Managing International Security: The New Europe (Fall 2000)

Introduction

ICONS simulations cast students as high-level negotiators on issues of international importance. Working together on "country-teams," participants model real-world interactions between nations. The simulations are conducted on two levels: deliberations within teams and negotiations between teams. Within a team, students perform research on their assigned country and on the specific negotiation issues highlighted in the scenario, and, working as a group formulate positions for multilateral negotiations. They then communicate their policies and conduct a dialogue with the other country-teams by sending written messages over a computer-based communications system. In addition, country-teams "meet" during real-time, on-line conferences to discuss proposals. While the focus of the exercise is multilateral, participants should keep in mind that bilateral dialogues are also a central component of the negotiations.

To facilitate the research process, ICONS has established a World Wide Web homepage on the Internet: http://www.icons.umd.edu. From there, participants are able to link to a number of sites that house relevant documents, treaties, and information.

Negotiation Framework

Diplomacy represents an alternative to the use of force in the settlement of potential or actual disputes between states. International negotiation is a phased process, predicated on expectations of reciprocity and the search for mutually satisfactory outcomes. The parties to a negotiation must prepare their positions carefully, looking for a balance between national strategic considerations and international realities.

Simulation participants should engage in the following stages:

Phase 1 Pre-Negotiation: Each country-team should prepare an internal brief to help guide it in the negotiations. The brief should include: issue background, country-interests, negotiation goals, and negotiation strategies.

Phase 2 Opening Positions: Country-teams will summarize and present their stances on-line for the benefit of the other parties during the first day of negotiations.

Phase 3 Dialogue: The talks will proceed during Week 1 of the simulation with an exchange of comments on the individual positions/proposals and agenda-setting conferences for each of the three main issues.

Phase 4 Negotiation: In addition to continuing to exchange comments through diplomatic communiques in Weeks 2 and 3, delegations will participate during Week 3 in several on-line, multilateral conferences. These are opportunities for negotiators to work to formulate common position and policies.

The parties to these negotiations will be Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Turkey.

Background

The collapse of the Soviet Union shifted the axis of global politics in a way that few historical events have ever done. While initially hailed as a victory for democracy, the end of the Cold War unleashed a period of great uncertainty in Europe. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union dissolved as nation-states, resulting in great turmoil in the latter two cases. Germany, on the other hand, reunified -- an event that led many in the region to think in terms of a Europe that could perhaps stand independent of the United States and the institutional instruments it had championed in the post-World War II era. However, not long after the demise of Soviet hegemony, it became apparent that the "new Europe" would be beset by a host of difficult problems. The most serious of these quickly became ethnic fragmentation. Civil wars that spilled across borders in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia proved too hot to handle for European institutions such as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now the OSCE) and the European Union (EU).

By the mid-1990s, it became apparent that post-Cold War Europe was institutionally paralyzed and engulfed in an identity crisis. While optimists in Western Europe continued to envision a supranational European Union, new realities to the East were casting serious doubts on the chances of this being achieved. The question quickly became not how deep European integration would become by the end of the century, but how widely it would expand. Would the new Europe stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals? Or, would military and economic uncertainties in the post-communist region lead Western Europeans to quickly close the door on their neighbors to the East?

In 2000, Europe seems to have opted to retain a close security relationship with the United States. The Europe, of at least the near-future, will remain more "Atlantic" in character than "Eurasian." After much debate, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decided to expand eastward with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joining in March 1999. On the economic front, the EU is also poised for enlargement, having recently informed the same three countries, as well as Estonia and Slovenia, that their admission applications have been favorably reviewed.

But the institutional expansion into East-Central Europe leaves many crucial questions still unanswered. For one thing, not all of the individual states of NATO and the EU agree with the path those institutions have designated. Some critics feel that NATO has been hopelessly compromised in this move to the East and that the EU will be torn apart by nations too economically disparate to stay together in a collective enterprise. Other voices are questioning what the future of those left out of the expanded institutions will be. They want to know what will become of such states as Romania and Bulgaria, not to mention Turkey, passed over once again by the European Union. Still others feel that an historic opportunity to move away from American domination has been lost. There is agreement on only one thing in Europe these days, that the region is now at a critical juncture in its history. But, it is unclear in what direction it will move.

