Last week it was reported in some Dutch newspapers that The Netherlands is no. 9 in the top-10 of countries that spend the most money on lobbying and public relations work in the United States. But investment goes two ways, and thus it's not at all surprising that Fay Hartog-Levin, the new US ambassador in The Hague, expressed her trust in the Netherlands when presenting her credentials to Queen Beatrix last week. She hopes that the Netherlands will continue to play a leading role in stimulating the economy in Afghanistan, praising the Dutch high-profile experience in the field of development aid. In this she seems to hang on to Prime Minister Jan Balkenende's promise that his government will consider all options to be involved in Afghanistan. All options other than military that is, because the Netherlands will not extend its current military mission in the Uruzgan province beyond next year.
Hartog-Levin, who was one of the contributors to Barak Obama's presidential campain, also considers the improvement of America's image abroad as one of her diplomatic priorities in The Hague. She admitted that in the past years a wrong image has been created of what the United States stands for and went on to stress that her country is not the enemy of the Islamic world, thus articulating her desire to focus on young people and Muslims. Hartog-Levin also mentioned her Dutch background. The ambassador's parents were Dutch Jews who fled from The Hague to Suriname at the outbreak of World War II. Which makes her new job a kind of second homecoming: 'With my being posted here my family history has come full circle'.
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