Again and again the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe - held in Summer 1975 in Helsinki - is cited as an example for how we could end the Ukraine conflict and regain peace, security and cooperation in Europe. But to be sincere, we have to have a more detailed look at the conditions which led to the decisions and agreements in Helsinki.
From Conflict to detente
Very soon after the end of World War II the different interests and orientations of the West and the Soviet-Union appeared openly. They manifested themselves especially along the inner-German border and specifically in Berlin. There were several Berlin-crises and finally - in 1961 - a wall was built by the Ulbricht regime which became a symbol for stubbornness, inhumanity and cruelty. In addition, there were many other crises from the Hungarian Revolution, the Cuba crisis and the military intervention in Czechoslovakia.
The situation turned more positively in the beginning of the seventies with different meetings between Leonid Breshnew on the one side and President Nixon and Willy Brandt on the other side. Brandt tried with his “Ostpolitik” to ease the relationship between the peoples in the two Germanys. Nixon and Breschnew discussed primarily issues of disarmament. Nixon and his foreign policy guru, Henry Kissinger, were determined to organize a new world order of peaceful coexistence between the big powers including China. Three weeks after the announcement of Nixon’s visit to China, Nixon was invited to a week-long summit in Moscow. Several important agreements were signed during this summit. Even if the Ostpolitik defined and promoted by Brandt and Egon Bahr on one side and detente promoted by Nixon and Kissinger on the other side were not really coordinated they went into the same direction.
Henry Kissinger wrote in his “Leadership”: “Nixon and I argued that declaring overthrow of the entire system as the defining objective would overshadow every controversy with the risk of an ultimate confrontation in an age of weapons of mass destruction and revolutionary technology in other fields. Instead, we favored a strong military position coupled with diplomacy that achieved the defense of American strategic interests via multiple options.”
Recognition of the Soviet empire
The Soviet Union had an interest in having a western acceptance of its dominance in the eastern part of Europe. The status quo created in Yalta - the legitimacy of which has been sometimes questioned in the West - should finally get a formal western confirmation and recognition. Furthermore, as Sergey Radchenko explains in „To Run the World“, an agreement with the West which should be found in Helsinki became “Brezhnev’s personal prestige project, the celebratory culmination of detente”.
And Brezhnev wanted a firm recognition of the Soviet rule over Eastern Europe. “That legitimacy was to be arrived at through collective recognition of the Soviet Union’s rightful place in Europe, much as the Concert of Europe inaugurated Russia’s centrality to the nineteenth-century European order“. This was also underlined by the inviolability of European borders - with the exception of voluntary changes and changes on the basis of bilateral or international agreements.
Recognition against civil rights
The West was ready to accept this reality but wanted to give the people in these countries some legitimacy to ask for basic human rights. Legitimacy of Soviet occupation and domination should be accompanied by a legitimacy for citizens in Eastern Europe to demand basic civil rights. Some say this part of the Helsinki accords have been the most successful ones.
Tony Judd in his „Postwar Europe“ explains the effect of the formulation of the relevant paragraph of the Basket Three: „From this wordy and, as it seemed, toothless checklist of rights and obligations was born the Helsinki Rights movement. Within a year of getting their long awaited international conference agreement, Soviet leaders were faced with a growing and ultimately uncontrollable flowering of circles, clubs, networks, charters and individuals, all demanding „merely“ that their governments stick to the letter of that same agreement, that - as enjoined by the Final Act - they „fulfill their obligations as set forth in the international declarations and agreements in this field.“
But the compromise with Russia was also contested inside the countries concerned. Especially the diaspora of the Baltic states organized a Baltic appeal to the United Nations in order to ask for not recognizing the occupation of their countries by Russia.
Recently the Slovak dissident Martin M. Simecka wrote, that in the years immediate after the agreement “I had no reason to think that anything would have to change. Instead, I was convinced that I had to defend my freedom on my own, without the help of the West, and that this would be a lifelong task.” But he had to change his mind: “What the communist states assumed was mere decoration added to an international treaty that de facto recognized the immutability of the Yalta agreement on the division of Europe, …became a hammer that gradually smashed the concrete structure of the Soviet empire”.
