During a visit to the United States in September, Cornelius Friesendorf, Head of the Centre for OSCE Research (CORE) at IFSH and Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions, discussed research findings on arms control and on OSCE police-related activities. At Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, he and Benjamin Schaller, a researcher at the Artic University of Norway, gave a talk on “Crisis Escalation in NATO-Russia Contact Zones? Assessing Arms Control and Conventional Deterrence in Europe”. Their presentation was based on the RISK Report (Wolfgang Zellner et al.: Reducing the Risk of Conventional Deterrence in Europe: Arms Control in the NATO-Russia Contact Zones, Vienna: OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions, 2018).
Cornelius Friesendorf and other authors of the report (Professor Philip Hopmann, Ambassador Philip Remler, and Benjamin Schaller) then presented the findings in Washington D.C., at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The event stimulated a lively debate on options for arms control and risk reduction especially in the Baltic Sea area. Participants included representatives of the United States Department of State and of foreign embassies.
In addition, Cornelius Friesendorf discussed initial findings of an ongoing project on OSCE police-related activities at a panel at Harvard’s Davis Center. This contribution was part of a conference on “Negotiating Peace in Global Complexity: Chaos, Conflict, and Cooperation in Central Asia and the Middle East” convened by the Davis Center’s Negotiation Task Force. Cornelius Friesendorf also discussed opportunities and limitations of OSCE police-related activities in Central Asia at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.