Democracy or security? The OSCE must choose

If you believe in realpolitik, it is a no-brainer: Kazakhstan should chair the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2009. If you believe in the principles of democracy on which the OSCE was founded, the question is a no-brainer too: an undemocratic country cannot be chair of the continent’s main democracy-promoting organisation.

This is no mere wrangle about protocol. It raises a fundamental question about Europe’s willingness to trade democracy for security.

The OSCE was founded on that bargain - but the other way round. The then Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, meeting in Helsinki in 1975, traded security, in the form of Western assent to the division of Europe, for freedom: the Kremlin’s formal commitment to continent-wide human rights. That helped destroy totalitarianism, because it gave dissidents behind the iron curtain a legal basis to challenge their communist rulers.

Now Russia and its allies want to cripple the OSCE until it turns into a mere talking-shop. They have systematically tried to strangle its election-monitoring outfit, the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR - pronounced, aptly enough, Oh Dear). The Kremlin also detests OSCE’s openness to independent non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The OSCE is one of the few places where outfits such as the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (banned in Russia but now registered in Finland) can get a public hearing before an official audience.

The chairmanship of the 56-member OSCE changes every year. Spain is in the chair now; Finland is next. Kazakhstan desperately desires the job in 2009. That, argue its supporters such as Germany, will reach out to the most important and promising country in central Asia. It will integrate Kazakhstan into the heart of Europe’s security structures - and maybe gain Kazakh support for a gas pipeline direct from central Asia to Europe, bypassing Russia.

Perhaps it will, though it is hard to portray this as a move to counter Russian influence in central Asia, given that the Kremlin also strongly supports the Kazakh bid. It wants to set a precedent that a non-democratic country can hold the chair. This year Kazakhstan, so why not Belarus in 2010?

The UK and US are still holding out against the plan. Kazakhstan’s human rights record is dire. It has never held an internationally validated election. President Nursultan Nazarbayev, already in office for 17 years, has just become president for life.

They fear that Kazakhstan may mute the OSCE’s effectiveness if, say, an election is rigged, a demonstration violently crushed or a prominent journalist killed somewhere in the former Soviet Union in 2009; on current form, such events are all too likely. The evidence so far is that stretching democratic principles to accommodate undemocratic countries does not spread freedom and it does dent the principles. Admitting Russia to the Council of Europe, another talking-shop with a grand human-rights mandate, now looks premature to say the least. The same applies to the G8, supposedly a grouping of big advanced democracies. Russia’s G8 summit in St Petersburg last year was a shameful farce.

One solution would be to say that Kazakhstan can be chair in 2011 - but only if some elementary democratic criteria are met first. But it may be too late for that. Anything short of the chairmanship in 2009 will be seen as a severe snub.

The sad truth is that an organisation like the OSCE can function only if its members mostly agree on most principles. That was the case through the 1990s. It no longer holds now. Rather than make shameful compromises on security, it would be better to concentrate on the best long-term bet: promoting freedom.

• The writer is central and eastern Europe correspondent of The Economist.

If you believe in realpolitik, it is a no-brainer: Kazakhstan should chair the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 2009. If you believe in the principles of democracy on which the OSCE was founded, the question is a no-brainer too: an undemocratic country cannot be chair of the continent’s main democracy-promoting organisation.