No-one really thought that Klaus Iohannis, Romania’s president since 2014, was going to be the next secretary general of Nato. Iohannis put himself forward in March as a candidate who would bring a new perspective to the leadership of the alliance, but it was never a plausible bid. When Romania’s Supreme Council of National Defence announced last week that Iohannis was withdrawing his name, it removed the last obstacle for Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, to be anointed.
Rutte is the ultimate technocrat.
Pending formal confirmation, Rutte will take office as 14th secretary general of Nato on 1 October 2024, succeeding Jens Stoltenberg of Norway who has served for a decade. He will be the fourth Dutchman to occupy the post, and comes to Brussels after 14 years as PM of the Netherlands. (This assumes that Dick Schoof, the former intelligence chief selected by the coalition government in the Hague, is formally approved: Rutte resigned in July 2023 and has been in a caretaker role since then.) There is widespread satisfaction with Rutte’s candidacy, as he is regarded as a safe pair of hands, but, in truth, he is a grimly lowest-common-denominator choice.
Stoltenberg has found it difficult to leave as secretary general. Appointed in 2014, he was given a second four-year term in 2018, but after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 his departure was postponed until 2023 and then again until 2024. This led to a protracted semi-public contest for Nato’s top job: early runners included Chrystia Freedland, deputy prime minister of Canada, and Mario Draghi, former Italian prime minister and president of the European Central Bank.
By the middle of 2023, the UK’s Ben Wallace was being touted as a candidate, and with characteristic honesty he admitted to wanting the job. It emerged, however, that Wallace would not win the approval of Washington, despite strong credentials. President Joe Biden was said instead to be leaning towards Mette Frederiksen, prime minister of Denmark, or the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. If it was not to be Wallace, the outstanding choice on ability was surely the Estonian prime minister, Kaja Kallas, an articulate and persuasive critic of Russia. But Nato heads of government were suddenly afflicted with a fear of provoking Vladimir Putin.
So it was that support began to coalesce around Rutte, who realised he would soon be unemployed (although there is a theory that becoming Nato chief was his plan all along). He might have said in July last year: ‘When a new government takes over, I shall leave politics’, but no-one is immune to the lure of one last job. He was, in the end, the candidate to whom no-one objected.
One of the most pressing issues facing the new secretary general is spending. Since 2006 it has been agreed that Nato member states should spend a minimum of two per cent of their gross domestic product on defence, a requirement reiterated in 2014. Compliance has been unforgivably slow. In 2014 only three members met the target, and a paltry seven did so by 2022. This year, it is expected that 23 countries will finally fulfil their obligations, though that leaves nine who will not. Crucially, this will be the first year since the 1990s that the Netherlands will spend more than two per cent on defence. Remember, Rutte has been prime minister since 2010. It is hard to see why those still underspending should listen to a fellow offender.
Rutte is an amiable, consensual, managerial figure with an almost obsessive craving for routine. His hallmark is flexibility, a man who takes well-considered advice and has never been known to have anything resembling a vision or a grand strategy. Before politics, he worked in human resources for consumer goods multinational Unilever, rising to board level in his 30s: Rutte is the ultimate technocrat.
When Nato faces so many challenges, we are entitled to ask: is that all? Is that enough? As secretary general, Rutte will need to make sure defence spending continues to rise; maintain military assistance to Ukraine; manage Kyiv’s potential accession and the reforms necessary to allow that to happen; soothe eastern European member states who feel exposed and marginalised; deal with the ongoing membership aspirations of Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; and, perhaps, handle a second presidency for the profoundly Nato-sceptical Donald Trump.
The role of Nato’s chief civil servant is an enormously difficult and multifarious one. Sometimes it requires an emollient, compromise-forging persuader. As the alliance celebrates its 75th birthday, however, that seems inadequate. It needs an eloquent, dynamic leader with a clear vision for the next five to 10 years, someone who can set a destination and then create a credible route to reach it. The tragedy is that there were good candidates available: Italy’s Federica Mogherini, Ben Wallace, most obviously Kaja Kallas. There was a chance for a transformative leader. Whether Rutte can step up remains to be seen.
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