These negotiations bring together some of the key European players (east and west) for discussions of the regional security agenda. They will attempt to define those issues that most threaten the well-being of the people of Europe and try to reach a common consensus on how to counter them. "Security," once focused solely on military positioning, now encompasses many other issues and problems. In addition to state-level concerns, there are a host of societal and transnational issues that foreign policy decision-makers must take into account, including questions of ethnic and cultural identity and resource quality and availability. These talks will focus on three interlocking subissues under the heading of "security:" (1) the military dimensions of European security, for example, ethic conflict, territorial integrity, arms proliferation, and questions of institutional architecture; (2) economic security, both for the peoples of the east who are struggling to attain a new level of well-being and those of the west, who are trying to hang on to the entitlements characteristic of the post-World War II "welfare states;" and (3) environmental security, physical well-being in the face of unprecedented natural resource and demographic pressures, as the nation states of post-industrial western Europe and post-Communist eastern Europe try to develop collective strategies for the allocation, development, quality and security of vital natural resources.

The Issues

Military-Security Dimensions

At the end of a turbulent decade, three enduring threats to European regional security remain evident. First, the issue of ideological and ethnic clashes looms large. The quick transformation from ethnic unrest to multiple interstate wars in the former Yugoslavia revealed the fragility of the new political era.

Ethnic fragmentation and unrest is a problem that threatens virtually every state in contemporary Europe, whether due to these deep-seated historical animosities in Eastern and Central Europe that have resurfaced in the wake of communism, or pressures resulting from new waves of migration within Europe and into it from various unstable regions around the world. Nationalism has been resurgent in both Eastern and Western Europe, resulting in open clashes between native and immigrant populations in many Northern European countries. Manifestations of xenophobia and resurgent neo-Nazi movements signal a disturbing element of new "identity politics" in Europe.

Perhaps the most hotly debated topic is to what extent post-Communist Russia poses a threat to the new Europe. Close attention continues to be focused on economic and political instability in that country. President Vladimir Putin, who has held office since Boris Yeltsin stepped down on December 31, 1999, faces great challenges. Russia's economic crisis of 1998-99 led to the collapse of the ruble and the Russian stock market, signaling a derailment of economic reforms and a potential return to the communist political era. At the same time, Russia has been mired in internal conflict. Citing a threat to national safety from the rebel Chechen guerillas, Moscow has pursued a bloody and costly campaign in breakaway republic Chechnya, raising the ire of many international human rights groups.

Recent events such as the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, which led to the death of 118 Russian servicemen and the deadly fire in the Ostankino Television Tower in Moscow, indicate that Russia will pay a high price for the budgetary slashes resulting from its continuing economic crisis.

Putin talks of regaining Russia's place as a great power in the international system, but many international observers sound cautionary notes about the state of Russia's nuclear weapons program, as well. The country still possesses upward of 20,000 nuclear weapons, and has not officially ratified the START II Treaty with the U.S., which would have further downsized its nuclear arsenal. Indeed, unhappy with NATO's 1999 bombing campaign in Belgrade, the Russian government indicated that neither ratification of START II nor commencement of START III negotiations would be forthcoming. Moreover, even proponents of disarmament have to concede that progress on this front could bring its own problems. The surge in organized crime in Russia, coupled with very low morale in the military and corruption among government officials, could lead to more nuclear materials on the black market if plutonium freed by weapon dismantling were not properly safeguarded and managed. This possibility of "loose Nukes" represents a serious threat to the territorial integrity and security of not only post-Cold War Europe, but the rest of the international system as well. Nuclear material not adequately secured in such countries as Georgia, Russia, Uzbekistan and possibly still in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine raise the specter of deadly nuclear accidents, purposeful sabotage and theft by insurgents and terrorists.

What to do about Russia as the institutional architecture of Europe is re-done in the new millennium is a crucial question on the negotiation agenda. The U.S. has favored placating the Russians into acceptance of the new, expanded version of NATO. This led to the signing of the "Founding Act" between NATO and Russia just prior to the announcement of expansion. This act sets up a system of "consultations" with Russia in instances where NATO is considering action. Critics have charged that the resulting NATO-Russia Joint Council will give Moscow veto power over actions by the "new" NATO, further claiming that it subordinates NATO to the United Nations (UN) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Clearly, however, the UN and the OSCE did not prevent NATO from taking action in Kosovo. The problem seems to be in balancing the need to avoid institutional paralysis with the need for European consensus on appropriate action.

In this context, the future of NATO and other European security organizations is a fundamental question. NATO is under pressure to increase its membership beyond the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Obviously, the aspirant states are hoping that inclusion in the alliance will increase their security (and perhaps lower the amount that they need to spend for defensive purposes), but there are fears that expansion could undermine NATO's ability to provide credible security guarantees.

At the same time, France and the UK have been at the forefront of a movement to develop a "European Security and Defense Initiative" within NATO that would allow the use of forces under the auspices of the Western European Union if the U.S. decided to not to become involved in an operation. With talk of merging the WEU with the EU, the differing memberships of NATO, the WEU, and the EU obviously pose a number of challenges.

