In recent years, many Western diplomats — let alone politicians — appear to have forgotten the very meaning of diplomacy. It does not mean agreeing on everything with your friends. It means negotiating with rivals and sometimes even enemies. That in turn means learning about them, so as to try to understand their goals, their view of their own countries’ vital interests, and therefore the issues on which compromise will or will not be possible.
Sometimes this will lead to the conclusion that no compromise is possible; but the only legitimate path to this conclusion is through talking. Increasingly, however, the West has adopted the stance that just meeting with adversaries at all involves some sort of surrender or moral compromise.
Hence the widespread condemnation by Western politicians and commentators of the Austrian decision to permit sanctioned Russian lawmakers to attend a meeting in Vienna of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) something that, as the Austrian government has pointed out, it is formally bound to do as the host country of the OSCE headquarters.
The condemnation of course stems from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has rightly been the subject of economic sanctions and condemnation by Western states, including Austria. It should be remembered however that the OSCE was created during the Cold War, explicitly as a means of engaging Moscow in discussions of European security. Soviet participation was not broken off by the West during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, nor did Russia, Germany or France demand the barring of American and British participation as a result of the invasion of Iraq.
Austria is a member of the European Union, but under the terms of the treaty of 1954 by which Western and Soviet occupation forces withdrew from the country, it has not joined NATO or any other military alliance. It has sent economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, but no military aid.
This neutrality was the reason why the OSCE headquarters was established in Austria. Long before that however, it had allowed Vienna to become a very useful place for contacts and talks between the Soviet Union and the West – and this was recognized as advantageous by Western governments. During the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was a closed system, cultivating Soviet contacts in order to try to learn more about the place was something that Western governments and experts greatly desired. Vienna therefore was also a paradise for spies from both sides.
Sanctions by Western governments against individuals visiting their countries are of course at the discretion of the countries concerned, but they have no wider grounding in international law. As this case demonstrates, they are not only a barrier to diplomacy and the acquisition of knowledge, but also (especially as imposed by Washington), they have a tendency to extend themselves to third countries who did not impose the sanctions, and thereby to damage relations with them.
These sanctions are extremely irritating to many countries around the world (including partners like India), who see it as yet another sign of a Western assumption of moral arrogance, and a legacy of Western imperialism, the memory of which in fact cancels out Western moral superiority. As former Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon has written:
"Alienated and resentful, many developing countries see the war in Ukraine and the West’s rivalry with China as distracting from urgent issues such as debt, climate change, and the effects of the pandemic.”
It would be different if NATO were actually at war with Russia; though even then meetings on neutral ground could be beneficial. But the Biden administration has made clear that it does not want Washington's assistance to Ukraine to become a direct war with Russia. President Biden and other U.S. and European officials have also stated their belief that in the end, some form of negotiated agreement with Russia will be necessary — albeit on terms advantageous to Ukraine.
This being so, there can be no argument in legality, morality or practicality for preventing Russian politicians from going to Vienna, and listening to what they have to say and have them listen to Western concerns. We pay our diplomats to practice diplomacy, not — to borrow an Austrian phrase — to behave like insulted liver sausages.
