For citation, please use:
Lukyanov, F.A., 2025. The Past Comes Knocking. Russia in Global Affairs, 23(3), pp. 5–8. DOI: 10.31278/1810-6374-2025-23-3-5-8
In times of upheaval, it is always tempting to compare the present with the past: Will history repeat itself? The war of Israel and the U.S. against Iran brings to mind the most diverse historical episodes—from the catastrophic (the world wars) to the equally painful but localized (e.g., the destruction of Iraq’s statehood at the beginning of this century). This historical experience is instructive but mostly useless. Nothing repeats verbatim. Although nothing changes fundamentally, either, in terms of states’ behavior. In any case, the paradigm-shift is evident, and beyond that one can forecast to the limits of one’s knowledge and imagination.
Fifty years ago, on the last day of July 1975, the heads of 35 European countries, the United States, and Canada met in Helsinki to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation (CSCE) in Europe. The document crowned years of negotiations on the principles of coexistence between the two ideological systems whose struggle shaped the European and global geopolitical landscape. The Act officially cemented the postwar status quo: state borders (mainly the two Germanys, Poland, and the USSR) and the superpowers’ spheres of influence in Europe.
Half a century before that, the leading powers had believed that the horrible chapter of the world war had been closed forever, but in reality, the socio-economic, ideological, military, and technological potential for a relapse was accumulating. After World War II, the victorious powers’ desire to prevent another such catastrophe produced the new international system. Despite persistent and sometimes intense confrontation, the balance of power and mutual containment provided decent stability, further reinforced by the CSCE.
The half-century since 1975 has seen equally fundamental shifts in the international order. However, whereas in 1975 no one pointed to the preceding half-century as a guide, since it was clear that the era had changed, today the Helsinki accords are still seen as the basis of European coexistence, and the principles laid down in them as universal.
One can hardly argue with that. The Final Act described the ideal model of interstate relations: mutual respect, non-use of force, refusal to change borders, and cooperation for the development of all and everyone.
The U.S. and its allies treated the Helsinki Act (as well as the Yalta and Potsdam agreements of 30 years earlier) as a forced compromise with the impious enemies of freedom. So, the collapse of the socialist bloc and the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union, 15 years after the Final Act, gave the U.S. and its allies relief and confidence in their own historical rightness and, therefore, the right to act at their discretion to implement the Helsinki principles. The disappearance of the previous safeguards did not frighten, but instead inspired.
The anniversary of the CSCE, and ideas of using its successor (the OSCE) to resolve current conflicts, raise the question of how relevant its principles, unanimously adopted decades ago, remain amid the crumbling liberal world order.
In the 1970s, World War II was still the unconditional point of reference. Negotiations did not need to establish a modus vivendi, but merely maintain it. Limits on the great powers had been determined earlier, and needed only to be updated.
If the Cold War had ended with an equally indisputable result—a victory for some and a defeat for others—a new system of relations would probably have emerged in Europe and the world, legitimized clearly and plainly. But when the winner is only informally implied, this creates a kind of strategic uncertainty, interpreted, as always, from a position of strength. Attempts to revise the status quo, at the first sign of a change in the balance of power, are then inevitable. All the more so if the stronger party, in the pursuit of immediate interests, begins to undermine the rules it has set itself.
The OSCE nominally relies on the order created after 1945 and reiterated in 1975. But that order is actually gone. Attempts to revise the results of World War II have, in various ways, swept across almost the entire planet, further undermining Europe’s common ground. The OSCE could have remained an effective tool if the West had retained the ability (as in the late 20th and early 21st centuries) to impose its ideas on others. But this is also gone, due to global and internal Western trends.
The U.S. is struggling to reconsider its international position, with unclear results so far. Europe is no longer the world’s political beacon. Eurasia’s connectivity is growing but not yet ensured. The Middle East is undergoing a deep reconstruction. East and South Asia feature development, acute problems, and irreconcilable competition, simultaneously.
So, it seems that the pan-European meeting has become literally irrelevant. It sought to consolidate, stabilize, and structure systemic confrontation, but now there is no system—and, in an environment of erratic and multidirectional processes, there probably will not be any system or balance. Attempts to structure confrontation, for example, in Asia—where globalization has left behind immense, mutually beneficial trade, even between competitors—will only exacerbate the confrontation; the Old World will subordinate economic logic to political logic, as it has always done. And in Europe, it is pointless to insist on the OSCE’s return as a conflict-manager, given the obvious gap between its ambitions and capacity.
And yet the half-century-old European process had one aspect worth returning to. Its diplomacy was guided by classical principles: consideration of overall (not solely military) capability, realization that one cannot achieve everything one wants, and understanding of the need for at least basic trust grounded in respect for one’s counterpart, even in the context of fundamental differences. All this seems self-evident, but—after years of the liberal order’s diktat of moral superiority—looks like something new. Or long forgotten.