That Europeans are even asking themselves whether their region is more or less stable than during the Cold War highlights the uncertainties of the new era. There are many important areas of discussion for the leaders of the European states as they try to forge a workable military-security arrangement for the new century.

Areas for Negotiation

1. What should be the strategic doctrine underlying European security? How can institutional overlap with accompanying confusion be avoided between NATO, the EU/WEU, the UN, and the OSCE?

2. How can future ethnic conflicts be avoided? When should intervention take place in such situations and according to what rules?

3. What steps should be taken to guarantee state control of nuclear material and to prevent "loose nukes" from falling into the hands of black marketeers and/or terrorists?

Economic Security

One of the enduring questions of the post-World War II era has been, what is the relationship between political democracy and economic prosperity? The post-war Marshall Plan was conceived with the notion that democracy could not flourish in the absence of economic security. Now, as the post-communist states try to secure their places in the liberal international economic system, there is once again debate on how much help the West should offer and how much reform, recovery and transition, is, in fact, in its own interest. As the western states of Europe struggle to keep up with the United States during its unprecedented time of economic growth and technological innovation, the question of whether deepening economic integration or broadening it will most improve the relative European position is paramount.

As communism, with its emphasis on state-run economies, collapsed after 1989, all of the states of Eastern and Central Europe gave transformation to market-based economies very high priority. Some adopted a radical approach known as "shock therapy," in which they attempted to make the transition in quick and dramatic fashion. Others adopted a more gradual pace toward change. In all cases, the task has proved daunting, involving a variety of complex tasks that need somehow to be synchronized (privatization of ownership, opening up of trade, and overhaul of legal, banking and training systems). Positive results were also slow in coming. Instead of immediate rises in standards of living, eastern Europeans were first faced with higher inflation, unemployment, and inequality -- in some cases dramatically higher than what they had previously experienced. Moreover, with new economic problems came higher rates of crime and disruptions in the delivery of many basic goods and services. A backlash was apparent by 1992, with many yearning for the "good old days" of communism and voting for politicians who promised to deliver it.

For many in the post-communist region, the economic situation remains dire as they approach the new century. Russia, with its current economic and political turmoil, is the most obvious example of this. The economy has been slowly declining since 1991, during which time its GDP decreased by about 40 percent, but the situation reached crisis proportions in August 1998 when the government defaulted on its debt again, abandoned support for the ruble, and allowed the banking system to collapse. Although the situation has stabilized somewhat, Russia is still a cause for concern. The use of shock therapy in Russia has been heavily criticized for privatizing the economy before the necessary institutions to regulate it (i.e., property rights, a sound banking system, a functioning tax code, etc.) were in place. Critics say that this is what has led to widespread corruption and the pillaging of the Russian economy by government officials and organized crime. Allegations of Russian organized crime groups laundering money through the Bank of New York raised tensions, with suspicions that a significant percentage of the money laundering activity springs from government officials pilfering government funds, including IMF loan monies. Such "capital flight," at times as much as $1 billion per month, has been a huge problem for Russia.

However, the relative successes of the Czech Republic, Hungary (where over 75 percent of the Gross Domestic Product is now generated by the private sector) and Poland (with economic growth rates averaging over 6 percent for the last three years) do offer an alternative vision of the future. These states will likely be part of the European Union in the relatively near future and their highly educated, low-cost work forces are expected to do well, especially in competition with the Mediterranean members of the EU, who are therefore strongly arguing against their membership petitions.

For most in the post-communist region of Europe, hopes for a brighter economic future are now firmly hinged on economic integration with Western institutions, especially the EU. But, it is not clear how their neighbors to the west will respond to these hopes. Large gaps in levels of income and industrial development between east and west make the expansion of the EU eastward an expensive proposition. The Czech Republic, with a per capita GDP of $11,000 is the success story of post-communist Europe, but this is barely half the average for the EU. If the EU admitted all ten former Soviet bloc nations of Eastern and Central Europe, it would only increase its economic strength by 5 percent, while increasing its population by one-third. And, if all ten were admitted to the EU, and the Union's current agricultural subsidies were extended to them, the result would be $15.5 billion per year.

There are also other reasons for caution in the West. EU countries are hesitant about importing a host of unresolved territorial disputes and potentially explosive ethnic minority questions. There is also concern that a decision-making process already made more complex with the recent addition of Sweden, Finland, and Austria to the Union would become hopelessly gridlocked if membership eventually grew to encompass 25 members. Dealing with these issues is at the center of Agenda 2000, the EU's blueprint for union enlargement.

