THERE IS, we are told, an element of international rebranding involved in Ireland’s assumption of the chair this year of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
“We are very conscious of the damage our country’s reputation has suffered. . .” Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs Lucinda Creighton has argued, “and this gives us a great opportunity to take our place on the world stage and bring our skills and traditional foreign policy values to the fore.” Brave little Ireland re-emerging . . .
The truth is more prosaic. Spin notwithstanding, the job is largely a selfless honouring of obligations to a club to which we are committed – every loyal club member has to take a turn on the catering committee. Ireland may indeed have a distinct contribution to make, but success will pay a return to the OSCE and multilateral collective security, the bedrock of Ireland’s security policy, rather than us. Our chair is likely to cost us some €8 million and countless air miles for Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, but – unlike the Vatican embassy? – should not need to justify itself by producing a profit.
Ireland’s chairmanship of the 56-member regional security organisation, which emerged as the old Soviet Union disappeared and whose remit stretches from Vancouver to Vladivostok, comes at a difficult time for it. The OSCE’s roles in military and economic security have to a great extent been eclipsed by Nato, multilateral disarmament talks, and the EU, while what is left, its “human dimension”, human rights monitoring and standards-setting, has put it more and more at odds with an increasingly hostile key member – Russia. The latter sees the OSCE’s “East of Vienna” focus as intrusive on both its domestic prerogatives – the right to fiddle elections undisturbed – and those of some of its former satellite states now still in Moscow’s “sphere of influence”.
That makes the major diplomatic challenge of the year, setting the ground rules for the March Russian presidential election monitoring mission, one that will require considerable skill. The OSCE’s justified criticism of the November parliamentary elections infuriated the Kremlin and has contributed in no small degree to the outpouring of protests seen since. Unless it is allowed to send a credible new mission with a free hand, the OSCE, not to mention Russia’s democratic credentials, will suffer a crippling loss of credibility.
Ireland, bringing its own experience of conflict resolution in the North to bear, will also take up the ongoing work of brokering talks in so-called “frozen conflicts” involving member states Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova and their respective breakaway provinces. And Mr Gilmore has made a welcome commitment to make freedom of expression and freedom of the media in the digital age key dimensions of the Irish year, with an important conference on the issue in Dublin this summer. The year will culminate with the largest ever gathering of foreign ministers in the capital.
An onerous, perhaps thankless task, but important nevertheless, and well worth the effort.