The Dutchman Mark Rutte is accumulating support to head NATO as secretary general. The acting Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who aspires to replace the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, has the support of 29 of the 32 allies of the military organization, according to Alliance sources. Rutte, a veteran liberal politician, is thus advancing his goal after securing the support of Turkey, which had shown suspicions about him. However, Romania, which supports its own candidate, the country’s president, Klaus Iohannis; Slovakia and Hungary have not given their support. And the appointment is made unanimously. The majority of allies believe that Rutte is the ideal person and hope that Iohannis will withdraw his candidacy after the European elections on June 9 and support Rutte, but they are also anxiously watching the possible blockade of Slovakia and the always fractious Hungary.
Rutte, who has led the Government of the Netherlands for 13 years, has commented that he is “optimistic” about his future in NATO and that he will not put pressure on allies. “I’m not going to call people and tell them ‘vote for me,’” he said in a recent interview with a Dutch media outlet.
Stoltenberg has led NATO for a decade and has expanded his mandate several times, but what appears to be his last ends this September. The United States asked the Norwegian last summer to continue for another year due to Russia’s war against Ukraine, in the absence of another consensus candidate. Washington had put on the table the name of the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who was Minister of Defense in her country, Germany, but her own Government, that of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, vetoed her for the position even before that it would be debated.
Now, although Rutte is the favorite, the candidacy of the Romanian Iohannis is delaying the decision, which the Alliance had wanted to take more than just in words to the Washington summit in July. Furthermore, the machinery had been activated to separate this election from the appointments for the major positions of the European Commission, so that the Secretary General of NATO would not enter the round of distribution by country after the European elections from the 6th to the 9th. of June. It is not clear whether this is the case, explain allied sources. In fact, some sources believe that Iohannis, whose mandate in Romania is already ending, is actually seeking a position as commissioner in the European Union.
Many voices within the Atlantic Alliance – to which Spain has belonged since 1982 – have demanded that the next secretary general be chosen from among one of the allies that fulfill the commitment to invest 2% of their GDP in defense. Neither the Netherlands (1.63%) nor Romania (1.60%) have reached that figure. Neither does Spain, the third ally from the bottom, which invests 1.23% of its GDP; The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, has set his sights on reaching 2% in 2029. Since 2014, with the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the subsequent arrival of Donald Trump to the White House in 2017, who insisted a lot on increasing the spending, and especially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the vast majority has greatly increased investment in defense.
However, with the prospect of a hypothetical return to power for Trump, who has already stressed once again that he would not defend an ally that does not comply with that 2% of defense spending, there are also increasing voices calling for better quantifying the contributions to NATO missions in other countries, and in research and development.
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If he eventually becomes secretary general this fall, Rutte, who comes from one of the so-called frugal countries and has always focused on budget control, will have to deal with all of that. He also with a complicated situation in Ukraine and what may happen in the United States. There is much concern in Europe about Trump’s possible victory in the US presidential elections in November and about the possibility that the US will withdraw its security umbrella or stop getting involved in supporting Ukraine.
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