Fair enough in pointing out the differences between OSCE and Freedom House. The latter does indeed appear to number more bankers and financiers among its top staff and trusteeship, and in the OSCE those kinds of people seem to be confined mainly to the organization’s economic arm.

Nevertheless, it still seems true to me that the OSCE is part of a broader international network of neoliberal institutions that collectively seek a gradual takeover – political, economic and military – of all or almost all of the post-Soviet world. By “takeover”, I mean nothing more than that they seek to incorporate this part of the world into a western economic, political and military order. Since the Cold War ended the west has tried to consolidate its victory and benefit from it by breaking up and absorbing what used to be the Soviet empire. Frankly, I didn’t think this would be taken as a particularly controversial idea based on some dark conspiracy theory. You might think Putin has no basis for objection, because the takeover is being accomplished fair and square, but it is happening.

The relationships between the groups that compose the western order are too incestuous to be prized apart. It’s a team effort. Your view seems to be that the actual leadership of the OSCE has virtually nothing to do with the organization’s policy agenda and behavior. But I simply can’t believe the policies and overall direction of an organization like the OSCE are determined by mid and low level bureaucratic staffers who are just out of control and acting on their own. Call me a conspiracy nut, but I tend to think that when a western diplomat heads OSCE one year, and becomes NATO Secretary General the next, there is probably more to connect the two organizations than the accidents of a single resume.

Their economic arm of OSCE claims on their website that part of their mandate is to forge ties with other international organizations that share the same goals, and to develop similar ties with the private sector. The Economic Forum exists to “give political stimulus to the dialogue on the transition to free-market economies” and “suggest practical means of developing free-market systems and economic co-operation”. Since much of the political conflict in the post-Soviet world is rooted in competing economic power sources, with western-financed or western-allied privatizers taking on the old Russian or Soviet guard running economic sectors that have evolved directly out of the old Soviet-run structures, this is an inherently political agenda that goes beyond being a human rights watchdog. It means participating in transferring the power of states from one group to another.

My understanding is that Putin’s complaint is specifically based on a trend at OSCE toward greater NGO involvement and cooperation in OSCE’s reporting activities. In other words, he believes the bureaucracy has been infiltrated by or compromised by the increasing involvement of organizations outside the OSCE. Isn’t there something to this? The OSCE claims to have developed several initiatives over the past decade, “to enhance the OSCE’s interaction with relevant international organizations” and “to broaden OSCE contacts with non-governmental organizations and the private sector;” It seems to me the OSCE has made no secret of its aim to fuse public-private-nonprofit partnerships among similarly oriented groups to extend the western order.

I simply don’t agree that there is no connection with what the OSCE does and profits. Certainly the side that wins an election in eastern Europe has a significant role in how and to what degree industries are privatized, who will own them, what kinds of investments will be available to others and who will make those investments. There are huge economic stakes here. I’m not simply talking about quick buck artists who might use a stint at OSCE for their own personal enrichment (there are always people like that in any organization); I’m talking about people who are working throughout the western world to continue the incorporation of as much of the former Soviet empire as possible into the western economic order. Bankers and financiers can be just as “idealistic” as election monitors. The entire history of US and western imperialism is built around a symbiotic relationship between financiers, industrialists, missionaries and other NGOs, and the government.

Now maybe this concerted effort is just the right thing to, and there are a lot worse things that could happen to the post-Soviet world than to have their economies, political systems and security systems incorporated into the western world on a western model. But I don’t think we can pretend this isn’t going on, and that the effort is based on a lot of hardball politics, drawing on the strengths of a diverse group of institutions. The world is still witnessing an important struggle over who owns the productive capacities and resources of the globe, and the countries that used to comprise the Soviet empire are a very important battlefield in that struggle.

You can call the OSCE part of the “international community” if you like. But it really tends to represent only one portion of that community. The international community these days looks a lot more like the “free world” institutions of the Cold War than a truly global collection of internationalist organizations.

