This week was one year since the rebellion against the Assad regime began. While Sweden and Canada react with their own foreign policy, the Norwegian Foreign Ministry is waiting for the EU. Norway was country number 46 to recognize the opposition in Libya. The red-green government promised in Soria Moria to stay ahead. After the Hamas dialogue in 2006, Norway has now finished among the last, researchers point out.
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Tentative. The 15. March was a year since the rebellion against Syria's sole ruler Bashar Al-Assad began when children protested in the small town of Daraa. One year later, 8000 civilians have lost their lives, according to the UN.
Canada determined 5. March to close its embassy in Damascus, in protest of the regime's attack on the civilian population. The same has been done by European countries such as Switzerland, Spain, the UK and France. In Sweden, formal contact will be made with the Syrian opposition, Syrian National Council (SNC).
Canada's Foreign Minister John baird had the following message to the regime last week: "We continue to repeat: Assad must go. The change will happen. The Syrians will have their day – and Canada stands with the Syrian people in the fight for a better and brighter 
future. "
But on the other side of the Atlantic, and in contrast to Sweden and Switzerland, Norway has chosen not to go ahead with an independent Norwegian foreign policy. In the past year, the Foreign Ministry has been late, compared to other European countries, in its recognition of the opposition ahead of the power shifts in both Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Facsimile: New Time March 16th
Now the focus is on the Syrian regime. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry would rather refer to the consensus decisions of the EU's 27 member states. And stronger reactions, such as embassy closure, are not on the program:
- We have always believed that closing eyes and ears by closing embassies is an unsuitable political tool. Together with, among others, our Nordic friends, we choose other methods to mark political distance from the Syrian regime. The presence also provides an opportunity for continued contact with opposition groups in Syria, says State Secretary Torgeir Larsen (Labor) to New Time.
The Soria Moria promise
The Arab Spring is the most tumultuous event in the red-green reign from autumn 2005 until today. The cooperation government between the Center Party, the Labor Party and the Socialist Left Party was to push the Norwegian foreign policy to the left after the election victory 2005. It should be more solidary than Bondevik I-II and Stoltenberg I.
“Norway must be a clear peace nation. The government will strengthen Norway's contribution to preventing, curbing and resolving conflicts, ”the Soria Moria statement states. With the SV in government, Norway in the world would become an even more progressive player. The government project, based on the Soria Moria Declaration, was referred to as "Europe's most radical government project".
In the beginning, too many looked like this. After Hamas won the elections in Palestine in January 2006, it was perceived outwardly as if Støre and Norway went a long way in recognizing the movement. This was only a couple of months after the red-green had taken up the government offices. In an interview with TV 2 in January 2007 said Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal:
“We really appreciate the Norwegian government and its policies that are different from European and American. Both in the case of Palestine in general and Hamas in particular. ”In the same message, Jonas Gahr Støre is confronted with conversations he had with the Hamas leader on the phone the year before.
However, few followed Norway. And George W. Bushthe government did not like this self-will. The Foreign Ministry also, after several media reports, had to publish a separate review on its website in 2010: "Facts about Norway's attitude to Hamas" underlines that "Norway has never recognized Hamas or made political connections with the movement".
The question is whether the approach to Hamas, and what seems like a subsequent retreat after strong criticism, is the exception in the red-green period of government? Is that why Støre emphasized the dangers of being too ahead in foreign policy, in an interview with Ny Tid in November: There Støre warned about the risk of being a foreign policy pioneer: "If you are a" frontrunner ", then you must also be prepared to run down tracks that do not lead forward. So we must be realistic and bold at the same time ", said the Foreign Minister at the time.
And in Damascus, the Chargé d'affaires at the Norwegian Embassy, Aud Lise Norheim, states that there has been little change in practice in Norway's presence in the regime-controlled country over the past year.
- Follow-up of the domestic political crisis has increasingly become the embassy's main task. Projects in the fields of development aid, culture, business and Norwegian promotion, and bilateral cooperation, have naturally become less of a priority during the popular uprising, Nordheim tells Ny Tid.
107 years abroad
The goal of an independent Norwegian foreign policy was one of the driving forces for those who fought the union resolution with Sweden in June 1905. 100 years later, NUPI researchers Halvard Leira and Iver B. Neumann wrote the story of the Norwegian foreign service.
