Losing Game, Demanding New Rules
Moscow explains its persistent desire to radically reform the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) by saying that it is a long overdue need to reform that unit of the OSCE. Russia claims the ODIHR, in its present state, is a partisan organization, and that is why Russia is offering to work out “uniform playing rules and precise approaches” for it.
Quite worthy reasoning, whatever you may say. However, Moscow’s chief claims to the ODIHR were clearly expressed after the election watchdog had refused in autumn 2007 to accept Russia’s new game rules of election monitoring. Those rules boiled down to a significant limitation of foreign observers’ powers at the parliamentary election in Russia. Had the ODIHR ‘swallowed’ those limitations, the urgent necessity for its radical reform would hardly have arisen. Anyway, Moscow wouldn’t be accelerating a reform like that.
Yet, the ODIHR refuted the new Russian rules, and decided not to watch the Russian elections at all. First, the Duma election, and then, the presidential one. Moscow obviously felt hurt, and began pushing for the ODIHR reform.
Similar situations often happened in the relations between Russia and various international organizations, when Moscow would suddenly start pushing for reforming them. Once, Russia firmly set its mind on transforming NATO, offering quite well-grounded arguments: after the Warsaw Pact Organization liquidated itself, NATO no longer has a chief rival, it faces no danger, and so it is time to transform it from a military alliance into a political organization like the OSCE. Meanwhile, the fact that the Warsaw Pact was liquidated far from voluntarily, and not after a triumphal victory over NATO, was sort of left out and not mentioned.
Then, Russia began pushing for a radical OSCE reform. Moscow’s key claim to that organization was that its focus has recently shifted to human rights, while two other directions (military-political and economic) are left out. It wasn’t just that Russia often stood in the minority in the OSCE by that time. The very creation of OSCE predecessor with its third, human rights basket, in 1975 was in fact the USSR’s first capitulation to the West, and Moscow can’t forget it.
Once, Russia became strongly concerned about the PACE’s effectiveness and usefulness, for PACE deputies adopt no legally binding decisions. The peak of that concern occurred precisely in the period when the PACE was toughly criticizing the Kremlin’s Chechen policy, and even suggested suspending Russia’s membership in the PACE.
So, Moscow’s desire to reform this or that international organization intensifies dramatically in the periods not very favorable for Russia. Yet, when you lose a game of chess, it is hard to persuade your partner to start playing checkers. It is easier to begin a new game.
Gennady Sysoev, observer
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 15, 2008
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