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

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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 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.

The Helsinki Final Act of 1975 brought together within a single political framework such principles as the inviolability of frontiers, the sovereign equality of states, the non-use of force, non-intervention in internal affairs, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and respect for human rights. European security was thus anchored not merely in military deterrence, but also in a political conception of equilibrium that required each side to consider the existence and security concerns of the other. The continuation of the CSCE process through the subsequent meetings in Belgrade, Madrid, and Vienna further demonstrated that Helsinki was not conceived as a one-off diplomatic accommodation, but as a long-term process for managing strategic competition in Europe.

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The Helsinki Accords, the final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, which was signed in Helsinki in 1975 by the US, Canada and 33 European countries. Exhibited in the House of History in Bonn. (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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With the end of the Cold War, this architecture entered a new phase. The Charter of Paris for a New Europe, adopted in November 1990 following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the East-West division, adapted the principles of Helsinki to the emerging strategic environment. Based on the understanding that the “era of confrontation and division of Europe” had ended, it envisaged a common European security space founded on democracy, peace, and cooperation, while also paving the way for the institutionalization of the CSCE.

The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), developed during the same historical period as the Charter of Paris, constituted the military-strategic pillar of this political accommodation. Signed in November 1990 by 22 member states of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the treaty imposed extensive limitations on conventional military forces across the vast geographical area stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. Overall ceilings were established for the two blocs in five principal categories of armaments—battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery systems, combat aircraft, and attack helicopters—while regional and sub-regional limits were introduced to prevent excessive concentrations of forces in particular areas. Of direct importance to Türkiye were the “flank” provisions, designed to restrict excessive force concentrations on Europe’s northern and southern flanks.

The purpose of the CFE Treaty was not merely to reduce the overall number of weapons. Its principal strategic objective was to diminish the ability of either side to rapidly concentrate major forces and thereby launch a surprise attack or large-scale offensive operation. To achieve this, numerical ceilings were supplemented by detailed exchanges of information, notifications concerning military formations and equipment, on-site inspections, and verification mechanisms. As a result of the treaty’s implementation, tens of thousands of heavy weapon systems were destroyed or withdrawn from service. The political conception of security that had emerged at Helsinki was thus reinforced by a measurable and verifiable military balance under the CFE framework.

The CFE regime, however, had been constructed upon the two-bloc military balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and NATO’s subsequent eastward enlargement fundamentally transformed the strategic geography upon which the treaty had been based. Consequently, the Adapted CFE Treaty was signed at the 1999 OSCE Istanbul Summit to replace bloc-based ceilings with national and territorial limitations. The new arrangement, however, never entered into force for all parties, and the CFE regime gradually underwent serious erosion.

Meanwhile, the institutionalization of the CSCE continued, and on 1 January 1995 it became the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The process that had begun in Helsinki was thereby transformed into a more permanent institutional structure equipped with standing institutions, conflict-prevention activities, confidence- and security-building measures, field missions, and election-observation mechanisms.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 fundamentally altered the balance of power upon which this system had rested. Although the Russian Federation was, in legal terms, the principal successor state to the Soviet Union, during the 1990s it had lost a significant part of the economic, military, and political capacity that had underpinned Soviet great-power status. From the perspective of the United States, the emergence of a unipolar environment also diminished the perceived need to recognize Russia as one of the major powers carrying equal weight within the European security architecture. Yet the 1990 Charter of Paris and the end of the Cold War could have provided an opportunity to replace the bloc-based division between NATO and the Warsaw Pact with a more inclusive European security order extending from Vancouver to Vladivostok. Instead, during the period that followed, particularly under the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, US policy became increasingly influenced by a powerful neoconservative agenda and expanded the NATO-centered security architecture in line with a strategic vision aimed first at containing Russia and ultimately at fragmenting it. Therefore, the OSCE, whose foundations rested upon the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, evolved from a potential central mechanism of the European balance of power into an institution primarily concerned with political norms, elections, human rights, crisis management, and confidence-building measures.