This book was officially called Active and pending. Foreign Service Life 1905-2005 (Pax Forlag 2005). But Ny Tid can today tell that the book should actually be called Active pending for 100 years, which gives a completely different meaning. The Norwegian Foreign Ministry protested against the publisher's proposal and demanded a different title. Or as the Foreign Ministry puts it:
- The authors landed on the title Active and pending in consultation with the contact committee in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2004 in the autumn, communication adviser states Kjetil Elsebutangen.
Halvard Leira, author and senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Policy, tells Ny Tid that the term "active waiting" is used about a general attitude in the Foreign Ministry system: One is careful about throwing oneself into processes internally in other countries. He points out that this is not abnormal for other countries' foreign services either. Still, it seems controversial to admit that you are sitting on the fence.
- Diplomacy is by nature actively hesitant. You follow the current. You are on the situation, but not too much on, says Leira.
- How would you describe Norwegian foreign policy today?
- Norway is pragmatic. In some fields and in some situations we mix with the desire of the heart, based on a liberal notion that we know best. Other times not. Norway thus often becomes a small, consistent country with an unclear line about how we relate to other countries' sovereignty, says Leira.
The pragmatic line to Norway thus becomes evident in that Norway in some cases responds strikingly quickly. But in some recent cases, Støre is not "first in the class of diplomats," but rather among the latter to take a stand:
Already in 1949, Norway recognized Mao's Communist China. This was a couple of decades before the UN and the US did the same, in 1971. Contact with, and partial recognition of, Hamas as elected representatives was also at the forefront. But during the ongoing revolt against the regimes in Arab countries, several have pointed out that Norway in both 2011 and 2012 has been strikingly passive, or pending.
Norwegian foreign policy is also characterized by both a pending "sit on the fence" attitude and an active involvement, says Leira.
- One is not consistent and principled, but pragmatic. Pragmatism balances the consideration of other countries' state sovereignty on the one hand and the consideration of international collective norms, such as human rights, on the other, states NUPI-forskeren.
At the same time, Leira points out that the basic worldview of Norwegian elected officials is based on a so-called liberal worldview: an understanding that the world is moving in the right direction and that it is possible to play a role in the change that is going on.
- Over 90 percent, from SV to well into the Progress Party, will agree that the world can be a better place, and that Norway can play a role in the work to move the world in the right direction. This is also the main line and starting point for the policy of the current government, says Leira.
- But, why are you so hesitant, if you also want to be an actor?
- Pragmatism and realpolitik are somewhat stronger under Støre than in the period 1990-2005. Norway recognizes that we are a country with relatively limited resources, a country that cannot fight all battles. In addition, Støre emphasizes Norwegian self-interests in a new way, says Leira.
successors
It was with a microblogging post that the prime minister Jens Stoltenberg became known to respond publicly to the crisis in Syria. Sunday 4. March at 12.18, the Prime Minister's over 130.000 followers on Twitter could read the message from the Minister of Labor:
"The Syrian regime must stop killing its own people. President al-Assad must retire. "
But already 18. July 2011 had the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, said the same, and publicly in a meeting of EU Foreign Ministers. Bildt then stated rightly that al Assad's regime must give way to a new regime, which is quite obvious. The time for this regime is over, it has lost its credibility and legitimacy ”.
Two months later, 18. August, ba Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Barack Obama og Nicolas Sarkozy about the same. Only then, exactly one month after his conservative colleague in the Union country of Sweden, did Norway follow suit. Jonas Gahr Støre told the Norwegian media on the same day that al-Assad "has repeatedly rejected international calls to reflect. The requirement that he must step down is a clarification of an attitude that has built up ”.
But these statements came after it was clear that the EU's 27 countries would agree to a declaration of departure. Norway followed the 27 EU countries on the 24. August. The government then endorsed a text from the EU Council on enhanced EU sanctions against Syria from 18. August: "The EU notes that Bashar al-Assad has lost all legitimacy of the Syrian people and that he must step down. "
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies that they were late in requesting al-Assad's departure. They point out that they have always followed the EU's line with Syria. And that on several occasions they have met representatives of the Syrian Transitional Council.
- This is incorrectly presented. Norway joined this demand on the same day as the EU and the USA, 18 August 2011, which was widely covered in the Norwegian media, says State Secretary Torgeir Larsen (Labor) to New Time.
International spokesperson in the Left, Ola Eleven, however, Norway must do more.
- The international community has recognized the Syrian National Council as a dialogue partner, Norway should do the same, says Elvestuen to Ny Tid.
This is the introduction to the main issue in the weekly magazine Ny Tid's issue 16 March 2. 2012. Read more in this week's issue, in sales in stores across the country. Get the edition sent for free by subscribing (Abo@nytid.no)or click here.
