WEBEDITION
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Sub-regional organizations:
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Sub-regional organizations are the Cinderellas of European security. Their activities rarely win frontpage attention in the West. Members of the many groupings now criss-crossing Central and Eastern Europe spend more time underlining what these groups cannot be expected to achieve, than what they can. They cannot substitute for collective defence groupings and 'hard' security guarantees. They have difficulty taking explicit strides in arms control. They can neither achieve nor substitute for the fully integrated single market on offer in the European Union. Many of their members speculate openly on how much longer these organizations can survive as the tide of integration spreads further East. It is not, in fact, unreasonable to regard these groups as the ultimately doomed product of a special historical juncture. The six principal groupings within the area of Central and Eastern Europe - the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC), the Council of Baltic Sea States (CBSS), the Visegrad group, the Central European Free Trade Area (CEFTA), the Central European Initiative (CEI) and Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) - were all set up between 1989 and 1993 after the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the CMEA (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact and the demise of the Soviet Union. They helped to fill a political vacuum and restart economic cooperation between states which were just beginning to explore the possibilities (but also sensing the burdens) of new-won independence. The northern and southern groupings - BEAC, CBSS, CEI, BSEC - created quite large networks of NATO states, Western neutrals and states of Central and Eastern Europe, exploiting the collapse of Cold War barriers to reunite natural regional 'families'. They also provide low-key, flexible channels for Western assistance at a time before 'enlargement' was talked of or Partnership for Peace was designed. Russia joined in three of them (BEAC, CBSS and BSEC) and Ukraine in two (BSEC, CEI since June 1996). The Visegrad group founded by Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, was always more explicitly geared to easing its members' way into the big Western organizations, and when consensus broke down on its value for this purpose in the political dimension, it was natural that the focus should shift to its economic counterpart, the Central European Free Trade Area - still thriving and now widening its membership to other EU Associate states. Visegrad apart, the groupings seem to have come safely through the first major challenge to their usefulness: the creation and embellishment of wider association/assistance schemes by the European Union (Associate status), WEU (Associate Partner status) and NATO (Partnership for Peace). The first two of these schemes are still geographically limited and none of them is focused on the practical agenda -infrastructure, tourism, cultural, social/educational cooperation, environment - which remains the core concern of most sub-regional groupings. If proof were needed that the latter still provide a marketable service it can best be found in the pressure they have all come under in the last two years to accept new members, observers and associates. States south and north of the original Visegrad group have sought to join the Central European Free Trade Area; the Central European Initiative and Black Sea Economic Cooperation have between them embraced a large number of smaller neighbours (including all states of the former Yugoslavia apart from Serbia and Montenegro); and even such a reclusive country as Belarus has been admitted to the CEI and applied for observer status in the Council of Baltic Sea States. This provides a clue to the best context in which to weigh the groupings' future value, and their chances of surviving at least through the next decade. Integration will be the dominant theme of that period in the Euro-Atlantic space: how best to deepen and how far to widen the two uniquely integrated organizations, the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Union. While a challenging process for those inside the organizations, this also poses special problems for at least two other categories of states. Some will have applied for early membership of the EU and NATO, but will be left out of the 'first wave' and may not even have any clear assurance of being in the second. Others may feel this type of integration is not for them or is even harmful to their interests, but will still have a claim and right to be considered members of the larger European family. There are, of course, other frameworks where such countries can seek leverage and protection - the OSCE and Council of Europe, in particular. But sub-regional groupings also guarantee states equal status while offering proportionally greater influence, dis creet channels for information exchange and negotiation, and flexible, potentially unlimited agendas. The benefits for the small and more remote states are particularly clear. |
Comparative study launched
Our project was launched in Warsaw with a meeting of an inner Steering Group, which was followed by a conference in Bucharest in October attended by officials from 20 states including representatives of NATO, the European Commission and the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE. The interest shown by sub-group members in each others' experiences confirmed the timeliness of the topic, while their contributions enriched our conceptual agenda with a number of new themes (e.g., the sub-region as a breeding ground of national identity, and the problems raised by overlapping/competing regional initiatives especially when conceived from afar). On the basis of these discussions, IEWS presented to the OSCE and dialogue partners in November a report and proposals on how the sub-regional dimension might be handled in the new "European security model", which was on the agenda of OSCE's Lisbon Summit in December 1996. The project will be completed this year and a research volume published combining extended comparative essays on the six groupings with general analysis and policy conclusions. All could profit from sub-regional workWhat are our preliminary conclusions so far? I Firstly, that the interconnection between the sub-regional process and integration is strong but by no means simple. When we asked why states might not ' support sub-regional organizations we found the strongest negative motives among states hoping to j join NATO and the EU. Would-be candidates of these I organizations are afraid they could be shut out on the grounds that sub-regional arrangements would ade- I quatcly cover their needs. They fear that all members of a sub-regional group might be considered for admission together, condemning the strongest to wait for the slowest. Some also consider that investing in these forums will redirect resources away from their key aim of gaining admission to NATO or the EU.Two things are required to persuade states that sub-regional and 'deeper' integration arc truly complementary. First, Western states would do well to admit that no model of sub-regional organization in Europe can provide a substitute for a country which has set its heart on collective defence guarantees and full political and economic integration. Secondly, the integrated organizations should make clear that a good record of cooperation at sub-regional level will help, not handicap, states which otherwise meet the conditions for membership, reflecting as it does the qualities of maturity, stability and good-neighbourliness which are central to the NATO and EU acquis. This message has been somewhat obscured up to now - indeed for some observers, contradicted -by the emphasis which NATO and the EU have (rightly) put on assessing candidates