While many US (and European) pundits criticize the European countries for a lack of military hard power or even ridicule German and other soldiers as armed social workers, the Pentagon is increasingly focusing on humanitarian missions, writes The Boston Globe:

Having learned the limits of force in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military strategists are rewriting decades-old military doctrine to place humanitarian missions on par with combat, part of a new effort to win over distrustful foreign populations and enlist new global allies, according to top commanders and Pentagon officials. The Defense Department is implementing a series of new directives to use the American arsenal for more peaceful purposes even as it prepares for war, including a little-noticed revision this year to a document called "Joint Operations," described as the "very core" of how the military branches should be organized. The effort illustrates a growing recognition that, to combat radical ideologies and avert future wars, the Pentagon must draw more heavily on its deep reserves of so-called soft power.

Dan Drezner notes that the US military does not want this responsibility, but is stepping up because no other agency possesses either the resources or the willingness to act. He also blames this development on how the foreign policy budget is authorized:

Congressmen are happy to authorize more defense spending, because that's easier to justify to their constituents, particularly those constituents whose livelihoods are tied into the military.  Authorizing civilian spending on foreign policy, however, just looks like a handout to other countries - it's much easier for Congress to say no to that authorization, and look fiscally prudent in the process.

Finally, Serbia is back in Europe. Stephen Castle and Steven Erlanger write in the NY Times:

Europe on Tuesday welcomed the arrest of Radovan Karadzic not just as a victory for international justice, but as a vindication of the Continent's favored political doctrine: soft power. (...)
In the last few months the European Union has helped bring a pro-Western political party to victory in Serbia's elections while ensuring that it has powerful incentives to hand over war crimes suspects. The arrest of Mr. Karadzic demonstrates how effective the union's leverage can be, particularly with neighboring countries that have ambitions to join it.

Yeah, it only took a bit more than a decade...

But then again, how successful (and how costly) is hard power? Milosevic and Karadzic were not arrested during the many Balkan wars... (Well, obviously, without the wars, they might still be in power.) And capturing Saddam was much more expensive and demands from the US to a strong commitment to Iraq of at least a decade...

The G8 used to be criticized as an evil capitalist group of powerful countries that determines world politics and economics without legitimacy like the UN. There has not been much of such criticism at this year's summit in Japan.

This time, lack of effectiveness was the most common criticism. The G8 is increasingly seen as a Western talking shop that is doing photo-ops with rock stars and third world leaders, but fails to act on its past promises on development aid and is increasingly incapable to shape international economic affairs.

Besides, Senators McCain and Obama recently had a dispute as to whether Russia should be excluded from the Group of Eight.

Consequently, there have been several reform proposals to make the G8 more effective:

L20: upgrade the existing G20
G13: G8 + the "outreach 5"
G9: leading market democracies
G3: US, EU & China
G3: US, EU & Japan

The Atlantic Community explains these proposals and asks: "Should the G8 be enlarged to include new major international players or contracted to ensure effectiveness?" If you register on Atlantic Community, then you can vote on the above options.

The Coca-Cola executive shall "retool NATO's brand," reports the NY Times (HT: Benjamin from Anglofritz):

Less than a year before its 60th anniversary, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is determined to revamp its image, establishing a media operations center for Afghanistan and hiring an executive from Coca-Cola to manage the way the alliance is seen around the world. (...)
Michael Stopford, has spent two years guarding Coca-Cola's image and will join NATO as deputy assistant secretary general for strategic communication services in August. Mr. Stopford, a British-born American, is a specialist in managing reputations. Before working at Coca-Cola, he also held jobs at the United Nations and the British Foreign Office.

I doubt whether such a branding will be enough. NATO needs to reinvent itself. Has Coca-Cola done that recently? Nope, it still tastes the same.

Madonna, however, has reinvented herself extremely successfully several times. And Peter van Ham of the Clingendael Institute in The Hague has even published an article in the NATO Review on NATO and the Madonna Curve: "Businesses use Madonna as a role model of self-reinvention. Now it's NATO's turn." Okay, okay, NATO is trying to do both: retooling its brand and reinventing itself by working on a new strategic concept.

Related posts on Atlantic Review:

• "Maybe It's Time for NATO to Die"

• Bumper Stickers Slogans: What is the Purpose of NATO?

• Trans-Atlantic Cooperation: Are Europeans Unwilling to Share the Burden?

The Atlantic Community has published a transatlantic press round-up about France's Adoption of a Multilateral Defense Policy.

Due to a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies, the Pentagon is considering sending as many as 7,000 more US troops to Afghanistan, write Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker in the New York Times:

[Senior Bush administration officials] said the step would push the number of American forces there to roughly 40,000, the highest level since the war began more than six years ago, and would require at least a modest reduction in troops from Iraq.

The planning began in recent weeks, reflecting a growing resignation to the fact that NATO is unable or unwilling to contribute more troops despite public pledges of an intensified effort in Afghanistan from the presidents and prime ministers who attended an alliance summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, last month.

Related posts on Atlantic Review:

•  Bumper Stickers Slogans: What is the Purpose of NATO?

•  Afghanistan: Merkel Has "No Time" for Burden Sharing Proposals

•  Rupert Murdoch: Alliance Based on Shared Values, not Geography

NYT Columnist Roger Cohen wrote Europe Votes Democrat, but Asia Tends Republican and Michael J. Green, who served on the National Security Council staff from 2001 to 2005, claims that the Iraq war has been good for US interests in South East Asia. He writes in The Washington Quarterly:

If anything, most major powers in Asia have used the war on terrorism and the conflict in Iraq to align more closely with the United States in order to balance rivals within the region or to advance their global standing.

Greg Sheridan agrees with this analysis and adds in The Australian (HT: Joe Noory):

Australian commentators almost universally mimic the European critique or more often the liberal American critique of the Bush administration and all its works. What is clear is that they have almost no sense of the Asian context at all.

Other conservatives, however, worry about the US standing in in East Asia: Michael Austin from the American Enterprise Institute opines that appeasement politics weaken US credibility in Asia: "Some of America's most important bilateral alliances are at risk of coming unmoored."