Helsinki Revisited: A Key U.S. Negotiator's Memoirs on the Development of the CSCE Into the OSCE by John J. Maresca

Author:John J. Maresca [Maresca, John J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Political
ISBN: 9783838268521
Google: 3NZ1CwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35145601
Publisher: Ibidem Press
Published: 2016-03-15T09:50:53+00:00

Ambassador to the “Near Abroad”

On December 12, 1991, Secretary of State James Baker made a speech at Princeton University, where he had been a student from Texas, many years before. In this “Princeton Speech,” he reviewed the implications of the break-up of the Soviet Union, which, along with the collapse of Communism, was a truly history-changing event, and the ways in which the US would move to ensure stability in the unpredictable period which was to follow, to promote democratic values and offer cooperation and support. It was important that the US response to the break-up of the USSR should be as calm and supportive as possible, and this speech was a significant review of the elements of this policy of restraint and supportiveness during an unpredictable period of change.

During this speech Baker said that the United States would “send our CSCE Ambassador” to the newly-independent states from the former USSR, to discuss their relations with the US, and to encourage them to cultivate democratic values.

I called and asked John Kornblum, who was then again my main contact in Washington, who Baker was referring to, since I had heard nothing of this idea. Kornblum told me that this special envoy would be me—that it was intended as a reward and a recognition of my role. So I began planning for this heavily symbolic mission, for which I never did receive any real instructions or guidelines. I was told very simply to explain the commitments of the Helsinki Final Act, which these new governments had just signed up to as independent states (but which they had been committed to from the beginning as parts of the Soviet Union, one of the original signatories), and to tell them that we would base our new bilateral relationships with these states on their respect for the commitments and values represented in the Helsinki Final Act.

And so I became the US Ambassador and Special Envoy to the Newly Independent States from the former USSR—the Ambassador to the Near Abroad. I was again given the use of an Air Force plane, this time big enough to carry a staff of specialists, and we planned to travel to all the new capitals in the vast former Soviet space—except for the Baltic states. Since Washington had never recognized the Soviet absorption of the three Baltic countries as legal, these were not “new” relationships for the US. So there was thought to be no need for such a visit to those countries. But other than these exceptions, I was instructed to visit all the “Newly Independent States” from the former USSR.

I undertook this mission in a spirit of adventure. As parts of the USSR these countries had been visited regularly by officials from the US Embassy in Moscow. The Embassy staff included diplomats who were assigned to cover events in each of these Soviet republics, and who visited them regularly. But now the situation was different, and the emphasis shifted toward the individual identities of these peoples and countries, and to the possibility of developing true bilateral relationships with each of them.

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