I’m sure all of these organizations are full of earnest and honest busybodies, just trying to do their human rights thing. I have no doubt that a good part of the makeup of this effort consists not of selfish profiteers, but earnest reformers out to save the political souls of the heathens, just as in an earlier generation imperialism was accompanied by Christian missionaries out to save souls of the old-fashioned variety. But the organizations themselves are part of a much larger international effort, fully integrated into the larger western governing system, and shot through with government agents and representatives, both open and clandestine. I don’t, for example, think the chain of color-coded revolutions “just happened” as a spontaneous chain-reaction of purely domestic movements. They are manufactured, using some substantial base of domestic enthusiasm to be sure, but heavily assisted by western intelligence, western non-profit “foundations” and injections of capital and economic promises.

Lawyers are part of the effort as well. Lawyers like Amsterdam and Peroff work for gangsters Mikhail Khodorkovsky and on behalf of a variety of clients seeking to get a larger piece of the Russian action. The lawyers are getting rich from the loot that these guys liberated from Russia, and which now is funneled back into funding for the NGO and public relations barrage against Russia. Boris Berezovsky, for example, is widely reported to have transferred large sums of cash to Ukrainian enterprises as part of the takeover effort there. Let’s be careful what we say here, though, since we might end up like Paul Klebnikov otherwise.

Personally, I would prefer for every country to be like Austria, but if some have to be more equal than others, then the Russians certainly have a good case asking for more super-powers than Austria – or France, for that matter.

Russia is referring to the problems where she was outvoted by combined US/Europe alliance. Like OSCE did not support Moldova reconciliation plan developed by Kremlin.

Same case is with European Court of Human Rights, where there’s judge from every European country. If matter gets complicated, they vote. They are directly appointed by the convention memberstates. Russia is unhappy about that too, in part due to recent and growing burden of war crime cases. So far it was Foreign Ministry which was speaking in its official notes against Strasbourg, not the Chief himself.

Same problem is with PACE (more broadly, COE). Also a conspiracy. PACE is not doing what the Russians want, hence calls by Duma and Russian FM to reform this organization.

There’s no single international body in bigger Europe, with which Russia would agree. Conspiracy is everywhere. Russia cannot have just one vote as some kind of Austria, it has to be special everywhere and have extra super powers.

Funny, when I hear that NGOs are often being used as “instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries”, I know this is a trivial statement and the most natural thing in the world; I’m not trying to come up with a wisecrack caricature. But it does take all kinds.

OK, abb1, just for you: George Bush sr was a former CIA officer. Spook spook spook. He lies like most of us breathe.
Happy.

dan: when people start saying “Oh, they’re anti-Russian because they’re run by members of the International Western Financial Conspiracy”, I tend to dismiss the rest of what they say as, basically, drivel. Please try to sound more sane. Or at least provide some evidence.

So, the CIA are honest and decent spies and murderers and the KGB are lying bastards spies and murderers, is that it?

Good, that saves me the trouble of skimming the rest of the comment.

Because I, for one, do not draw an equivalence between the KGB and the CIA. Do you?

Anyway, if I remember correctly, there’s a long-ish history of the Soviet government trying to assert that the CSCE commitments did not mean what they plainly did mean. Putin is in some ways picking up this tradition.

Also, there’s a long-standing tension between the principle of non-interference and the other principles. The trump has always been the states recognition that violation of CSCE/OSCE commitments is by definition a matter of concern for other participating states. If some states are trying to re-forge the broken shield of non-interference, that’s an interesting indicator by itself.

Further, there was tension between self-determination of peoples and inviolability of borders. I don’t think that this one has been settled in theory, but it certainly has in practice.

What about the view that states are not the only actors in the international system, and that as the OSCE becomes more established, it is an actor in its own right, with interests that it pursues (more precisely, perhaps, interests that the people who cromprise the organization pursue, out of a variety of motivations), one of which is increasing effectiveness? I’m a bit out of date, so I’m left to wonder if there are any IR traditionalists who argue that the international system is states, only states and nothing but states. This seems an odd way to look at the world.

