International institutions usually become a handy tool for venting social frustrations in times of international crises. The war in Ukraine has sparked many criticisms blaming the UN and OSCE for their inability to act effectively. And rightly so. In many global South countries the so-called IMF diktat has been frequently criticised. And in the European Union countries, the European Union has been the ritual object of political beatings from the far right and populist politicians for decades.

Even if the criticism is valid, because international organizations often do not rise to the challenge, they are a hallmark of progress in international relations. They deserve general appreciation and support. They complement the development of international law. They serve to curb the domination of the big states and promote cooperative attitudes in the international environment. In one of my books I described their development over the last one hundred and fifty years. After World War II, their growth took on an almost exponential form. Over time, the establishment of new institutions and the expansion of existing ones have become a routine way of supporting the development of international cooperation in solving common problems. According to this logic, if there is a problem, an institution is needed to solve it.

In the introduction to the publication “The Pursuit of Undivided Europe” from 2014, containing the opinions of representatives of the scientific and research community about the future of the Council of Europe (a book which, for completely non-substantive reasons, was consciously ignored by the then top managers of the Council of Europe), I tried to recall a few simple truths that affect the effectiveness of international institutions. I will mention them briefly.

An international organization means what its member states want it to mean. Member States often prioritize control over the organization over its effectiveness. They want to place people they trust in key places in international secretariats. They don’t want to deal with “unpredictable” leaders at the top of the organization. They often treat the creation of new institutions or entrusting them with new roles as an alibi for their own inaction.

Each international organization creates its own institutional culture. Its guardian is the international secretariat. International secretariats tend to alienate. They become entities in themselves, escaping the control of the member states. Which leads to the inevitable tension between states and bureaucracy. Bureaucrats are guided by a specific understanding of the interest of the organization. It is sometimes supported by a noble vision of its goals, although it usually has a pragmatic dimension, i.e. it results from concern for the position and material resources of the organization.

International bureaucracies are subject to self-replication mechanisms. Officials on recruitment panels definitely prefer those who are most similar to them, not necessarily the most talented, most creative and resourceful.

All international organizations are subject to the phenomenon of inertia. All of them outlive the conditions that led to their creation. Today’s system of global institutions (including the composition of the UN Security Council, the operating mechanisms of the World Bank and the IMF) largely reflects the realities of the world after World War II. All institutions (especially their bureaucratic bodies, i.e. secretariats) have a natural tendency to resist change. They open up to reforms under the influence of external pressure or when confronting threats to their existential foundations (especially financial ones).

Neither the world nor Europe embarked on a radical reconstruction of international institutions after the end of the Cold War. At that time, no new institution was established in Europe, apart from formats supporting subregional cooperation and regulating EU and NATO contacts with partners in the east and the south. The pressure of geostrategic circumstances forced the EU and NATO to undergo further waves of enlargement. The Council of Europe took shortcuts in gaining a pan-European character, and the OSCE was transformed from a forum for sincere dialogue into a bureaucratic operational tool.

Here is a short personal digression. I witnessed how, already at the CSCE review meeting in Helsinki in 1992, diplomats of key Western European countries sought to end (or seriously limit) the so-called implementation debates, i.e. opportunities for presenting strict assessments of other countries’ compliance with their obligations. But then the Americans, also with our active participation, were able to oppose it. But at the CSCE Summit in Budapest in 1994, the Americans gave up. Assessment debates were maintained, but they were no longer at the heart of the CSCE process. The German-French logic, because it was the French-German engine that pushed for change, was based on the assumption that if the countries of the former communist system declare commitment to democratic values, human rights and the rule of law, there is no point in holding them accountable for the deficit of these values, but they must be helped to fill it, especially through expert and assistance activities (training, expertise, incentives, etc.). I was skeptical about this approach. And time showed that it was actually naive. Western Europeans completely failed to notice the geopolitical dimension of the political and mental trauma of the post-Soviet elites, which was caused not only in Moscow by the collapse of the Soviet empire, especially the internal one (the USSR). And already with Putin it was evident that Russia was not interested in assimilating Western values, but rather in rebuilding the empire.

After World War I and World War II, the institutional world was fundamentally rearranged. After the Cold War, an adaptation strategy was chosen. Some people still claim that this was the wrong approach. It was necessary, as they claim, at least in Europe, to adopt the zero option and build something fundamentally new to replace the OSCE or the Council of Europe. But the prevailing view is that adaptation was the only reasonable path.

