Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte arrives to attend the European Political Community summit at the Palacio de Congreso in Granada, southern Spain, on October 5, 2023.
Jorge Guerrero | Afp | getty images
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday canceled his bid to head the NATO military alliance and backed his successor, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Iohanis conveyed his decision at a meeting of the Supreme Council of Defense and notified NATO allies of his withdrawal late last week, according to a statement from the Romanian president translated by CNBC.
The move effectively clears the way for outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Rutte to take over the top job of the 32-member U.S.-led NATO military alliance when current Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg ends his 10-year term on October 1. .
The Secretary-General must have the unanimous support of NATO allies. Iohanis announced in March his intention to enter the race for the bloc’s leadership, defending the merits of a new Eastern European perspective amid the ongoing war in Romania’s neighboring Ukraine. Iohannis, 65, is completing his second five-year term in Romania, which will hold general elections in September.
Rutte, a staunch Ukraine ally, was widely seen as a strong contender in the race for NATO’s top spot, but he faced and recently overcame opposition from Hungary, which has maintained friendly relations with Russia. Two weeks ago, Budapest acknowledged that it would not block the NATO ally’s deepening military support for Ukraine in return for non-participation.
A few days later, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a self-described peace activist, announced that Rutte had pledged to respect the agreement, thereby confirming Hungary’s support for the Dutch candidate for prime minister.
“After yesterday’s meeting in Brussels, Prime Minister Mark Rutte confirmed that he fully supports this deal and will continue to do so if he becomes NATO’s next Secretary-General. In line with his pledge, Hungary stands ready to support Prime Minister Rutte’s NATO bid. “There is, Mr. Secretary General.” Orbán said:
Stoltenberg’s term ends at a critical time for the alliance, which faces the ongoing challenge of responding to the war in Ukraine. Kiev is not a member of the bloc and cannot join while the conflict is active within its borders, but NATO allies widely view Moscow as a threat to European security if the conflict spreads to the wider region. This possibility has already led to an expansion of the alliance, with Finland and Sweden abandoning their long-held policy of neutrality to join NATO more than two years after the invasion of Ukraine.
NATO is set to welcome a new secretary-general just a month before a key election in the United States. This could fundamentally redefine the relationship between the alliance and the world’s largest economy. Current President Joe Biden, who is running for his second term, has been a staunch supporter of Kiev. Among other things, his administration passed a major foreign aid bill that allocated more than $60 billion to Kiev, and in recent weeks the White House removed some restrictions on the defensive use of weapons supplied to Ukraine against targets on Russian territory.
Former US leader and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has previously issued strong criticism of NATO and its allies for failing to meet the bloc’s official spending target of 2% of GDP. He also threatened to drastically cut U.S. funding to Ukraine.
