Helsinki at 50: Cooperation – or Crashing at Full Speed
by Walter Baier, President of the European Left
Fifty years after the Helsinki Final Act, the world stands at another crossroads. Are we ready to revive the logic of cooperation—or are we speeding toward disaster? Walter Baier reflects on what we can still learn from 1975.
Every driver knows the situation: you’re speeding along on a country road at night, headlights on. Another car approaches fast, also with its lights on. The sensible move? Both drivers slow down and dip their headlights—making the road safer for each other, and for themselves.
That same principle guided the 33 heads of state from Europe and North America who signed the Helsinki Final Act in 1975.
Put simply: in a world with advanced weapons and spreading nuclear technology, real security doesn’t come from one side trying to outgun the other. The opposite is true. Rearmament leads to counter-armament, and that triggers further escalation. The end result? More insecurity for everyone.
In the nuclear age, thinking in military terms has become the biggest security risk of all.
Conference in Helsinki (1975), from left to right Helmut Schmidt, Erich Honecker, Gerald Ford and Bruno Kreisky.
The rulers of the Cold War superpowers—the USA and the Soviet Union—didn’t become friends after Helsinki. But they did agree on something essential: that some level of respect and cooperation was needed to avoid war in Europe. And a war in Europe would likely have meant global nuclear disaster. So they pledged to resolve their ideological conflict politically, not militarily.
The Helsinki Conference followed earlier agreements between East and West: recognizing borders established after World War II, and normalizing relations between the two Germanies. In the Final Act, all sides committed to economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation—and to protecting the environment.
That too makes sense. Peace rests on cooperation. As long as people trade, they’re less likely to fight. Today, as in the past, peace in Europe remains fragile as long as it rests on the illusion of military strength. True security and independence will only come when the governments of the great powers agree once again to settle their differences without war.
But this will not happen unless the people themselves intervene in politics and set limits to the arrogance of the ruling elites. That is why we need a European and global peace movement. There’s no alternative to this rational survival strategy—except crashing at full speed.