The Yugoslav crisis constituted an important turning point in the Russian perception of this transformation. The disintegration of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia, and particularly NATO’s 1999 military operation against Yugoslavia, conducted without explicit authorisation from the United Nations Security Council, reinforced the view in Moscow that the emerging post-Cold War international system rested increasingly upon Western military superiority. The fragmentation of Yugoslavia also substantially increased the geopolitical weight of the United States in the Balkans, while weakening Russia’s historical sphere of influence and its geopolitical links towards the Adriatic. From Moscow’s perspective, therefore, the Yugoslav crisis became more than a Balkan conflict; it emerged as one of the clearest indications that the European balance of power was being reconfigured to Russia’s disadvantage in the post-Cold War era.

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People displaced as a result of the 1999 NATO bombing in Yugoslavia. | Photo: Twitter/ @KanekoaTheGreat

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During the same period, NATO’s eastward enlargement—first through the accession of former Warsaw Pact members and subsequently through the incorporation of the Baltic states—significantly reduced the strategic depth separating Russia from NATO. Western governments interpreted this enlargement primarily through the right of sovereign states to determine their own security alignments. Moscow, by contrast, perceived the same process, particularly the 2004 accession of the Baltic and Black Sea states to NATO, as the strategic encirclement of Russia and the exploitation of the weakness it had experienced following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Any attempt to understand the subsequent crises of the European security order must therefore take these two fundamentally different security perceptions into account.

Following the intervention in Yugoslavia, the geographical center of gravity of Western military power gradually shifted towards West Asia and North Africa. After 11 September 2001, the growing influence of neoconservative and Zionist approaches on US foreign and security policy culminated in the 2003 intervention in Iraq. In the following period, Libya and Syria likewise became central theatres of external intervention and regime-change policies. From the perspective of Israel’s regional security geopolitics, this process also resulted in the weakening of regional powers such as Iraq and Syria, as well as pressure on Iran—states capable of constituting a counterweight to Israel—and contributed to the emergence of a belt of failed or severely weakened states around Israel. The process that had begun with the contraction of Russia’s geopolitical space in the Balkans thus continued in West Asia through the transformation of existing regional balances of power increasingly in Israel’s favor.

The growing number and scope of military interventions by the United States and other Western states in West Asia and North Africa further hardened Russia’s assessment of the West’s use of military power. In particular, the association of concepts such as regime change, humanitarian intervention, and democratization with military intervention deepened distrust in Moscow and contributed to the gradual hardening of Russian foreign and security policy. Russia increasingly ceased to interpret developments in its own near abroad as isolated regional crises. Instead, Moscow began to view them as components of a broader geopolitical transformation extending from Yugoslavia and Iraq to NATO’s eastward enlargement, which it increasingly perceived as ultimately directed towards the containment and fragmentation of Russia. By the second half of the 2000s, it had become clear that Moscow no longer regarded the post-Cold War European security order as acceptable.

The Russian intervention had serious consequences for Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, but it also foreshadowed a broader shift in the balance of power within the European security system. Moscow was signaling that the era of the weak Russia of the 1990s was coming to an end and that it was prepared, when necessary, to respond with military means to unilateral changes in the security balance within its near abroad. In this sense, the August 2008 war can be regarded as the first serious military and geopolitical brake applied by Russia against the expansion of the Western geopolitical sphere in the post-Cold War era.

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Russian APCs entering Georgia (CC BY 4.0)

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The Maidan events that began in Kyiv against the government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the involvement of the United States and the European Union, and the subsequent overthrow of the government, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, cannot be considered independently of the 2008 crisis. While Western governments interpreted the fall of the Yanukovych government as the outcome of a democratic popular movement and the Ukrainian public’s political orientation towards Europe, Moscow regarded the process as a Western-supported change of government, actively backed by the United States and other Western states, with the geopolitical objective of separating Ukraine from Russia’s sphere of influence.