At the same time, western Europeans are skittish about taking a risk on the East because they are already trying to weather transitions in their own economies. Since the mid-1980s, budgetary crises, high deficit spending, tax revolts, and sustained high unemployment have signified the painful death of Western European entitlement economies (so-called "welfare states"). Coupled with that is the adoption of the "euro" as the single European currency (effective January 1, 1999), which has forced the participating governments (all EU members except Denmark, Greece, Sweden, and the UK) to further lower budget deficits and inflation. In so doing, the "Euro-11" have surrendered a great deal of national control over their macroeconomic management. For them, as well as for their more reticent neighbors, the question of what place national sovereignty will have in the new Europe is a contentious but important one.

Areas for Negotiation

1. Will EU membership for post-communist states consolidate fledgling democracies and make Europe an even more powerful force in the coming century? Or, could the broadening of the EU at the expense of its deepening lessen the clout of what is now the world's largest and most successful single trading bloc?

2. How can the post-communist states consolidate their economic gains of the last decade and move to the next level (full participation in the technology-driven "global" economy)?

3. Can a single, unified Europe be attained in the economic area? What do the experiences of the "Euro-11" so far indicate about this?

Environmental Security

The rise of "green parties" as serious electoral contenders in western Europe, and their role as leaders in the movement against communism in the East, signal the importance of the environmental movement in the New Europe

Environmental problems are very difficult for states to manage on their own because they are transnational by nature, defying borders and challenging narrow definitions of national self-interest. Ecological disasters, whether beyond human control (such as the 1997 flooding of Central European waterways) or due to human error (such as the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident of 1986) serve as reminders that environmental stability is not under national political control, and that only through collective efforts, can solutions to collective problems be found.

Even during the Cold War, Eastern and Western Europeans recognized the need for environmental cooperation when they worked together to reduce sulphur emissions, a leading cause of acid rain, but the same problems worked against collective problem-solving then as now. Namely, the greatest environmental offenders are also the countries that have the least financial and political capability to "clean up." Does this, therefore, mean that the richer countries should finance environmental clean-ups in the poorer ones?

There are a multitude of serious environmental problems in the European region. Waterways such as the Aral, Baltic, Black, and Mediterranean Seas and the Danube River and its many tributaries, are in deep environmental distress. Their stocks of fish have been adversely affected by industrial waste and overzealous fishing practices, and tourism continues to be adversely affected by the sight of raw sewage washing up on beaches in many of Europe's resort communities. Forests and farming lands in areas of Europe subjected to the ruthless industrial policies of the communist era continue to be adversely affected, with contaminants in air, food and water blamed for the very high rates of illness (especially cancer) in many of the post-communist states. Many people in the area of the former Soviet Union have even had to leave their homes in search of clean air and water. People everywhere in Europe also fear the possibility of future nuclear accidents, especially as they hear regular news reports on the inadequacies of storage facilities, safeguard measures, and transportation routes for "stranded" nuclear materials. Raising the sunken nuclear submarine, the Kursk, in a safe manner will reportedly cost $100 million.

The heavy pollution of the post-communist states has slowed economic reform. Privatization of industry in eastern Europe has been adversely affected by the issue of environmental contamination. Fear of liability for communist-era contamination has scared off many potential buyers of factories and other industrial real estate. And the creation of new "pollution havens" in the East promises to continue the environmental inequities. "Environmental audits" have now become standard practice for those interested in investing, and the cost of cleaning up site contamination prior to purchase or investment is now being passed on to the states whenever possible. This is causing grave concern for post-communist political leaders. They are very bitter at having to absorb the costs of policies they believe were forced on them by Moscow. They have pleaded with Western states and institutions to do more to finance the clean-ups, urging the availability of grants or "soft loans," but being met instead with offers of commercial (interest-bearing) loans.

To further cross-border collaboration on environmental initiatives, problems of equity must be addressed. A common legacy of both communism and capitalism is that "vulnerable" or weaker states are forced to pay the environmental price for industrial progress in stronger, richer states. The hazardous waste trade and energy sector have been two offenders in this creation of "pollution havens" in Europe. These transgressions have prompted some to call for "polluter pays" schemes that will turn the tables. The issues of in whose interest and at what cost such initiatives can be undertaken, will be important to discussions of environmental institution building. New ideas for environmental action are also beginning to show up on regional and international negotiation agendas. An important one is the fostering of "green technologies" by state and private interests, advances in technology that offset the unwillingness to change on the part of producers and consumers.

Areas for Negotiation

1. Are there models for successful cooperative environmental management in Europe? How can they be transferred to currently pressing problems?

2. How can questions of equity and responsibility be worked out in the area of environmental security? What burden should the polluters take on as opposed to the polluted?

3. What role should states play in the environmental area? How about regional institutions? Can corporations be brought into the solutions, since they are a big part of the problem?

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