AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIA

The Australian, Dec. 14: If it is to have clarity from the Copenhagen climate change summit, the world needs leadership from China and the US. A political agreement that keeps open the prospect of a legally binding agreement in the future will not be achieved without Beijing, in particular, recognizing that it must be part of the solution. A cashed-up China, more powerful than ever since the global financial crisis, must step up to play a lead role with the US.

As the summit moves to the business end of the proceedings, the debate is narrowing to what is politically achievable. China’s official party line, spelt out in The Weekend Australian by the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Junsai Zhang, is presumably an ambit claim as it moves to position itself as a key player in the formulation of the final communique. There is a long way to go for the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases as it argues that the rich, industrialized West owes a “carbon debt” to the developing world and refuses to be legally bound to targets. In the next few days, the world will want movement from China on two key issues - acceptance that carbon cuts must be binding and subject to monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV); and recognition that the rules are changing around financial assistance to countries such as China, India and Brazil.

Vulnerable nations

China has complained about the moves to jettison the Kyoto Protocol, but it is clear that document does not capture the complex range of economies within the developing world. It makes sense to distinguish between developing countries such as China and poorer, vulnerable nations when it comes to assisting them to adapt to climate change. China’s claim for access to new technology, regardless of patents, is part of its bargaining to receive help other than direct grants. Beijing has committed to reducing its carbon intensity by 40-45 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, but its refusal to agree to outside scrutiny runs counter to the spirit of a shared response to global warming. China was adamant again yesterday that it would “do its own checking”.

BRITAIN

London Evening Standard, Dec. 12: It has taken months of deliberation but the move is the right one. It gives a renewed sense of purpose to the mission for all the coalition forces in Afghanistan, not just the Americans.

It also provides the means to implement the strategy of General Stanley McChrystal, which focuses on engaging with civilian populations while stepping up the training of Afghan forces.

There is also a timetable for withdrawal of US forces — this will begin in 2011 — and there is already controversy about whether announcing this in advance sends quite the right signals to the Taliban. Politically, however, it is one way to quell popular doubts in the US about the strategy.

The approach is risky, of course. There is no certainty that Afghan forces will be capable of taking charge of the country within the time allowed, even given intensive training.

Their calibre is generally regarded as patchy, though possibly better than that of the police, and the quality of its leadership is not high.

More worryingly, the regime of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, is sufficiently corrupt to make it a fragile basis on which to repose hopes for future stability.

Febrile, dangerous situation

And, as both President Obama and the Prime Minister have indicated, the situation in Pakistan, arguably more important than Afghanistan, is becoming more febrile and dangerous.

Having said that, the new robust counterinsurgency strategy has a sense of direction. The question for us is how British troops fit in with it.

As our correspondent Robert Fox argues, a crucial choice for British commanders is whether to remain in Helmand or to join US forces in combat operations elsewhere.

The latter is more dangerous but it may maximize the effectiveness of the British deployment. This deserves public debate.

However, while the Prime Minister commits himself to deploying 500 more British troops to Afghanistan, other allies seem less keen. The French president supports the courage of the US strategy but declines to send more troops.

The Germans are holding fire. The Italians will send more troops but it is unclear how many. Yet as the head of Nato has said, there needs to be a deployment of 5,000 overall from other coalition members. Britain has played its part, now other partners must do the same.

CANADA

The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Dec. 16: Iran needs to be firmly warned that harsher economic sanctions are pending, now that documentary evidence has been found that the Iranians are testing an essential component for a nuclear weapon, equipment that could have no other use, either civilian or military.

Negotiations between Iran, on the one hand, and the United States, Russia and France have bogged down, without a definitive rejection of a draft agreement for Iranian export of its low-enriched uranium for further enrichment elsewhere. Moreover, the momentum of the discovery of the nuclear facility at Fordow near Qom has diminished, though Barack Obama has set an end-of-the-calendar-year deadline for progress in restraining the Iranian nuclear program.

Sanctions

Robert Gates, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, said late last week in Iraq that he expects the international community will impose “significant additional sanctions,” if Iran does not change course, and Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, praising some enforcement action by Thais of the sanctions against North Korea, said, “I think there’s a lesson there for people around the world to see when it comes to Iran.”

The evidence obtained by The Times of London appears to show work by Iran on a “neutron initiator” that could trigger an explosion, a device made from uranium deuteride (a substance particularly favoured by Dr. A.Q. Khan, the notorious Pakistani nuclear scientist and metallurgical engineer). The documents seem to give the alleged Iranian nuclear-weapons program a name, the Field for the Expansion of Deployment of Advance Technology, with a chairman called Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

The existing sanctions, however, are undoubtedly being felt. Major Iranian companies are having a hard time getting financing, being caught between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s low-interest-loan policy that favours small businesses and short-term investment, and the lack of access to loans from international banks as a result of the sanctions.

JAPAN

The Japan, Toyko, Dec. 15: In the October announcement of its decision to bestow the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on U.S. President Barack Obama, the Norwegian Nobel Committee attached special importance to his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” The committee also praised the U.S. president by stating: “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.”

Realism

But the prevailing political circumstances seem to have forced Mr. Obama to put more stress on realism in international politics than on ideals and hope. In his acceptance speech, entitled “A Just and Lasting Peace,” given in Oslo Dec. 10, he acknowledged that occasions arise when use of military force becomes necessary to realize peace.

Clearly aware of criticism, especially in the United States, that he cannot claim any concrete achievements of a global scale, Mr. Obama was humble in the opening part of his speech. He said, “I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage.”

A Gallup poll taken a week after the Norwegian committee’s announcement found that 34 percent thought that Mr. Obama deserved the prize, while 61 percent did not. The results of a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Dec. 9 showed that only 19 percent of respondents thought Mr. Obama deserved the prize now, with 35 percent regarding it likely that he will eventually accomplish enough to deserve it, and more than 40 percent believing that he will never deserve the prize.

Mr. Obama also admitted that “my accomplishments are slight” when compared with people like Albert Schweitzer (the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize winner), Martin Luther King Jr. (the 1964 winner of the prize), George Marshall (former U.S. Secretary of State known for the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction after World War II) and Nelson Mandela (the 1993 recipient of the prize).

The acceptance ceremony came nine days after Mr. Obama announced that he will send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, and the fact that his administration is waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan clearly weighed on his mind. He acknowledged that “perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.”