Eastern Europe aspires to take command of NATO – DW – 02/25/2024

It may already be too late, but supporters of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis hope it is still possible to find a good path leading outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to the NATO command. will be.

The process of choosing the new head of the military alliance has traditionally been conducted away from public scrutiny. It would be inappropriate to even openly discuss personal ambitions for office, even if candidates work behind the scenes to build the necessary support.

Despite all this secrecy, it is known that Root is considered by most colleagues to be the candidate with the most choices. Everything indicates he will succeed Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in October, the second-longest-serving secretary-general in history, who will retire with a decade of work behind him.

NATO wants the decision to be taken before the European Union (EU) begins shuffling seats in the European Parliament after the elections in June and before the United States votes for president in November. However, the notion that it had already been called off has been shaken by the growing support Callas is receiving on social networks and a report from the Bloomberg agency, which says that the Romanian President also wants to run for the post. .

Rutte has been praised for his long political career, but when it comes to NATO, he lacks some of the characteristics many would like to see in a new secretary general. For example, that she is a woman or that she comes from Eastern Europe. It is even considered relevant that it belongs to a country that meets the NATO objective of spending 2 percent of GDP on defence, unlike Estonia and Romania, the Netherlands does not.

Support for Kailash is growing

Ben Tallis, a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations, helped put forward Callas’ candidacy following the Munich Security Conference in mid-February. For them, Estonians’ assertive leadership style is what NATO needs.

Other prominent voices have joined this trend, including Andrew Michta, director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Strategic Initiative, for whom Rutte is “not the right candidate.” Michta prefers one of the allies on the East Coast who “understands the existential nature of the Russian threat.” “There is still time to correct the course,” he said.

Tallis suggests that the motion arose from, for him, an attempt to discourage dissent that might delay consensus around Rutte. He said, “The fact that such a credible candidate (Kailas) is getting a wave of popular support is frightening to those who want to fix it within an elite.”

Is it time for transparency?

Tallis believes that the opaque method of choosing the new NATO chief is a more important problem than the feasibility of any candidate for the post. “They are trying to stop this process, and if they do, they will only create problems in the future,” he says. “People have become more involved in defense policy over the past two years than ever before and want to feel represented in the process, not outside of it.”

He also calls for taking into account expectations that the next Secretary-General will not be from Northern Europe, like Norwegian Stoltenberg and his predecessors Denmark’s Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer from the Netherlands. “We have had Central and Eastern European countries in NATO for 25 years and they have never had a secretary general,” Tallis said.

Assess the Eastern Flank Experience

This last point was reiterated by Cristian Dorobantu, Security and Defense Advisor to the Romanian Parliament, who believes that his country’s outgoing president would best embody those characteristics. “There is a feeling in Eastern Europe about NATO’s stance towards Russia,” he told DW from Bucharest. “He has been very lenient, including sanctions, actions, aid sent to Ukraine and the whole situation in general.”

To compete, any potential Secretary-General must be nominated by his or her country’s ambassador to NATO. At the moment, it is not known whether Iohannis formally asked to put his name forward, leading to speculation that he is more interested in increasing the visibility of his name to aspire to other positions that open up after the European Parliament. Can take. Election. Such as the presidency of the European Commission and the European Council.

It is also unclear whether Callas’ name has been formally raised with NATO, although his public comments indicate his desire to seek the position. The same applies to Latvia’s Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins, who broke the unwritten rule of not campaigning for office. Either way, NATO officials insist that the only official candidate is Rutte.

(dzc/rr)