Council on Foreign Relations

There are mixed views about future of the United States’ relations with North Korea in the light of this week’s visit by the New York Philharmonic orchestra. The Hankyoreh in South Korea says it is clear that the historic concert in Pyongyang will improve relations between Pyongyang and Washington. The Guardian, however, in an editorial, believes the expectation of change created by high-profile events such as these is often unsustainably high. It would be naive to expect that Dvorak or Gershwin alone could open the eyes of North Koreans to the outside world, the paper says. The Financial Times warns that the bonhomie with which this rare cultural encounter is being conducted should not obscure the serious issues that still remain unresolved. Michael Auslin and Christopher Griffin of the American Enterprise Institute comment in the Wall Street Journal more broadly on the United States’ relations with East Asia. They say the easing of political tension between Japan and South Korea could pave the way for a new trilateral security partnership. The Japan Times, in an editorial, comments on relations between the two Koreas in the week the new South Korean president, Lee Myung-Bak, was inaugurated. The paper says North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il, will do his best to force the new president to abandon his harder-line policies toward the North and embrace those of his predecessors.

Also in today’s papers:

Christian Science Monitor

• In a commentary on Iran’s diplomatic elite, Nieman Fellow Iason Athanasiadis says that in Tehran, a common reading of December's U.S. National Intelligence Estimate is that it stems from a desperate Bush coming to terms with the knowledge that no external pressure, whether political, economic, or military, can contain Iran.

Daily Star (Lebanon)

• In an editorial on America’s relationship with Pakistan, the paper accuses the Bush administration of working behind the scenes to dictate the composition of the next government there, and says he risks the collapse of Pakistan's political process for the sake of his own legacy.

Daily Telegraph

• Harry de Quetteville writes from Liechtenstein, currently under pressure over its status as a tax haven, and says that of all its travails, the ongoing tax scandal poses perhaps the most significant challenge to its existence.

Dawn (Pakistan)

• In an editorial, Dawn calls on Iran to go slow on its nuclear program, but says it is equally necessary that the IAEA and the West, especially the U.S., make Iran feel that its efforts at cooperation are being appreciated by them.

Financial Times

• Joseph Cirincione, soon to become president of the Ploughshares Fund, and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, dismiss criticism of Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency as a quixotic bureaucrat. They say he is judiciously achieving the goals that critics seemingly desire – the nuclear disarmament of Iran.
• In a commentary on sovereign wealth funds, John Kay writes the investment that Norway, Singapore, and Kuwait have made in global markets is also an investment in global, economic and political stability. We should welcome it if China and Russia make the same commitment, he says.
• Simon James of University College, London, says Kosovo’s independence is, on the face of it, a distant but useful precedent for Scotland’s nationalists, but warns that the diplomatic fallout over recognition of the newcomer has ominous implications for the separatists in Edinburgh.

Independent (London)

• Columnist Patrick Cockburn says the recent Turkish invasion could destroy a unified Iraq, and comments that Iraqi Kurdistan is becoming like Gaza, where Israel can send in its tanks and helicopters at will.
• In an editorial on Cyprus after Sunday’s presidential run-off the Independent says permanent partition is a solution the Greek Cypriots have always abhorred and that political will has been the missing ingredient in Cyprus for many years. That, the paper says, may now be about to change.

Jordan Times

• Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East policy writes that all parties in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear capability need to find a formula to resolve the issue before it again threatens to erupt into conflict.

New York Times

• In an editorial, the Times comments on Vladimir Putin’s imminent handover of power but says it fears that little will change as a result. The next American president will have to deal with a Russia that is not only nuclear-armed but increasingly wealthy and increasingly authoritarian, says the paper.
• Vuk Jeremic, the foreign minister of Serbia, in an op-ed, denounces Kosovo’s declaration of independence as an illegal act and says recognising this declaration legitimizes the doctrine of imposing solutions to ethnic conflicts.

Times of London

• Columnist Daniel Finkelstein asks why the Left still worships Fidel Castro and all his appalling fellow communists.
• Chief foreign commentator Bronwen Maddox confesses to a flicker of sympathy for Liechtenstein, the European tax haven now embroiled in a row with Germany and the UK.

Wall Street Journal

• Editorial editor Matthew Kaminski looks ahead to Russia’s “foreordained” presidential election this Sunday, saying that Vladimir Putin exudes confidence about his political future, but that his actions betray an insecurity that must come naturally to a man with KGB-honed analytical skills.
• In an editorial on Bangkok’s “drug war,” the Journal says that Thailand's military government may be gone, but its war on drug patents is still very much alive.

Washington Post

• In an editorial on biofuels, the paper comments on two recent studies that it says reveal that biofuels are not a silver bullet in the battle against global warming, but that, in fact, they could make things worse.

Washington Times

• In an editorial, the Times welcomes pressure applied by China on the Sudanese government over Darfur but says that Beijing needs to move beyond rhetoric. Only substantive solutions will end the genocidal crisis and bring peace to Sudan, the paper says.
• In a further editorial the Times accuses Democrats in the Senate of defeatism over Iraq, despite what the paper calls the growing evidence that the troop surge is damaging al-Qaeda, and that the Iraqis are making remarkable progress on the political front as well.