A side cost of the process of institutional adaptation in Europe was the proliferation of institutions and the duplication of their activities. I observed how jealously the Council of Europe looked at the European Union’s human rights protection mechanisms and how it tried to delimit the spheres of competence between the European Council and the OSCE. With modest results. The concept of interlocking institutions, which was promoted to avoid inter-institutional competition, turned out to be wishful thinking as a model for Europe.

The development of political processes has led to the European Union and NATO (in the field of military security) taking a dominant role in the political architecture of Europe. Other organizations, especially the Council of Europe and subregional institutions, fell into the “EU shadow” complex.

International relations, like all other dimensions of social life, are subject to the principle of entropy. Nowadays it has become the mother of all rules. One of its manifestations is the proliferation of actors in international life, the diversification of their interests and the cacophony of their voices.

It makes it more and more difficult to agree on positions between states. It is increasingly difficult to develop a consensus position in the forum of international organizations, especially global institutions, where the emancipation of the “non-Western” world is strongly visible. The pain of reaching consensus also applies to the process of reforming international institutions.

In the early 1990s, an attempt was made to use international bureaucracies as a catalyst for consensus on reforms. At the UN, secretaries general began to take the initiative for reforms. Bold reports initiating reform attempts were prepared by Boutros-Ghali, Annan and, more recently, Gutteres. And they started using the opinions of special panels composed of former politicians, functionaries, academics and social activists. The fashion for “wise men” panels has also been followed by other organizations, including the OSCE (report of the Panel of Eminent Persons from 2005), the Council of Europe (High-Level Reflection Group of 2022), the European Union (let us mention, for example, the “Europe 2030” reflection group and its report from May 2010) or NATO (e.g. the NATO Reflection Group established in 2019).

Behind the fashion for panels of “wise men” there is a quite noble belief that the personal authority of recognized (and uncontroversial) politicians and impartial experts will suppress national egoisms, tame the egos of active politicians and diplomats, and help build the nucleus of a common position.

This was not the case in the past (apart from the Harmel Report of 1967, of course, which gained cult status not only within NATO). In the past, ideas and reform plans came directly from the member states. There were no panels of eminent personalities within the CSCE or the Council of Europe. And there were plenty of them, these personalities, back then, maybe even more than now. And far-reaching reforms were introduced, especially in the early 1990s.

I once wrote about my undoubtedly rather cool enthusiasm for these panels. First, they have limited credibility for me. Retired politicians suddenly gain the courage (and wisdom) to express views that they did not propose before, did not push for, and did not even reveal any vision of reforms in their activities during their activity. Someone prevented them from doing it? Were they too shy? Can they only think when officially requested because someone has denoted them as wise? The Council of Europe Reflection Group in 2022 included, among others: Mary Robinson, Evangelos Venizelos, Federica Mogherini, Bernard Cazeneuve and others. Apart from Josep Dalleres (from Andorra), they have not been remembered in my recent memory (and I spent almost ten years in Strasbourg) for being particularly active on the forum of the Council of Europe and did not demonstrate any particular knowledge of the mechanisms of its operation. But now, on request, they have revealed it.

Second, their reports show clear traces of inspiration from international bureaucrats. Because politicians operate at a sometimes quite high level of abstraction. They do not know the institution’s program achievements, decision-making mechanisms, the distribution of political forces, not to mention the financial and administrative conditions. And suddenly they come out with specific, detailed, often operational proposals. Someone must have suggested it to them. Guess who? It is good if expert bureaucrats, such as Adam Day or David Passarelli in the case of the 2022 report of the UNSG advisory group, reveal their helping hand. It’s worse if they pretend they weren’t there at all. They pose as an invisible hand.

The problem with reform reports prepared or inspired by the international bureaucracy is that they very often ignore (consciously or not) issues with a deeply political dimension, especially those that cause political divisions among member states, require strategic or even groundbreaking decisions. A good example is the report of the UN Secretary General “Our Common Agenda” from September 2021. The author should be praised for the courage to proclaim the thesis about the dramatic nature of the historical moment, about the critical state of the UN, about the need for a radical change in the time perspective in thinking about the world and international cooperation. And the report contains many valid assessments and proposals. But it does not mention the political factor, which is one of the main causes, if not the main one, of the UN’s decision-making and operational paralysis, namely the re-cleavage of the world on axiological grounds, the confrontation between the world of democracies and the world of dictatorships, the world of freedom and the world of oppression. It is understandable that this division is not always revealed in votes in the UN General Assembly; ideological disputes have not returned to the UN forums, and the UN Secretariat, the IMF, the World Bank and other important institutions are not yet headed by appointees of the CPC Politburo or agents of the FSB (GRU), which would make the West realize that it is losing control over global organizations. But this division is real and the deficit of mutual trust between the opposing camps has already returned to Cold War levels. Can the UN improve its effectiveness if it pushes this division out of its consciousness?

