ITALY

ITALY

Corriere della Sera, Milan, Aug. 13: After having given Georgia inopportune and unrealistic support, the United States could not be the mediators of the crisis. It was necessary to have someone who did not have prejudice against Russia or insensitivity to the issue of Georgian independence. France is currently holding the EU presidency, it has an ambitious head of state and a foreign minister with a respectable humanitarian pedigree.

Independence

Nicolas Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner divided their tasks skillfully. The minister’s trip to Georgia showed that Europe is ready to support the country’s independence. The president’s trip to Moscow (and his arguments) ... showed to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Europe understands Russia’s needs and does not question them.

This does not mean, obviously, that the 27 members of the EU all have the same opinions ... But France right now can count on the support of Italy, Germany, Spain and maybe even Britain.

BRITAIN

The Daily Telegraph, London, Aug. 13: The Chinese have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the Olympics in Beijing present the most benign and professional face possible to the world.

In doing so, they have confirmed that the Games are nowadays as much about show business as sport. In London, the venue for the Olympiad in 2012, organizers must have watched the opening ceremony and subsequent events with wide-eyed astonishment and asked themselves: “How can we compete with that?” The answer is that they shouldn’t even try.

End the ‘arms race’

And, as further revelations emerge of the shenanigans in Beijing, it might now be easier for London to end the “arms race” that requires every staging of the Games to be more spectacular than the last.

So far we have learnt that the firework footprints that marched toward the Olympic stadium were digitally enhanced for television audiences and that thousands of spectators are being bused in to swell the desultory crowds.

Now we discover that Lin Miaoke, the little pig-tailed girl in the red dress who “performed” the Chinese anthem so delightfully at the opening ceremony, was miming.

Have the Olympics really reached such a pass that a seven-year-old girl is prevented from appearing because she doesn’t look adorable enough? It meant, said the director, that we had “a perfect voice, a perfect image and a perfect show all together.” Sometimes, too high a price can be paid for perfection.

Let us hope the London 2012 organizers can bring some sanity and proportion back to both the opening ceremony and the Games themselves.

SWEDEN

Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, Aug. 11: In the last few weeks Turkey has been in a constant condition of tension.

In mid-July a spectacular prosecution begun against 86 highly placed people who stood accused of being included in an ultra-nationalist network called Ergenekon. Two weeks later a bomb exploded on a pedestrian street in Istanbul that killed 17 people.

‘Coup d’etat’

At the same time the final negotiations took place in the constitutional case that Carl Bildt has called a “coup d’etat disguised as law.” The country’s constitutional court was trying if the governing party AKP should be closed down because it threatened Turkey’s secular order.

On Aug. 1 came the somewhat surprising decision that the party was warned, but not banned.

But the attempt to remove a democratically elected government shows that Turkey still is caught up in a political abuse logic that goes back decades in time.

ESTONIA

Eesti Paevaleht, Tallinn, Mon. Aug. 13: With only some 75,000 residents, South Ossetia is sure to continue playing a crucial role in world politics for a long time. Besides Russia’s role in the post-communist world, stakes in this game involve economic interests including battle for the control of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.

How do we proceed from here? After the smoke has cleared, maintaining an international peacekeeping force in the crisis area and having NATO offer Georgia a coherent membership plan would seem to be the best solution.

Clear signal

Only this way can the West send a clear signal: joining an international organization is up to the applicant country itself and is not something that is up to Russia’s will.

The war in Georgia seems to have opened the eyes of the even most naive Western leaders. The conflict means that one cannot expect Russia’s ties with the West to improve any time soon as has been hoped by many observers.

It is clear by now that Russia is not the dignified world power that it presented itself as when the country was granted the right to host the Olympics in Sochi in 2014. Diplomatic advice ... has never worked in changing Russia’s course.

KOSOVO

Telegraf, Riga, Latvia, Aug. 11: The end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st will no doubt go down in history as an era of double standards...The current conflict in the Caucasus is more proof of this...There’s Georgia, and then there’s South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are part of Georgia. At one point South Ossetia and Abkhazia wanted to secede from Georgia, which is their right. It is also Georgia’s right to prevent its country from falling apart.

Two choices

Georgia had two choices: create such living standards that no one would want to secede, or use force. Georgia chose the second...and Russia, which is on the side of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, intervened. And what do we see? The West accuses Russia of aggression.

The same principle applies in another situation. There’s Serbia, and then there’s Kosovo, which is part of Serbia. At one point Kosovo wanted to secede from Serbia, which is its right. And it’s Serbia’s right to prevent its own dissolution. Like Georgia, Serbia chose force...and the United States and NATO intervened. They nearly wiped Serbia off the map, and then declared that every nation has the right to self-determination.