on their own merits, not in regional 'packages' . But this last principle is entirely compatible with a more forthcoming line on sub-regional associations provided that the criterion for judging states in the accession context is not mere membership, but their attitude and performance within the given group. Once these points are cleared up, it should be possible to see ways in which even a country single-mindedly bent on integration could profit from sub-regional work. A grouping of relatively few like-minded states could adopt a joint 'pre-accession strategy' and work together to try out, or approach by stages, the standards and mechanisms of the 'target' integrated group. (This is, essentially, the Visegrad and CEFTA model). Even where all sub-regional partners are not at the same level in their bid for membership they could select some less exacting policies of the 'target' body (e.g., common positions on the Common Foreign and Security Policy) to apply voluntarily and equally among themselves. The function of the larger, less homogeneous sub-regional groupings of northern and south-east Europe may be, rather, to complement and cushion the integration process, absorbing some of the inevitable strains. At the very least, these groups will allow NATO/EU members, first and second wave candidates, neutrals and non-candidates like Russia to continue meeting and talking to each other. The fact that their meetings are little publicized and carry little burden of expectation would be a positive asset if and when the more direct lines of communication (US/Russia, NATO/Russia) grow over-heated. If all members of such a grouping could agree, at least, on trying to make the best of things there are many practical ways they could help each other. The integrated members could brief on developments in the EU and NATO, they could feed back their neighbours' concerns to these institutions, and they should be able to devise schemes to benefit all members of the grouping which they can recommend for NATO's or EU's support. These functions would be roughly parallel to those performed by the Nordic cooperation network following Danish and then Swedish and Finnish entry into the EU and they are already being reflected in the work, for example, of the Barents and Baltic sub-regional groups. If the five still-active sub-regional groups can play even part of the role suggested above they will clearly be making a useful input to European security. Yet some of them do not even have security issues as such on their agenda. The majority of their members, if asked, are more likely to play down, rather than advertise, their security importance. This is partly tactics because they do not wish to divert attention from their NATO candidacies, but it also reflects a truth. The largest contribution all these groups make to security is probably at the unexpressed, existential level: the mere fact that their members belong somewhere, that they understand each other, that they can talk about their worries in the 'corridors', that they have telephone numbers to dial in a crisis. Beyond this, all the groupings under study have made some strides (whether they recognize it or not) in 'soft security', by easing human and economic exchanges across frontiers and thus helping build wider social foundations for stability and understanding. Almost everything they do - environmental cooperation, improving transport and communications, helping each other with accidents and emergencies - can be related to security and confidence-building. The sensitive issue is whether they can and should develop their activities into more explicitly security-related fields: open debate on regional, Europe-wide or global security issues; collective dialogue with NATO, WEU or OSCE; overt attempts at conflict prevention, mediation or resolution within their regions; political and/or military cooperation on conflict management tasks further afield. All groups have hitherto been extremely cautious about entering these areas of activities and the most heterogeneous groups may be well-advised to avoid them altogether. Our work so far suggests that, even leaving aside any suggestion of 'hard' guarantees, there are some parts of the agenda that will remain particularly resistant to the sub-regional approach. For 'hard' arms control (force reductions and ceilings) and for the development of joint crisis management forces, to take just two examples, the existing groupings are both too small and too large. They do not contain the largest Western military powers, whose presence would be needed for balanced results, but they contain states of too many different sizes to strike an easy and sustainable local bargain. Pan-European and bilateral/trilateral approaches are likely to work better here; while states and institutions from outside the region may (given their relative weight and 'neutrality') produce the best conflict managers and mediators. That leaves a few security functions which sub-regional groups might usefully be able to explore, but which we certainly should not pressure them to tackle before they are ready - cooperative border management, wider cooperation on 'new threats' such as terrorism, crime and drugs, and 'softer' arms control measures, particularly in the areas of transparency, advance notification and other constraints on activity. The OSCE connection and beyondThe recommendations which IEWS made in October to OSCE were presented on our own responsibility and must stand or fall by their merits. Whatever their eventual fate, they gave us a useful chance to draw out some interim policy conclusions. We believe that sub-regional groups built on a basis of free consent, proceeding by consensus and observing the principles of the UN and OSCE, make a contribution to the stability and security of the Euro-Atlantic area by their very existence. Any indirect contribution they can make to security through their joint activities is an added bonus, provided only that it is not directed against the security of non-members. We believe this sub-regional dimension of security should be recognized in the provisions and structure of any new OSCE Security Model, and that OSCE should also facilitate contact and mutual support between the groupings in a practical way by providing a home for a 'group of groups' (represented by their Presidencies and/or Secretariats) to meet together at least annually.The larger European organizations - NATO, EU, WEU - should be encouraged to send representatives to such meetings, to articulate their own policies in support of the sub-regions more clearly, and to set up a regular but non-constraining information exchange. We have suggested that a site on the World Wide Web be dedicated to information exchange and discussion on the work of sub-regional groups, perhaps in association with the new OSCE 'home page'. The OSCE's Lisbon Summit declaration on the 'Security Model' highlighted the value of "bilateral and regional initiatives aimed at developing relations of good neigh-bourliness and cooperation". It also suggested developing a menu of confidence-building measures (CBMs) to support regional security processes. We believe this offers a sound basis for us to go on promoting our proposals, and a hope of winning eventual consensus for their adoption. If there is no single ideal way of organizing sub-regional cooperation in the Central and Eastern European area then there is certainly no basis for imposing such a model on others. But an open-minded debate and exchange of experiences is always worth attempting and we intend to pay proper attention to these possible broader geographical applications during the final phase of our study. Whether or not the proliferation of sub-regional groups in post-Cold War Europe turns out to have been a passing phase, a correct analysis of its significance should have value for the cause of security in the wider world.
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