Two-thirds of NATO member states have signaled their support for outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to take up the mantle of the NATO Secretary-General after the current leader Jens Stoltenberg’s term runs out in October this year. The latest endorsement came from U.S. President Joe Biden and is expected to sway the remaining ten member states so that Rutte can be approved unanimously.
NATO’s European wing has always been somewhat of an extension of the U.S.’ overwhelming military power, which is why the tradition emerged that the alliance’s secretary-general would always come from Europe. The current boss, Jens Stoltenberg, was the prime minister of Norway before replacing the former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen at the top of NATO in 2014, whose predecessor had been a Dutch foreign affairs minister, Jaap de Hoop Schaffer.
Now it’s time for another Dutchman, it seems, despite the increasingly frequent calls that NATO should finally break from the pattern of nominating only Western European men and finally give the job to a woman or someone from East or Central Europe.
“After very intense rounds of discussions among the allies we are now at the point where over 20 NATO allies are prepared to support Prime Minister Rutte as the next secretary-general,” an unnamed NATO official told Politico.
This means Rutte still needs to convince the remaining countries of the 31-member alliance, but according to Dutch defense chief General Eichelsheim, the prime minister is “very likely” to get the job in the end.
Rutte’s chances for success just skyrocketed after a U.S. official revealed that President Biden is also throwing his support behind him on Wednesday, February 21st, although the White House has not yet confirmed this publicly. Nonetheless, diplomats are expecting the news to sway the reluctant member states too and NATO can go ahead with the official nomination in a month or two.
While there is no way to know which countries are not entirely comfortable with the idea of giving the important post to Rutte, it’s safe to assume that most are from Eastern and Central Europe and had been hoping for a different outcome.
For instance, one major hopeful was Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, who announced her intention to enter the race in November last year and was backed by several officials who argued that no one knows how to deal with Putin more than those bordering Russia.
The same argument was put forward by another hopeful, Latvian Foreign Minister Krišjānis Kariņš, who also said the NATO top job should go to a country that fulfills the 2% defense spending requirement. Only eleven do at the moment, and most of them Eastern Europeans including both Estonia and Latvia, but NATO hopes another seven will reach the threshold by the end of the year.
On the other hand, the Baltic leaders are sometimes seen as loose cannons when it comes to Russia, and an overly militant anti-Russian NATO chief might complicate things once the war is over and it is time for discussions. Kaja Kallas, for instance, has been recently put on a wanted list in Russia, so it’s safe to say that her nomination would be seen as a provocation by Moscow.
Rutte, in contrast, has proven to be a firm but not too aggressive supporter of the Ukrainian cause. On the other hand, he comes from a country that not only produced three NATO secretaries-general in the past decades already but one that might not even reach the 2% financial obligation in 2024 either. Last year, the Netherlands spent about 1.7% of its GDP on defense and is estimated to reach 1.96% this year, just below the required threshold.
In public, however, Rutte never misses a chance to remind others of the spending obligation and even defended Trump’s comments, saying that the former president “was completely right” to force Europeans to live up to their commitments. “Let’s stop moaning and nagging and whining about Trump,” the Dutch PM said at the Munich Security Conference last week. “We need to invest in our defense expenditure. We need to massively ramp up arms production and then we need to massively do more in support of Ukraine.”
But while he presents himself as a trustworthy leader who’s ready to take on Russia—and already cozying up to Trump in case he happens to win the elections in November—let us not forget that Rutte lost the trust and support of his own electorate last year.
In late November 2023, Dutch voters overwhelmingly chose Geert Wilders’ right-wing populist PVV instead of Rutte’s nominally center-right, but more or less liberal party, the VVD, which has been ruling the Netherlands for over 14 years. The governing VVD ended up in third place with only 15%, and although Rutte himself was not up for reelection, the defeat was largely seen as a clear sign of voters rejecting his decade-long leadership.