Doug (not to be confused with Doug M.)
Germany

Sure, I could be wrong, there are exceptions to every rule. On the other hand, there are some things that are simply not possible, just because of the fundamental laws of nature, y’know, that affect, I’m pretty sure, even the IR.

Putin’s speech at that conference was very good, here’s a part of it; excellent essay, I must say.

#16: That said, the willingness of people to believe Vladimir Putin continues to baffle me. He’s a KGB agent, people. Spook spooky spook. He lies like most of us breathe.

Who said anything here about believing Vladimir Putin? That would be stupid. Otoh, to read his words and immediately assume that the opposite is true would be even sillier.

And btw, I bet you would never express this sentiment in these words about former pres. Bush, who was the head of the CIA at one time. Why is that, I wonder?

What Henry said. I can give a couple of specific, recent examples from my region.
—The OSCE was critical of last year’s constitutional referendum in Armenia. This was mildly embarrassing to the US, which knew perfectly well the referendum was a sham but chose not to challenge it anyway. (US policy is not to challenge Armenian President Kocharyan, since Armenia is a friendly country bordering both Turkey and Iran.)
—OSCE/ODIHR was also quite critical of the 2005 parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, correctly pointing out that they were a complete sham.
—In 2004, ten of the twelve CIS countries signed a declaration complaining that OSCE was “too focused” on human rights and was “not observing the principle of non-interference” in internal affairs. Looking at the list of signatories does not make one think less of OSCE…

This is not to say that OSCE is hunky-dory. Henry, I think you’re wrong on one point—OSCE was not very critical of Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election, nor of Putin’s first election in 2000. Critics have seen this as OSCE following the collective will of the West. This seems plausible in 1996 (it’s hard to remember now, but everyone was worried that Yeltsin would lose to the Communists), somewhat less so in 2000. But it is worth nothing.

That said, the willingness of people to believe Vladimir Putin continues to baffle me. He’s a KGB agent, people. Spook spooky spook. He lies like most of us breathe.

Doug M.
Armenia

dan – the suggestion that the OSCE’s ‘civic fathers’ go back to the “banks and government offices from whence they come” is empirically wrong. Have you ever met and talked to an OSCE official? There’s a very small political part surrounding the rotating chairmanship which does indeed consist of government officials on secondment – but this has nothing to do with the parts of the OSCE that Putin is complaining about, and that we are talking about (primarily ODIHR). What Putin is looking for is for the semi-autonomous bits to be brought under the control of the political bit (where Putin and his mates can bring more pressure to bear). OSCE officials are mostly lawyer types with a human rights background. There aren’t to my knowledge bankers working for the OSCE for the simple reason that there isn’t any plausible connection between what the OSCE does and the possibility of large ex post profits. Nor is the OSCE anything like Freedom House, which is indeed funded largely by the US government; you’re comparing apples and oranges here.

If you want to make sweeping statements about the “Benevolent Order of Western Robber-Barons,” you need some actual empirical evidence even to make this claim vaguely plausible, let alone make it stick. Your specific suggestion that the OSCE has “a lot more trouble with elections when they are not won by candidates aligned with western carpetbaggers or west-leaning scalawags” is contradicted by the facts. The OSCE started to get critical of elections in the former Soviet space in the mid-1990s, criticizing, for example, Yeltsin’s election, which the Western Overlords were vigorously in favour of. If you can point to a specific place where the OSCE has gone soft on western carpetbaggers, you really should do so. There should be examples out there (as I presume you know, there are corrupt Eurasian autocracies that the US quietly is strongly supportive of – to the best of my knowledge, the OSCE hasn’t been any softer on them than on their Russia-backed cognates). I’ve done a fair amount of research on the OSCE in my time, and I can tell you in all honesty, that I don’t see how your broad claims are going to make it.