Former two-term Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg started work today as NATO's secretary-general, the 13th in the trans-Atlantic organisation's 65-year existence. And the key question is whether his consensus-building style will be more effective in tamping down the Ukraine conflict and other flashpoints than the hard talk of his predecessor, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.
"I expect more moderate language, and that he will try to keep the dialogue open," said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, an independent Norwegian research institution.
Last month, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, though squarely blaming the Kremlin for the continued crisis over Ukraine, said: "I found that some things that came out of Brussels, from NATO headquarters, in these last few weeks weren't always helpful."
Stoltenberg was unanimously chosen as Rasmussen's successor by NATO's policy-making North Atlantic Council in March. It was a pick that won swift if tentative approval from Putin, who had dealt with Stoltenberg when the 55-year-old Norwegian headed the left-of-centre government of one of Russia's neighbouring countries.
Traditionally, a European has headed NATO's civilian headquarters in Brussels, while an American officer holds the post of the alliance's supreme military commander, beginning with General Dwight D Eisenhower in 1951-52.
Stoltenberg will be the first secretary-general to hail from an alliance nation that borders Russia. He becomes NATO's highest-ranking civilian at a time when Western relations with Moscow are at their lowest ebb since the collapse of the Berlin Wall a quarter-century ago.
"As we all know, NATO is not just a security alliance. It is a family of values which reaches across the Atlantic and defends almost 1 billion citizens of our allied countries," Stoltenberg told a news conference at the NATO summit in Wales earlier this month.
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