCE, because together with the Soviet Union, the three actors were able to interact, evolve, and counteract their proposals, either by confrontation or by complementary action. Moscow used the latent Franco-German rivalry at both the economic and the diplomatic levels. Roupioz analyzed how Moscow played on the differences between French enthusiasm to serve as a driving force in the preparations and Bonn's attempts to postpone the conference as long as the German question could not be settled. Among the examples of interactions within this triangle were France's agreement to a CSCE immediately after the new West German government had confirmed its Ostpolitik in 1969, and the bilateral "code of good conduct" negotiated between Paris and Moscow following Brandt's Crimean meeting with Brezhnev. Re-emphasizing the importance of "soft politics" and stressing the offensive motives of the West in the promotion of respect for human rights in the CSCE process, Floribert Baudet (University of Utrecht) analyzed the goals and perceptions of Dutch CSCE policy. With its tough negotiating strategy, the Netherlands helped the West win crucial concessions from Moscow, for example with regard to the principle of self-determination. Baudet's analysis offered new insights into intra-NATO relations in the years of détente and into the role smaller NATO countries were able to play. While the influence of small countries during the Cold War was usually rather limited, the rules of the CSCE made their role interesting. As consensus was required, any country could block agreement – as demonstrated during the CSCE negotiations by Malta and Liechtenstein. Baudet's research showed that Dutch policy-makers, often supported by Italy and sometimes also by other countries, hoped to realize a vision of long-term security and were willing to jeopardize the fruits of short-term détente in order to attain such a goal. While the Dutch government was hesitant regarding détente and a European security conference up to the Dipoli talks and tried to slow down the enthusiasm of other Western countries in Dipoli, Italy was one of the early proponents of a pan-European conference, as Ambassador Luigi Ferraris (University of Rome III) emphasized in his paper, based on his personal experience in the Italian CSCE delegation. Despite initial skepticism within NATO, Italy had already supported the idea of a CSCE as early as 1966-67 and, according to Ferraris, the Soviet Union deliberately used the "Italian channel" to advance its conference idea in the West in the mid-1960s. The leading role of Italian parties in the so-called Eurocommunist camp, Italy's tradition of cordial relations with the Soviet bloc since the late 1950s, and its early support for East-West détente made Italy a true believer in dialog with the Eastern bloc and an adherent of the CSCE. Ferraris claimed that from 1969 to 1971, Italy invented many of the core ideas of the later CSCE process in Dipoli and Geneva, including the definition of preconditions for a CSCE and the importance of the inclusion of free flow of information and movement of persons on the agenda. The Neutrals and Non-Aligned in the CSCE Process A further session, devoted to the role of the neutrals in the CSCE process, revealed considerable differences of expectations and policies among this less than homogenous group of small states. Seppo Hentilä (University of Helsinki), discussing the remarkable role of Finland in the CSCE process, made clear that in the first place, there was no cooperation among the neutrals in the CSCE process. In the beginning, the neutral states of Finland, Austria, and Switzerland in particular were even competitors. Hentilä explained that the Finnish initiative for a European security conference of May 1969 had been very much in the country's own interest: The goal was to reduce Soviet pressure on Finland to recognize both German states. Until 1973, Finland had recognized neither the Federal Republic of Germany nor the German Democratic Republic. At the outset, the Finns placed no high hopes on the conference and expected at best some kind of diplomatic tea party in Helsinki, as the head of the political department in the Finnish foreign ministry, Max Jakobson, put it in his memoirs. After the conference had moved from Dipoli near Helsinki to Geneva, the Finns' main interest was to ensure that the Final Act signing ceremony would be held in Helsinki. Similarly to Finland, both Austria and Switzerland initially had little hope for the success of the CSCE. Nevertheless, the CSCE enabled both Alpine states to play a bigger international role than their neutrality had heretofore allowed, as Thomas Fischer (Austrian Defense Academy, Vienna) maintained, based on his comparative research on the Austrian and Swiss CSCE efforts. The key figures were ambassadors Edouard Brunner on the Swiss side and Franz Ceska on the Austrian side. Yet it was not until the 1980s that Austrian-Swiss cooperation became a permanent element in the CSCE framework. Indeed, the formation of the Neutrals and Nonaligned (NNA) group was by no means a matter of course. At the beginning of the process, the neutrals held differing views on the conference, on détente, and on security in Europe; and the idea of countries acting individually in the international arena, rather than as part of blocs, was still very strong. The NNA group was only institutionalized in February 1974 and was clearly a product of the Cold War constellation rather than cooperation by design. Teaming up was a simple, though uncertain necessity, Fischer concluded. Christian