On Indivisible Security : Historical Roots, Conceptual Evolution, and Current Relevance in the OSCE Context

Abstract

This report examines the evolution, conceptual dilemmas, and future relevance of the principle of indivisible security. Historically, the idea emerged in interwar debates on collective security as “indivisible peace”, resurfaced implicitly in Soviet rhetoric on peaceful coexistence, and entered the diplomatic vocabulary through the 1975 Helsinki Final Act as “indivisible security”. The post-Cold War years gave it renewed prominence within the OSCE, though its meaning remained contested and vulnerable to competing interpretations. In recent decades, Russia has increasingly instrumentalised indivisible security. It was first invoked to oppose NATO enlargement, later to justify coercive policies, culminating in its use as a rationale for the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Most recently, Russia has advanced the principle in support of a proposed “new Eurasian security architecture”. In August 2025, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was ready to state: “The goal of ensuring indivisible security proved unattainable in the OSCE, yet it can be fully realised within a pan-Eurasian framework open to all continental nations – embodying a new, polycentric world order.” Conceptually, indivisible security is closely related to, but distinct from, other frameworks such as collective security, collective defence, cooperative security, comprehensive security, and the idea of a security community. The analysis shows that while these concepts overlap, they can also be understood hierarchically: cooperative security provides enabling conditions for indivisible security, comprehensive security defines its substantive scope, and a security community constitutes its normative end state. The study proposes a redefinition of indivisible security through guiding maxims that reaffirm its compatibility with international law, sovereignty, and OSCE principles. Anchored in cooperative and comprehensive security, indivisible security should be reclaimed as a tool of genuine cooperation rather than a justification for aggression and spheres of influences.