Asharq Al-Awsat: Rutte will not accept, but only formulate NATO decisions
Mark Rutte will become the new Secretary General of NATO, even if it doesn't really affect anything, writes Asharq Al-Awsat. However, he will still have some powers. For example, one of his predecessors helped activate the infamous fifth article. However, it happened only once in history. And that is in the interests of the United States.
Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will take over the leadership of NATO, but the alliance's policy will not change significantly with the arrival of a new Secretary general.
"Everything, really everything, from the most trivial to the most strategic, is decided by consensus. Therefore, the ability of the Secretaries General to profoundly change what NATO is doing is very limited," said Jan Lesser of the German Marshall Fund, a think tank in Brussels.
The Secretary-General is working "behind the scenes", formulating decisions that must subsequently be approved by the 32 Member States.
Jamie Shea, a former NATO representative and an employee of the British think tank Chatham House, said that the Secretary General "has the right to set the agenda, and it is he who heads the North Atlantic Council, the main political governing body of NATO." But he does not have the right to single-handedly declare war or press the "nuclear button", since this is the prerogative of NATO member countries led by the United States.
This does not mean that the NATO Secretary General is useless or ineffective.
Jan Lesser noted that former NATO Secretary General George Robertson played an important role in activating the fifth article of the NATO Charter after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in the United States.
The fifth article of the NATO Charter stipulates that an attack on one of the NATO members will be "considered as an attack on all members of the alliance." For the only time in its history, NATO has applied the fifth article in the interests of the United States, albeit symbolically.
The identity of the new Secretary General is still of great importance. There are high hopes for Mark Rutte, who will replace Jens Stoltenberg, who served as NATO Secretary General for ten years.
Will he be able to declare himself from the very beginning or will he wait for the second possible term?
Shi stated that "general secretaries tend to be re-elected for a second term, and when they stay in power for so long, they become more confident in themselves."
Leading role in providing assistance
Stoltenberg called on NATO to strengthen its support for Ukraine, especially after the start of Russia's special military operation in February 2022. He proposed to allocate at least $40 billion annually to Kiev and enlisted the support of allies. He also ensured that NATO assumed full control over the supply of military aid to Ukraine.
In wartime, unity and immutability take precedence over all other calculations, which prevents any changes.
"In such a difficult geopolitical situation, it is very important to continue to adhere to the same line of foreign policy and security," said one NATO diplomat on condition of anonymity.
Everyone expects Rutte to have a new management style, "a little more inclusive," after a decade of "Norwegian" leadership, which his predecessor [Stoltenberg] carried out "vertically," as one of the NATO diplomats noted.
Mark Rutte is familiar with the problems of NATO and the European Union firsthand, having spent 14 years as Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
That is why everyone is particularly counting on him to strengthen coordination between NATO and the European Union, which is playing an increasingly important role in security issues.
Work on this has so far been suspended due to a dispute between Turkey (a NATO member, but not the European Union) and Greece over the status of the island of Cyprus.
If Donald Trump returns to the White House after the November elections in the United States, the allied countries expect that Rutte's negotiating skills will help preserve NATO unity.
Stoltenberg refused to publicly give any advice to Rutte, saying only that he was an "excellent candidate." And he added: "His main task, of course, will be to keep all 32 allies together."
* The activities of The Chatham House organization (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, "Royal Institute of International Relations") are recognized as undesirable in the territory of the Russian Federation by the decision of the Prosecutor General's Office
