ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

PERINA: This was an issue because of the growing role of the European Union within
the OSCE. When I first started working in the CSCE, there was the NATO caucus and
that was it. There would be a meeting of the NATO countries prior to CSCE sessions,
they would decide on strategy and approach, and that was the limit of Western
coordination. Gradually, however, the EU countries decided that they should be meeting
as well, and an EU caucus developed parallel to the NATO caucus. By the end of my
tour, there was a clear rivalry beginning to develop between the two and an institutional
problem as well. The problem was this: the EU caucus would usually meet prior to the
NATO caucus and try to develop a common strategy among EU countries. Sometimes
this was a grueling process that took many hours. At the end, they would emerge with a
fragile consensus and go to the NATO caucus and not be in a position to be very flexible.
In effect, the U.S. would get a fait accompli in whatever the EU had decided. The U.S.
would not necessarily accept the EU conclusions, and then there would be a standoff
between the EU and the non-EU countries, primarily the U.S., within the NATO caucus.
There was steadily growing tension between the EU and the U.S. because of this
problem.
Q: How did you feel the role of France in particular but also of Germany in this
dynamic?
PERINA: France was always France, and France was always difficult to deal with in the
OSCE. They had some good ambassadors there but still they took the French position of
generally trying to diminish the U.S. role and to increase the profile of the Europeans.
They were the moving force, I think, in getting the European Union to play a more
independent role through its caucus. The Germans at that time were still very much
dependent on the United States. This was, after all, the time when the negotiations on
reunification of Germany were beginning, very sensitive negotiations in which the U.S.
played a central role. So the Germans often tried to bridge differences between the U.S.
and the EU.
Q: What about the role of the Turks and the Greeks?
PERINA: It was very predictable that at almost every CSCE meeting there would be a
confrontation between Turkey and Greece as well as Cyprus regarding the Cypriot
question. Very often, Cyprus would threaten to withhold consensus on a document
because of this issue, but at the end it always relented. It was a periodic ritual that the
delegations had to go through, and it always prolonged meetings though usually it did not
disrupt them. Most other delegates went for coffee breaks when these three delegations
started to speak.
Toward the end of my time in Vienna, after the Soviet Union actually disintegrated, there
was another interesting dynamic in the OSCE, and that was deciding whether all of the
former republics of the USSR should become members of the organization. The OSCE
was by definition a European and trans-Atlantic organization, and many of the newlyindependent
states, particularly the “stans,” were in Asia. There was a certain debate
within the U.S. Government about whether all these Asian states should be admitted. In
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