A woman at the head of NATO for the first time?: who is Mette Frederiksen, the favourite

BORN He’s about to have a woman at his command for the first time in his history. The current secretary general, former Norwegian Social Democrat prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, is expected to leave office in September after seeing how it stretched out last year.

The annual NATO summit in Vilnius in early July should serve to clarify who will succeed Stoltenberg, but all the lights are on on another Nordic Social Democrat prime minister, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen.

The still head of government of his country meets most unofficial requirements succeed Stoltenberg in the NATO headquarters office in Evere, just outside Brussels.

Denmark is a deeply Atlanticist country, Frederiksen has a good relationship with most of the heads of government of the Member States, she is a woman (NATO has long wanted a woman in charge) and meets basic requirements, such as knowledge of languages.

Good relationships

You are also head of government (other names that sound like “only” ministers), your country is neither one of the smallest nor one of the largest partners. Denmark has not hesitated to support Ukraine and send weapons. Placed in the more liberal wing of the European Social Democratshis figure is not annoying for liberal governments like the French and the Dutch and he comes from a social democratic family like the German and Spanish.

frederiksen he still has to pass the White House exam. President Joe Biden invited her to Washington in June and the invitation is seen by the Danish press as practically a job interview. Without the approval of the tenant of the Oval Office, there is no candidacy forward.

Atlantic sources ensure that the Danish satisfies most of the requirements and that if NATO wants a woman in command, she is one of the few in operation.

Frederiksen also has cons because nobody is perfect. The first is that a Dane, one of his predecessors as prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, He was former Secretary General of NATO between 2009 and 2014.

If we add to this that the current one is Norwegian, the Atlantic Alliance would be in the hands of Scandinavian politicians for almost two decades. It seems like a small obstacle if countries in the east or south of the continent don’t have a more powerful candidate.

little competition

In the east, the name of the former European Commissioner and former Lithuanian president appeared several times Dalia Gribauskaite. But Western capitals do not want to place someone from one of the most warlike countries against Russia. They think it would attract the bonfire. In France, Italy, Spain, Portugal or Greece, there is no woman in government and never has been, and there seems to be no female minister interested.

Former British Prime Minister Theresa May has appeared a few times in the lists of names but doesn’t seem to show interest anymore. The Politico online newspaper also reports on Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace and even Spanish President Pedro Sánchez.

The second major scam that Frederiksen drags is that his country is far from fulfilling the political commitment of NATO member states (more than half do not respect it) to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. But to correct that, on Tuesday his government announced that by the end of this decade it will have tripled its military spending from the current 1.38% to over 3.5% of GDP.