Are a New Helsinki Process in Europe and a New Westphalian Process in West Asia Possible?

Are a New Helsinki Process in Europe and a New Westphalian Process in West Asia Possible?

Lasting security arrangements arise not from shared values, but from the recognition by the parties that they cannot eliminate one another.

Enduring security arrangements in the international system have often emerged not from the strengthening of the ideal of peace, but from the realities of power imposing themselves upon the parties concerned. When neither side is capable of eliminating the other politically or militarily, when the cost of pursuing absolute superiority becomes unsustainable, and when the continuation of war begins to generate risks greater than the potential gains, diplomacy once again becomes the language of the balance of power. Although separated by more than three centuries, both the Westphalian order of 1648 and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 were, despite emerging under profoundly different historical circumstances, products of this fundamental reality.

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 did not eliminate the confessional differences that had divided Europe during the devastating Catholic-Protestant wars. Catholics remained Catholic and Protestants remained Protestant. What changed was the recognition of a simple reality: allowing theological divisions to keep the European state system in a condition of perpetual warfare was no longer sustainable. Sovereignty, raison d’état, and the balance of power gradually took precedence over confessional affiliation. The historical significance of Westphalia therefore lay not merely in bringing the Thirty Years’ War to an end, but in opening the way for an order in which states with different political and religious identities could coexist within the same international system by accepting one another’s continued existence.

The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 represented the application of a similar reality of power to European security. During the Cold War, the ideological and geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union had by no means ended. NATO and the Warsaw Pact remained arrayed against one another, while nuclear weapons made the consequences of any major war potentially uncontrollable. Yet Washington was in no position to remove Moscow from the European security equation, just as Moscow could not remove Washington. Helsinki was therefore not a project of friendship, but a strategic accommodation based on the mutual recognition of power. The willingness of both sides to take into account each other’s existence, borders, and certain security concerns made it possible to place the military competition in Europe within an agreed framework of rules.

Today, the international system is once again approaching such a historical threshold. As the unipolar order of the post-Cold War era erodes, the rise of China, Russia’s military and geopolitical resilience, Iran’s regional weight, and the Global South’s growing pursuit of strategic autonomy are altering the distribution of power. In Europe, the security order between Russia and the Collective West has effectively collapsed with the war in Ukraine. In West Asia, meanwhile, Israel’s steadily expanding use of military force is reshaping the security calculations of Iran, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other regional states, moving them—at least to some extent—away from traditional theological divisions, such as the Sunni-Shia divide, and back towards the realities of geopolitics.

For different reasons, therefore, the same fundamental question is emerging in both regions: will security once again be constructed around the pursuit of hegemonic supremacy, or will new balances emerge based on the mutual recognition of powers that are incapable of eliminating one another? From this perspective, what Europe may require is a new Helsinki approach—one that recognizes Russia as a permanent component of the European security system and once again places military competition within an agreed framework of rules.

The requirement in West Asia is different. The objective here should not be to eliminate the Sunni-Shia divide or the region’s historical, ethnic, and ideological differences, but rather to develop a new political understanding that prevents these divisions from taking precedence over state sovereignty, security, and shared geopolitical interests. In other words, the question confronting Europe is whether a new Helsinki is possible, while the question confronting West Asia is whether a new Westphalia can emerge. Behind both searches lies the same global transformation: the erosion of hegemonic supremacy and the re-emergence of the balance of power as one of the principal determinants of international politics.

The Foundations of Helsinki: Mutual Recognition of Power

The Helsinki process was not founded on the expectation that the parties would come to like one another, narrow their ideological differences, or converge around a common worldview. On the contrary, the fundamental condition that made the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) possible was the recognition by the United States and the Soviet Union that neither could remove the other from the European security system. The Soviet Union, acting through the Warsaw Pact, was in no position to eliminate the American military presence in Western Europe or dismantle NATO. Nor could the United States and NATO disregard the Soviet Union’s military and political weight in Eastern Europe. The preparatory talks that began in 1972 and the negotiations conducted between 1973 and 1975 therefore developed based on this balance of power. At the strategic level, this conventional balance was complemented by the nuclear deterrence equilibrium between the United States and the Soviet Union. The existence of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), which raised the cost of direct war between the superpowers to unacceptable levels, did not eliminate strategic competition in Europe; rather, it made it necessary to manage that competition within an agreed framework of rules and confidence-building mechanisms.