NORWAY

NORWAY

Dagsavisen, Oslo, April 7: All of Turkey expected (NATO’s next secretary general) Anders Fogh Rasmussen to publicly apologize for a Danish newspaper printing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. Of course, there was no such apology. It would be absurd for a prime minister to apologize for what a newspaper printed.

But the fuss about Fogh Rasmussen ... shows how inflammatory his appointment was for NATO.

Turkish government sources apparently spread the claim that the (incoming) secretary general had promised to apologize and also to finally close a Kurdish TV-station in Denmark. They grossly overestimated their influence.

Balancing act

The problem for NATO is that alliance has gotten a prime minister who must constantly balance on a diplomatic tightrope because of his own opinions and earlier statements.

The biggest problem is that the strongest supporter of the USA’s offensive war on Iraq is now going to lead the defense alliance NATO.

SWEDEN

Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm, April 8: Barack Obama’s European visit is over and even if there have been some demonstrations, the welcome has been warm overall. ... The contrast to George W. Bush’s last moments in power couldn’t be sharper.

The are also many signs many of a new American foreign policy. Obama has ordered the closing of the Guantanamo prison camp, he’s reached out a hand to Iran, tried to improve relations with Russia, emphasized the importance of international organizations and has said that a nuclear-free world is possible.

Regaining ‘soft power’

All this is music to European leaders’ ears. The U.S. therefore seems to have regained its “soft power,” or ... getting countries to want what you want instead of getting them to do what you want.

But, one might ask, has it helped?

Professor Peter Feaver writes in Foreign Policy, that, ahead of Obama’s trip, the U.S. wanted Europe to adopt a more American stance toward the financial crisis, shoulder a greater military responsibility in Afghanistan and receive prisoners from Guantanamo.

The result, Feaver writes, has mainly been the opposite.

BRITAIN

The Observer, London, April 5: Logistically, America is holding back the Taliban with only auxiliary help from Europe. And that, for now, is the limit of U.S. ambition. The strategy is to pin the insurgency back to a few areas, hoping to buy enough time for some kind of indigenous political process to set down roots in the rest of the country.

Progress, however incremental, has been made in restoring basic civil rights to ordinary Afghans. That, in turn, has helped mitigate the sacrifices made as a consequence of military occupation, among Afghan civilians and NATO forces.

Limits of liberation

But there are signs that the limits of liberalization have been reached. To shore up his position ahead of elections later this year, President Hamid Karzai recently backed a law giving men of the country’s Shia minority total dominion over their wives, legalizing child marriage, rape and incarceration inside the home. Even if, as seems likely, pressure from NATO leaders forces Mr. Karzai to withdraw the law, questions remain over whether or not he can be trusted to uphold the country’s post-Taliban constitution.

The west cannot support civil rights in Afghanistan without local support. But by definition the Afghans whose rights are most under threat are those who are least able to show support for the occupation.