The 2014 crisis also exposed the growing tension between two conceptions of security that had existed within the broader Helsinki framework. The West emphasized Ukraine’s sovereignty and its right to determine its own foreign-policy orientation, whereas Russia regarded NATO’s expansion towards its borders and the prospect of Ukraine’s incorporation into the Western security system as a strategic threat to its own security. One side therefore emphasized sovereignty and the freedom to choose alliances, while the other stressed the indivisibility of security and the preservation of the strategic balance in its immediate neighborhood.

Europe consequently entered a period in which both sides accused one another of violating the principles of Helsinki, while simultaneously losing the common security mechanisms capable of managing the tensions between those principles. Following the failure of the Minsk processes, the Russia-Ukraine war that began in 2022 can therefore be understood not merely as a regional war arising from the developments that followed 2014, but also as the military collapse of a European security architecture that had been eroding for many years. The mutual recognition of power and the management of competing security concerns that had underpinned Helsinki in 1975 had given way to a new and considerably more dangerous era, in which each side increasingly sought to achieve its own security through the strategic weakening of the other.

One of the most important factors distinguishing the present strategic environment from that of 1975 is the economic, technological, and military power that China has attained within the global system. At the time of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act, the military-strategic balance of the international system was essentially structured around the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, however, while the United States seeks to contain and strategically weaken Russia in Europe, it is simultaneously engaged in an increasingly intense strategic competition with a rising China in the Indo-Pacific and is attempting to preserve an Israel-centered military and political order in West Asia. Unlike during the Cold War, Washington is therefore compelled to allocate power and resources simultaneously across several major geopolitical fronts.

At the same time, Russia’s exclusion from the European security system and the contraction of its economic relations with the West have further deepened Moscow’s relationship with Beijing. The growing China-Russia alignment in energy, trade, military technology, diplomacy, and transportation networks across Eurasia raises the prospect of a degree of Eurasian geopolitical integration on a scale that the United States did not confront during the Cold War. Iran’s expanding political, economic, and military relations with both Russia and China reinforce this trend, making it increasingly difficult to treat the geopolitical struggles unfolding in Europe, West Asia, and the Indo-Pacific as separate from one another.

The China factor is therefore becoming increasingly decisive in determining the prospects for a new Helsinki process in Europe. If China increasingly emerges as Washington’s principal strategic competitor, an important question will arise as to whether the continued exclusion of Russia from the European security system is driving Moscow further towards Beijing and thereby contributing to the formation of a broad concentration of Eurasian power opposed to the United States. One of the principal geopolitical variables that could open the way for a new Helsinki process may therefore be a reassessment in Washington of the long-term strategic costs of turning Russia into China’s permanent strategic partner.

Whether a new Helsinki process can emerge will depend to a considerable extent on a change in Washington’s geopolitical assessment of Russia. If the United States continues to regard Russia as a power that should be excluded from the European security system or strategically neutralized over the long term, the establishment of a new Helsinki order will remain extremely difficult. Conversely, if the rise of China becomes the overriding priority of American strategy, and if Washington concludes that Russia’s complete transformation into a strategic partner of China would impose a greater geopolitical cost on the United States, this could open the way for a different approach to European security.

Such an approach would neither require the acceptance of all Russian demands nor imply that the sovereignty and security concerns of Ukraine or the states of Eastern Europe should be disregarded. Nor should a new Helsinki be conceived as a new division of spheres of influence between the United States and Russia imposed upon the rest of Europe. Rather, the objective should be to establish an equilibrium capable of reconciling the reality that Russia is a permanent component of the European security system with the sovereign rights and legitimate security concerns of other European states. The essence of a new Helsinki, as in 1975, would lie in the recognition by all parties that they cannot eliminate one another and that none can build its own absolute security upon the absolute insecurity of the other.

