Then it was over. Barack Obama moved out of the White House, and Donald Trump took over. Prime Minister Erna Solberg doesn’t deny that it’s sad.
‘I’m going to miss Obama. I’m going to miss his speeches, and I’m going to miss anything he does’, Solberg said by phone from Davos.
When she looks back on Obama’s presidency, there is one particular aspect she would like to highlight: his international orientation.
‘Obama was busy with multilateral cooperation, and the United States not attempting to go it alone.That has been an important part of it. He was occupied with a rights-based international order; in that way he built alliances and coalitions between many countries’, said Solberg.
She still doesn’t absolve him completely.
‘The United States is still a superpower which doesn’t always give the U.N. enough space to make decisions. That doesn’t always follow the rules of international cooperation to the letter. Although Obama has been more multilaterally oriented, it has still sometimes been challenging’, said Solberg to NTB news agency.
‘When it comes to Trump, we just have to wait and see’, she said.
‘The thing is, in many areas we do not know quite what his policies are going to be. It makes it exciting, yet uncertain how it will go’, the Prime Minister said.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
