Brussels:
At a time of daunting geopolitical crises, NATO is undergoing its own version of regime change, with the arrival of a new chief official who has the blessing, at least temporarily, of one of the West's biggest adversaries: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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.
To allies like Germany, the expectation of a dial-back of the rhetoric from Rasmussen, a former conservative Danish prime minister, was one factor arguing in Stoltenberg's favour.
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.
"We have very good relations, including personal relations," Putin said in an interview on Russian state television last spring. "This is a very serious, responsible person, but we'll see how our relations develop with him in his new position."
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.
Simultaneously, NATO member states are confronted with crises in Iraq, Syria and North Africa, the uncertain future of Afghanistan, and an array of security challenges ranging from the threat of cyber-attacks to pirates preying on commercial shipping in the waters off the Horn of Africa.
"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.
