New Perspectives on the Origins of the CSCE Process

Abstract

The Helsinki process remains a controversial legacy of the Cold War. Did the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) play a crucial role in bringing the East-West conflict to an end? Or was it largely irrelevant with the implosion of the Soviet Union that decided the outcome? There is no doubt that Communism collapsed under the weight of its economic inefficiency and the rejection of its repressive political system by its subject peoples. A non-violent ending of the Cold War, however, was not preordained. Developments set in motion by the Helsinki Final Act helped make it possible. By 1989, the CSCE had supplied a normative framework conducive to the peaceful demise of Communism while providing for the radical, but orderly, disarmament that defused military confrontation in Europe. The Helsinki process created the external conditions for the internal legitimization of democratic reform movements in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.1