In short, in several previous entries on this blog, I have repeated the thesis that there will be no breakthrough in solving the world’s problems without overcoming the deep axiological division in the international community and the related geopolitical rivalry (or even confrontation), but the UN Secretary General does not see this as a challenge at all. Perhaps he probably notices the fact of division itself, but he wants to bypass it. I would like to be wrong that nothing will come of his vision of deep reforms until he acknowledges these realities. Thus I do not expect groundbreaking results from the Summit of the Future this year.

The 2021 UN Secreatry General’s report does not mention the word democracy. There is nothing about dictatorships, military coups, failed states, etc. Nothing about the rule of law. The term “human rights” slips through the text so as not to irritate anyone. After all, China and others could use the emphasis on human rights in the report as an excuse to ignore the entire report.

The list of important issues that were omitted in the report is longer. Nothing has been written about wars and conflicts, especially those that the international community, with and without the help of the UN, has been trying unsuccessfully to resolve for decades. Can the UN make a breakthrough (as the Secretary General dreams of) without solving the impasse in its anti-crisis activities? And after the publication of the report, there was the Russian-Ukrainian war and the open military hostilities in the Middle East, and further examples of the UN’s impotence.

You will not find anything in the report about migration, and about the rights of migrants (including economic migrants – see the case of Qatar publicized in connection with the 2022 World Cup), even less so. Yet for many countries, not only in rich Europe, migration is still a strategic problem.

Or even the problem of the rules of management of virtual space. For me and many others – crucial. Restricting freedom on the Internet, censorship, surveillance and manipulation have become global challenges from the point of view of citizens’ security. Not to mention the effects of the artificial intelligence revolution. The report did not have the courage to address these issues.

The High-Level Advisory Committee on Effective Multilateralism established by the UN General Assembly had a chance to fill the gaps. And it published a huge report in 2023 titled: :”A Breakthrough for People and Planet: Effective and Inclusive Global Governance for Today and the Future.” Indeed, some of the obvious gaps have been filled. But by no means the most important one.

The report was published when the war in Ukraine was in full swing. Many analysts and politicians in the West saw it as the most serious blow to the values and credibility of the UN. A permanent member of the Security Council violates the UN Charter, commits war crimes, and its leader is indicted internationally for criminal acts. Many analysts and politicians in the West placed hope in Russia’s defeat for a kind of catharsis that would also help rebuild the mechanisms of global governance. Well, ladies and gentlemen, you will not find any reference to the war in Ukraine and its global repercussions in the 2023 UN Advisory Committee report. For its authors, this factor is not even worth formally noting. I understand that the Committee’s debates could have been dominated by the view that this was simply one of many wars the world has experienced in recent years. But the report includes, among others: signatures of the former president of Slovenia, former prime minister of Sweden, former chief of the planning staff of the US Department of State. And they were unable to make their point visible?

Even more disappointing with the lack of a political perspective is the report of the High-Level Reflection Group on the Council of Europe published in October 2022. It was signed by a group of very distinguished and honorable people. They did not lack the courage to make critical remarks, e.g. about the state of democracy in Europe (“democracy is in decline”), but these remarks were made wholesale, i.e. they had a practical usefulness comparable to determining the “average temperature of patients in a hospital”. Because France has different problems with democracy, Poland or Hungary have different problems, Turkey has different problems, and Azerbaijan even more so. Never mind.

Undoubtedly there was definitely a lack of courage (perhaps due to the so-called invisible hand of the Secretariat) to take a critical look at the Council of Europe itself and its recent activities. It is significant that this reform report silently treated the errors and weaknesses within the organization. It is understandable that bureaucrats (not only in the Council of Europe) have a natural tendency to fall into a mood of complacency, and if they admit to the poor functioning of the institution, they blame the member states for it (because states spend too little on the organization, because they do not treat it with proper seriousness, etc.). But what about the “wise men”? After all, there was nothing stopping them from taking a critical look at the effectiveness of the institution and its officers.