It is as Norman Davies concludes in his “A History Europe”: „The Helsinki Final Act was criticized by many as a capitulation to the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe. At the same time, it gave formal encouragement to political dissent throughout the Soviet bloc.“
Detente and defence
Even if the human rights “basket” was seen as the most successful part of the Helsinki agreements the security and cooperation parts helped to stabilize a peaceful status quo. But as the French President Francois Mitterrand expressed it in his speech to the German Bundestag on January 20th, 1983, dissuasion and deterrence by a united West in the framework of NATO made it possible to come to the Helsinki accords. In this speech he also supported strongly the disarmament talks between US and the Soviet Union but insisted on the French Nuclear Force for the French but also European security. He wanted a strong alliance with the US but he insisted on a viable European force of dissuasion.
The new inner European and global dynamics
Today we are in a quite different situation in comparison to 1975. It is not about confirming a status quo, however the status quo is defined. The “order” created in Yalta or rather confirmed in Yalta on the basis of the results of World War II and reconfirmed in Helsinki has been overthrown by the breakdown of the Soviet Union and its empire. And the new structure has been questioned and attacked by the Russian aggression against Ukraine and different hybrid attacks against Europe. There is nearly no sincere(!) dialogue between the West and Russia comparable to discussions with the Soviet leaders in the seventies.
The Ukraine war is also seen by many especially in some EU-countries, like the Baltic states and Poland, as a continuation of the aggressive behavior of the Russian empire over centuries including during the Stalinist era. Russian politics, society and culture and not only President Putin and his cronies are seen as infected by an imperial and aggressive virus.
The conference in Helsinki was - as Kissinger said according to a rumor - certainly a “turning point”. But it was a turning point inside a development of accepting the stability of a divided Europe including a divided Germany. We are not in that situation today. Russia is far away from accepting the order which was existing and even recognized by it formally before it started different aggressive acts against some of its neighbors and finally an outright brutal war against Ukraine.
And also, the United States lead by Donald Trump is questioning the order established after the break down of the Soviet empire. The same is true for China which in many respects supports Russia in its attack of Western supremacy. And the Global South is not very interested in reinstating and reinforcing an order which did not take strong interest in their political, economic and social issues and fate.
And inside the EU and also inside different member countries a gap between those who support the defence of Europe against Russian aggression and this who would just like to end the war irrespective of its consequences is growing. Or rather the votes who support the second attitude, the appeasement tendency, is growing.
Any chance for a new stability?
For the moment I do not see any chance for a new stability and especially a stability on the ground of respect for once agreed borders and self-determination. Necessary steps in that directions from the side of the European Union are:
Buildup of a strong and efficient European (defence) after a debate what are the vital, necessary defence needs a strong economic and technological revival to the benefits to all groups of European citizens, a sincere and open debate inside the European Union with critical parts of the population on defence.
In spite of the present US-EU conflicts on tariffs, democracy etc. we need to keep contacts with the US in order to establish a minimum basis of confidence. Europe needs to strengthen the contacts and cooperation with the Global South who could help to find new channels of contacts to Russia.
The European Union must strengthen all contacts with Russians outside and inside Russia who can build a minimum of contacts and bridges close to Putin.
The strategy and politics of the European Union must be realistic but also looking for any chance to take first steps towards a new European stability without laying the ground for the next war.
Dr. Hannes Swoboda, President of the International Institute for Peace (IP), started his career in urban politics in Vienna and was elected member of the European Parliament in 1996. He was Vice President of the Social Democrat Group until 2012 und then President until 2014. He was particularly engaged in foreign, enlargement, and neighborhood policies. Swoboda is also President of the Vienna Institute for International Economics, the Centre of Architecture, the University for Applied Science - Campus Vienna, and the Sir Peter Ustinov Institute.