Nuenlist (Center for Security Studies, ETH Zürich) contrasted the "traditional" Swiss view on Swiss CSCE policy in 1969-1975 with an international perspective based on evidence from archives in the US, Britain, and Germany. The customary view holds that besides acting as host country, Switzerland promoted its own interests and initiatives in Dipoli and Geneva – such as the controversial plan for a system of peaceful settlement of disputes – without being affected by a conflict of interests. From an international perspective, Nuenlist maintained, a more ambivalent Swiss role in the CSCE emerges. Mainly, Western praise for the Swiss performance in Dipoli was replaced by irritation over the Swiss role in Geneva, where the Swiss reputation was not that of an "impartial host". Also, Switzerland's insistence on its arbitration proposal in Geneva was registered with indignation among NATO states. Nevertheless, the Swiss impact on the CSCE process (including the right to neutrality in the Final Act and the agreement on follow-up conferences) clearly transcended the country's size. In the first place, this was due to the personalities in charge. In the discussion, Ambassador Brunner added that the question of the CSCE venue had been determined by the German issue – both Bonn and East Berlin had to be represented at the same diplomatic level at the conference venue, which was true for Helsinki and the UN in Geneva (but not Berne or any other capital in East and West). Security, Trade, and Economics Two papers focused on the economic aspects of détente and on Basket II of the CSCE process. Juhana Aunesluoma (University of Helsinki) reviewed the thin historiography on the "ill-fated stepchild" of the CSCE (Victor-Yves Ghebali) and the "empty basket" (Marie Lavigne) and agreed, based on existing literature and published sources, that the second basket turned out to be the most meager in terms of actual impact and substance. He emphasized that in general, the East suggested universal principles, whereas the West put forward particular practical measures such as better hotel facilities for businessmen. Throughout the Dipoli and Geneva phases, the Soviet position was less tough than anticipated by the West, apparently since Moscow did not want to complicate the all-important negotiations in Basket I. Basket II negotiations in Geneva differed from Basket I and III, as they were mainly conduced by economic experts who knew each other fairly well from other occasions, in particular from economic talks conducted in the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), which had been founded in 1947. Aunesluoma argued that in strictly economic terms, the CSCE achieved very little. In line with a major Western goal, however, the West managed to extract concessions in the form of making economic information and facilities more readily available in the East, while making hardly any real concessions itself. As Aunesluoma proposed, archival research and interviews with CSCE diplomats would be needed to complement these preliminary results. Duccio Basosi (University of Florence) discussed the hitherto unexplored links between the Helsinki summit of July-August 1975 and the restricted "Economic Summit" at Rambouillet five months later – the very first of the so-called G6 (later, G7 and G8) summits. Basosi analyzed the connections between the two summits that, he argued, were instrumental for the reconstruction of Western unity in the troubled 1970s from a US perspective. His analysis of transatlantic relations, emphasizing its economic aspects, illuminated both the "worst crisis" in the Western alliance in the early 1970s – after Nixon's unilateral "dollar shock" of August 1971 – and the overcoming of the US-Western European rivalry in 1975 through revitalized US leadership, a rivalry that had also led to "sharp differences" among Washington and Western Europeans during the CSCE negotiations. As Basosi argued, economic instability even brought Western European countries including France back into the arms of the US in 1975. The German Question and the CSCE The German Question as related to the CSCE was the focus of the last scholarly conference session. Gottfried Niedhart (University of Mannheim) first discussed the underlying assumptions of Ostpolitik as formulated by Egon Bahr, saying that the Soviet Union sought to legalize the status quo, whereas the German goal was to overcome it. Once the FRG-GDR Treaty of Moscow had been signed in 1973, West German preparatory work for the multilateral CSCE started. The West German delegation soon placed emphasis on the fact that the peaceful change of borders was vital and, ultimately, the precondition for West Germany signing a final agreement. In 1974, when the issue of inviolability of frontiers was agreed upon in the CSCE, Bonn's tough position was regarded as oversensitive and an embarrassment in the US. Yet Washington could not discard Bonn as one of its most important allies, and eventually promoted an agreement including provisions for the peaceful change of borders. In conclusion, Niedhart made the case that stability – namely, acceptance of the status quo – was an essential precondition for change. In the short term, security depended on stability, while in the long run, it depended on change. Oliver Bange (University of Mannheim) looked at the security side of Ostpolitik with a strong focus on the "Grand Design" of Foreign Minister Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr towards a European security system as defined in 1966-69. Bahr, head of the planning section in Bonn's Foreign