Such a European security architecture would necessarily have to encompass a broad range of issues, from Ukraine’s post-war status and Black Sea security to NATO-Russia lines of contact, intermediate- and longer-range missiles, the forward deployment of nuclear weapons, and large-scale military exercises. Yet simply reproducing the security mechanisms of 1975 or 1990 would not be sufficient. Hypersonic weapons, long-range precision-strike systems, unmanned aerial and combat aerial vehicles, and increasingly sophisticated intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities have made the military balance in Europe considerably more complex than it was in previous decades. A new security architecture would therefore have to address these emerging military capabilities alongside traditional limitations on conventional forces.

Within this framework, the experience of the CFE Treaty could provide a useful foundation for limiting conventional forces and, in particular, excessive force concentrations along lines of contact; establishing reciprocal notification of military activities; providing advance notice of large-scale exercises; restoring on-site inspection and verification mechanisms; and developing new confidence- and security-building measures. A new Helsinki could thereby become not merely a political declaration, but a security architecture founded upon a measurable and verifiable military balance.

The purpose of a new Helsinki, therefore, should not be to reproduce the institutions of the Cold War or to divide Europe once again into spheres of influence. It should instead be to establish an equilibrium that recognizes the existing distribution of power, acknowledges Russia as a permanent component of the European security system, and re-institutionalizes the principle that the security of no state can be built upon the absolute insecurity of another.

West Asia is also witnessing the possibility of a different, yet equally significant, transformation. Throughout the region’s modern history, sectarian, ethnic, and ideological divisions have been continuously intertwined with interstate rivalry, while the struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia has long been interpreted as the geopolitical manifestation of the Sunni-Shia divide. Extra-regional powers have exploited and encouraged these divisions, conducted false-flag operations, co-opted political leaders, and thereby strengthened their influence and military presence in West Asia. In recent years, however, important signs have emerged suggesting that this structure may be beginning to change.

Israel’s emergence after 1973 as a central actor in US geopolitics facilitated the strategic management of both the wealthy Gulf states and the strategically vital Suez Canal. In this process, eschatology, through Zionism, was also transformed into a shared geopolitical instrument of the United States and Israel. Israel’s progressively expanding use of military force and its strategy of preserving regional military superiority consequently became major factors reshaping the security perceptions of West Asian states. The US-Israeli attack on Iran on 28 February 2026 constituted a major strategic warning in this process. The critical transformation, however, lies in the declining ability of theological and ideological differences to determine the security and geopolitical interests of states. While the pressure generated by Israel’s aggressive and genocidal military policies has accelerated this tendency, shared interests such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and strategic autonomy are increasingly coming to the forefront.

The restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia through Chinese mediation, the diversification of the Gulf states’ relations with China and Russia, and Türkiye’s normalization processes with regional states demonstrate that ideological and sectarian differences do not necessarily have to take precedence over state interests. These developments do not yet signify the emergence of a common regional security architecture. They do, however, provide an increasingly important foundation for the possible reorganization of West Asian politics around state sovereignty, national interest, and the balance of power rather than sectarian affiliation.

Israel’s aggressive and genocidal use of military force across a broad geography extending from Gaza and Lebanon to Syria and Iran, together with its policies aimed at maintaining regional military superiority, is accelerating the transformation of traditional threat perceptions in West Asia. Türkiye, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt do not share identical policies towards Israel, security priorities, or relationships with extra-regional powers; nor should they be expected to develop a common political or military vision in the immediate future. Nevertheless, the geographical expansion of Israel’s use of military force, the unresolved Palestinian question, and the decisive role of extra-regional powers in the West Asian security architecture may increasingly encourage regional states—many of which have long regarded one another as rivals or even threats—to seek regional means of providing for their own security. Such a process would not eliminate sectarian divisions, but it could enable the emergence of new areas of geopolitical convergence based on state sovereignty and shared security concerns that transcend those divisions.