Especially since the moment was begging for it. Because Russia’s expulsion from the Council of Europe in 2022 should have served as an impulse for reflection, a fundamental one at that, or at least one that would answer the question why Western Europe’s policy towards Russia pursued at the Council of Europe was such a failure.

Let us recall that until the early 1990s, the Council of Europe operated as a club of democracies. When there was an internal attack on democratic principles in countries such as Greece or Turkey, sanctions were taken immediately (Greece pre-emptively left the Council in 1969, only to return in 1974 after the overthrow of the junta), and Portugal and Spain could join the Council only in the second half 1970s. The communist bloc countries did not even have a chance to apply for membership then. Poland had to hold its first free elections in 1991 for its application to be approved.

In the late 1990s, this strategy was changed. The CoE agreed to admit countries (post-Soviet and post-communist) even though they did not fully meet all the political criteria (democracy, rule of law, human rights). Behind it there was an organic-adaptive strategy. At the time of admission, these countries declared their intention to eliminate the deficiencies, and membership in the Council of Europe was supposed to help them in this. But it quickly turned out that some of them, and Russia under Putin in particular, instead of catching up, were moving further and further away from the Council of Europe standards, in a conscious and calculated way. The leadership of the Council of Europe did not know how to acknowledge the failure of this strategy. And in the years 2010-2021, with open ostentation, it not only did not know how, but also did not want to acknowledge it at all. When the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe suspended the Russian delegation’s right to vote after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the CoE authorities set themselves the goal of appeasing Russia by changing this decision. And with the participation of, among others, the then Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, they managed to achieve their goal in 2019.

And it wasn’t just about Russia. Look what happened to the values of the Council of Europe in Turkey and Azerbaijan back then. Look at her powerless reaction to the collapse of democracy in Hungary and Poland.

Therefore, the strategic question should become whether it is not time for a change of approach, at least in the work of the Committee of Ministers and the Secretariat (because the Parliamentary Assembly will follow its own path anyway, pretending that the Council of Europe is them, which can only cause laughter, because by the statute it has only an advisory role, and political decisions fall within the competence of the Council of Ministers). You will not find any answer to this question in the report. It is true that the report mentions the intensification of activities to implement the judgements of the Strasbourg Court and the possibility of introducing unspecified “gradual sanctions” in this context, but the implementation of judgements of the ECtHR is only part of the problem.

There is nothing in the report regarding overcoming the rather serious limitation in the competences of the Council of Europe. The statute excludes matters relating to national defense from its mandate. This happened at the end of the 1940s due to known and understandable political conditions. Today, however, they are completely obsolete. But in practice, the Council of Europe has avoided military security issues only to a degree. Because it (especially the Parliamentary Assembly) has had to deal with the issues of conflicts (but never in an active way, e.g. through attempts at mediation), wars (sanctions against Russia), and human rights in conflicts. In times when security has acquired such a broad definition, when the very concept of human rights and the interests of an individual are so intertwined with security threats, is it not time to revise the current self-limitations? Of course, without any attempts to subsume the Council of Europe into an institution of collective security, much less collective defense. The Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik in December 2022 was dominated by the issue of the war in Ukraine and solidarity with Ukraine. So isn’t it time for deeper reflection? Especially when the OSCE has been paralyzed and Russia is no longer able to block the Council of Europe.

Another issue: the Council of Europe, due to the fact that human rights are at the center of its activities, could undertake deeper reflection on bringing the voice of ordinary citizens closer to its deliberations and in its activities. It is difficult to find anything closer to a human individual than his or her rights. Nothing of that. The Reflection Group thought more about how to attract state leaders closer to the organization (and proposed to organize summit meetings more often), the European Union (by advocating with new force for the EU’s accession to the Human Rights Convention), the UN (providing input from the CoE to the reviews under UPR), but not citizens. Pity. Yet it could play a pioneering role. Strasbourg’s strategists lack ideas?

I could multiply the list of serious questions. They are of course easy to counter or kill. Because changing the mandate of the Council is unrealistic, because changing the Statute is not an option, because the voice of citizens cannot undermine the voice of states. I know these chants from bureaucrats. But why engage outstanding personalities if they do not have the courage to think boldly, or at least ask difficult questions? The Council of Europe (like the UN or the OSCE) will continue its strategic drift. Drift towards total marginalization.

The inability to adapt means that institutions become part of the problem instead of being the solution. “Volui, sed non potui” could become their heraldic motto. But by no means should they be disparaged. The path to a better world leads through strengthening institutions, building new ones, and with their help creating a new culture of international cooperation. No dispute about it.