Office, had not invented Ostpolitik, but made it operational, Bange maintained. The concept had originated with the SPD, FDP, and to a certain degree with the CDU. Indeed, it was the existence of a well-prepared concept that made the departure towards a new foreign policy possible under the first Brandt government beginning in 1969. The "theoretical blueprint" was then implemented in a cumbersome domestic process in the context of CSCE and MBFR. By summer 1972, the FRG had assumed a central role in the preparation, negotiation, and final success of the CSCE and succeeded in inserting into the CSCE proceedings those elements of its Ostpolitik that had been declared essential for the future course of transformation and security in Europe, culminating in the 1975 agreement of Washington and Moscow to include an option for peaceful change of borders in Europe in the Final Act. Petri Hakkarainen (Oxford University) also discussed the years 1969-72 as the true roots of the European security system. The pre-Dipoli phase of the CSCE provided the FRG with unprecedented opportunities to make use of the multilateral mechanisms to promote its national interests. These interests were twofold. First, from an instrumental angle, the Brandt government attempted to link Bonn's participation in the CSCE with concessions from the Warsaw Pact countries in bilateral negotiations and with its Deutschlandpolitik. Substantively, Bonn used the CSCE to promote its interests regarding the European peace order. While it had initially been reluctant to engage in the multilateral conference process before the goals of Ostpolitik were achieved, the Brandt government was interested in influencing the CSCE agenda from the very beginning. Ultimately, linkage policy was given up rather easily, and yet giving attention to the substantial issues such as freer movement paid off. Departing from the literature and partly from the speakers preceding him, Hakkarainen concluded that Bonn's Ostpolitik and Westpolitik were intertwined with the CSCE from the very beginning. Oral History Workshop A four-hour oral history roundtable, moderated by Jeremi Suri, returned to the controversies raised in academic papers and during discussion. Ambassador John Maresca (United States) emphasized the advantages of the relatively passive approach of the US. The US delegation kept a low profile during the official 35-nation negotiations, but members of other delegations approached the US bilaterally. Maresca sought to convince the conference participants that US passivity had been a conscious decision made by US head of delegation George Vest. Since a US push for Basket III would have led to Soviet resistance and killed off certain negotiation items, the US let non-threatening powers such as the Netherlands or Denmark propose and fight for Basket III. However, Maresca was evasive on the crucial point of whether the US had communicated such a strategy to its Western European allies. Sir Crispin Tickell (United Kingdom) reminded the scholars that at the time, many contemporaries regarded the CSCE as a Soviet vehicle aimed at enticing the United States to withdraw from Europe. Tickell's duty in the London Foreign Office, therefore, was first of all to convince the British government that the CSCE was an opportunity rather than a trap. Ambassador Jacques Andréani (France) recalled that the CSCE was a new experience for East-West diplomacy, with 35 delegations living and working together for almost three years in Helsinki and Geneva. Several former delegation members, including Brunner, Andréani, Ecobescu, and Bock, emphasized that they had written their own instructions, as the subject was "too complex for their foreign ministers or ministries" (Andréani). Representing the view from the capitals, Tickell clarified that in the British case, the CSCE delegation clearly had to operate within limits and that the Foreign Office coordinated the instructions to the British CSCE delegation with instructions to other delegations – for example, the MBFR negotiations team – as well as to the NATO Mission. Hans-Jörg Renk (Switzerland) differentiated between the Dipoli and the Geneva stage. While the small Swiss delegation made Swiss CSCE policy in Dipoli almost on their own, more experts and bureaucrats became involved as the complexity of the negotiations increased during the Geneva stage. In an intriguing comment on relations between Moscow and its Warsaw Pact allies at the outset of the Dipoli talks, Nicolae Ecobescu (Romania) recalled a secret meeting of the Warsaw Pact foreign ministers in Moscow around 12 November 1972. In a bilateral meeting between Ecobescu and Mendelevich, head of the Soviet Dipoli delegation, Mendelevich explained that the procedure in Dipoli would follow the traditional model of disarmament negotiations, i.e. bloc-to-bloc talks with the US and the Soviet Union as leaders of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Romanian leadership opposed such a procedure and decided to arrive in Helsinki two days in advance of the USSR. At an ambassadorial meeting of all participating countries, Romania then proposed to table draft rules of procedures as the very first official CSCE document. When Finnish chair Richard Tötterman avoided the issue, the Romanian delegation threatened to complain in the plenary session unless the Romanian document was registered as CSCE Working Document No. 1. Finally, the Romanian rules were adopted with only small changes. The panelists also debated the impact of other events on the CSCE process. They agreed that while, for example, the "Solzhenitsyn affair" or the crises in Cyprus and the Middle East did not enter official multilateral discussions, they clearly affected the atmosphere in Geneva. Ambassador Yuri Kashlev (Russia) pointed out the very important impact of China on the talks in 1975. After the serious deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations, the Soviets wanted to have their hands free in the West and were ready for major concessions in the CSCE negotiations. Debating "missed opportunities" and personal regrets, Andréani felt that he would have preferred the commitments in Basket III to be conventions rather than mere recommendations. Ambassador Siegried Bock (former GDR) emphasized that he did not regret the outcome of the CSCE process, although it contributed significantly to the collapse of the regime in his country. However, he argued that longer deliberations in the concluding stage might have produced a more balanced result. He regretted several contradictions within the principles in Basket I and made the point that more extensive debates on Basket IV and the inclusion of further concrete tasks in the Helsinki Final Act might have prevented many of the problems in the follow-up conferences in Belgrade and Madrid. Asked about the role of public pressure on the negotiations, participants agreed that up to 1975, the press had not been interested in the topic and rarely reported about it. Renk added that the move from Helsinki, where the media were not present, to Geneva caused somewhat increased public interest, since more journalists were accredited to the UN. The Swiss hosts therefore set up weekly press briefings. Conclusion The concluding keynote address by Vojtech Mastny summarized new perspectives on the CSCE and added the important long-term view of the Helsinki Final Act's legacy. Mastny emphasized that we now know much more about the viewpoints of Eastern European countries. While their strategies and tactics during the preparations and the actual talks in Dipoli and Geneva can be traced in Eastern European archives, the evolution of the Soviet Union's position in the early 1970s appears much less clear. Why did Moscow allow the West – and the European Community in particular – to take the initiative in Dipoli and set the agenda for the original Soviet idea? In retrospect, it was clearly the EEC that most dominantly shaped the CSCE process. The Western European states successfully fought for an open-ended document, they created the hope for a united rather than a divided Europe, and West European values influenced perceptions of security and the practice of security in the mid-1970s, including the important humanization of security (Daniel Thomas). According to Mastny, it is still difficult to establish a direct link between the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the collapse of Communism. But Mastny, in agreement with Rotfeld's introductory keynote speech, saw a clear connection between the CSCE process and the way in which the Cold War ended – i.e., non-violently. What were the most important changes in the Cold War after 1975? Mastny first emphasized the importance of pressure from below and the reorientation of US policy on Eastern Europe under the Carter administration. Previous US administrations had aimed at driving a wedge between Moscow and its Warsaw Pact allies. After 1975, Washington tried to encourage domestic change and concentrated on Poland and Hungary rather than on Warsaw Pact maverick Romania. Second, the CSCE's military aspects, the voluntary confidence-building measures (CBM), signified a new element in East-West relations – something that did not relate to the Soviet idea of détente. Despite the Soviet idea of turning the CSCE follow-up conference in Madrid into a disarmament conference, it eventually became a conference on CBM. In Stockholm, Moscow finally allowed the notification of military maneuvers up to the Ural – from that moment on, it became difficult for either side to prepare a surprise attack. The impact of the Stockholm meeting, according to Mastny, could be seen in the Warsaw Pact's change of doctrine in 1987. In conclusion, Mastny underlined the two important roles that the CSCE played in laying the groundwork for the end of the Cold War: First, it provided the framework for radical, but orderly disarmament. Second, it inspired the non-violent demise of Communism. In 1989, Hungary invoked the CSCE commitments when it allowed GDR refugees to leave the country for Austria, despite Soviet opposition. And during the turbulent months of 1989, even the Soviet Union made clear that it would respect and live up to the CSCE principles. In his conclusion, Vojtech Mastny argued that after 1989/90, the European Union increasingly took over the legacy of the CSCE. The EU's 2003 strategy document "A Secure Europe in a Better World" – according to Mastny, a landmark agreement similar to the 1975 Final Act – incorporates the basic principles of the CSCE and paves the way for a still nascent common European security policy. Selected conference papers will be published as a book in late 2006 or early 2007, edited by Andreas Wenger, Vojtech Mastny, and Christian Nuenlist, as part of the Center for Security Studies series with Routledge. Anmerkungen:
CitationTagungsbericht At the Roots of the European Security System: Thirty Years since the Helsinki Final Act. 07.09.2005–10.09.2005, Rüschlikon/Zürich, in: H-Soz-Kult, 07.12.2005, <http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/eurhistxx.asp?id=959&pn=tagungsberichte>.
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