The Mecca Mutual Defence Treaty, signed by Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan on 7 August 2026, represents one of the earliest yet potentially highly significant indications of this transformation. The treaty’s principle that an armed attack against one party shall be regarded as an attack against the others signifies more than the deepening of military cooperation among the three states. More importantly, it strengthens the idea that regional security need not remain dependent exclusively on security umbrellas provided by extra-regional powers, particularly the United States, but can instead be organized around the military, economic, and technological capabilities of the regional states themselves. The fact that the treaty does not identify any particular state as a threat, Ankara’s explicit emphasis that it is not directed against Iran or any other country, and the perception of Egypt as a natural potential future participant all raise the possibility that the Mecca Entente could evolve beyond a narrowly defined Sunni bloc into a broader regional security architecture.

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If this emerging structure centered on Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and potentially Egypt can, over time, evolve towards a broader conception of security that does not exclude Iran, it could form the nucleus of a transition in West Asia from alliance systems shaped by external hegemons towards a regional balance-of-power system constructed by the regional states themselves. Indeed, some official statements from Iran have also interpreted the Mecca Treaty as an indication of a new approach capable of reducing the region’s dependence on external powers for its security.

What is at stake, therefore, is not the formation of a new ideological unity between the Sunni and Shia worlds. A more realistic possibility is that states may cooperate around shared interests such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, security, and strategic autonomy despite the persistence of theological and sectarian differences. If such a transformation takes place, the Sunni-Shia divide will not disappear, but it could gradually lose its traditional role as a divisive geopolitical fault line repeatedly exploited and encouraged by the Collective West in its approach to West Asia.

From this perspective, the principal strategic significance of the Mecca Entente lies not merely in its character as a defense agreement among three states, but in the fact that, for the first time, it gives an institutional framework to the possibility that West Asian security could evolve from an externally managed hegemonic order towards a new architecture based on a regional balance of power.

The Westphalian order of 1648 did not eliminate the theological differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, but it opened the way for the European state system to operate increasingly based on sovereignty, state interest, and the balance of power rather than confessional affiliation. If a comparable development were to take place in West Asia, Iran would retain its Shia character, Saudi Arabia its position within the Sunni world, while Türkiye and Egypt would continue to preserve their own historical and strategic identities. What could change is not the existence of these differences, but their role as the defining axis of regional geopolitics. The fundamental objective in this context should be to restrain Israel’s aggressive conduct and achieve a peaceful and just settlement in Palestine.

The foundation of a new Westphalia in West Asia could therefore be the reassertion of state sovereignty rather than theological reconciliation. Respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, the transformation of Israel into a norm-abiding state that respects international law, the limitation of external interventions aimed at regime change, the prevention of sectarian and ethnic differences from being used as instruments of interference in the internal affairs of other states, and the shaping of regional security, to the greatest extent possible, by the states of the region themselves could constitute the principal foundations of such an order. In this sense, a new Westphalia would not require West Asian states to unite around the same ideological or political orientation, but rather to recognize one another’s continued existence and legitimate security interests despite their differences.

Israel’s increasing military pressure could, meanwhile, become a geopolitical catalyst accelerating such a transformation. Türkiye, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, which have competed with one another for extended periods, need not develop identical strategic visions or policies towards Israel. The West Asian search for a new Westphalia should therefore not be understood as an attempt to create a new alliance or bloc. The fundamental transformation would instead begin when regional states increasingly seek to construct their security not through sectarian alignments or the protection of extra-regional powers, but through a balance of power among sovereign states and the mutual recognition of interests.

The fundamental dynamic that could make both a new Helsinki and a new Westphalia possible is the changing distribution of power within the international system. The unipolar era that emerged after the Cold War was itself the product of a particular historical balance of power, and that balance is now receding into the past. The central question for the coming period is therefore not whether multipolarity will emerge, but to what extent, and through what mechanisms, the existing international order will recognize the new distribution of power that is already taking shape. The transition from hegemony to the balance of power has already begun.

For Europe, the most important consequence of this transformation is the necessity of redefining Russia’s place within the European security architecture. An order based on the permanent exclusion of Russia from the European security system not only drives Moscow closer to Beijing but also perpetuates military tension across the European continent. For the United States in particular, the growing priority of long-term strategic competition with China may, over time, make the costs of this policy increasingly apparent. It is precisely here that the foundations of a new Helsinki could emerge.

The issue is neither the acceptance of all Russian demands nor the renewed division of Europe into spheres of influence. Rather, it is the need to recall the fundamental reality that made the Helsinki process of 1975 possible. If neither side can eliminate the other from the European security equation, security cannot be built upon the absolute insecurity of the opposing side; it must instead rest upon the mutual recognition of power and a verifiable equilibrium. Europe therefore does not require a new era of friendship, but a new security architecture capable of managing competition, defining limits on the use of military power, making armaments subject to verification, maintaining crisis-management and communication channels, and narrowing the pathways that could lead to direct war. The contemporary value of Helsinki lies not in reproducing the institutions of the past, but in restoring the strategic realism that rested upon the mutual recognition of power.

In West Asia, the same transformation is unfolding on a different historical and geopolitical terrain. The prerequisite for a new Westphalia is neither the disappearance of the Sunni-Shia division nor the unification of regional states under a common ideological identity. The fundamental transformation could instead begin when sectarian differences cease to constitute the principal geopolitical axis shaping the security policies of states. Israel’s expanding aggressive and genocidal use of military force, the continuing absence of a settlement to the Palestinian question, and the shared security concerns generated by extra-regional interventions are making principles such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, strategic autonomy, and the limitation of external intervention increasingly important for states whose interests otherwise differ considerably. The historical significance of emerging regional security initiatives such as the Mecca Entente should also be assessed within this framework.

A new Westphalia in West Asia would therefore mean the creation not so much of an alliance system as of a new regional order of conduct. If states move away from attempts to change one another’s regimes, exploit internal fault lines, or eliminate regional rivals, and instead mutually recognize each other’s sovereignty and legitimate security interests, the region’s dependence on external hegemonic intervention could also diminish. It is precisely here that the Westphalian analogy acquires its meaning: what matters is not the possession of identical values, but the acceptance of rules that make coexistence possible despite profound differences.

From this perspective, a new Helsinki in Europe and a new Westphalia in West Asia should not be regarded as two independent processes. Both are regional manifestations of a broader historical transformation in which hegemonic supremacy is eroding, and the balance of power is returning to the center of international politics. Helsinki could represent the mutual recognition of power in Europe, while Westphalia could represent the mutual recognition of sovereign existence among West Asian states despite Israeli pressure. The former would require security to be pursued not by encircling the opposing power but by taking its continued existence into account; the latter would require regional order to be constructed not by fragmenting rival states under US-Israeli pressure, but by recognizing their sovereignty.

The fundamental reality revealed by historical experience has not changed. Enduring security orders are built not upon states liking one another or sharing the same values, but upon their recognition that they cannot eliminate one another. This was the strategic realism represented, under very different historical conditions, by the Westphalia of 1648 and the Helsinki of 1975.

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This article was originally published on Mavi Vatan.

Ret Admiral Cem Gürdeniz, Writer, Geopolitical Expert, Theorist and creator of the Turkish Bluehomeland (Mavi Vatan) doctrine. He served as the Chief of Strategy Department and then the head of Plans and Policy Division in Turkish Naval Forces Headquarters. As his combat duties, he has served as the commander of Amphibious Ships Group and Mine Fleet between 2007 and 2009. He retired in 2012. He established Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021. He has published numerous books on geopolitics, maritime strategy, maritime history and maritime culture. He is also a honorary member of ATASAM. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from the author

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