Who Will Be the Next NATO Secretary-General?

Happy Wednesday! Our hearts go out to Derek Myers, a former staffer for Rep. George Santos running for Congress, who not only accidentally announced his concession in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District primary Tuesday afternoon well before the polls had closed but also made an unfortunate typo in a subsequent release explaining the error. 

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Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Hong Kong’s legislature approved a broad security law Tuesday providing the government with sweeping authority to crack down on political dissent and protests deemed national security threats. John Lee, the city’s Beijing-aligned chief executive, proposed the law in January, after which international observers and human rights groups swiftly condemned the proposal as a vehicle for authorities to further erode freedoms in the city. The Legislative Council adopted the bill in record time on a vote of 89-0. 
• Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng suggested on Thursday that U.S. Special Forces have been deployed to Taiwan’s outlying islands—including an island just 3 miles from mainland China—to help train the island democracy’s troops. U.S. defense officials have not commented publicly on deployments to Taiwan, but Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen first confirmed in 2021 the presence of U.S. forces in Taiwan amid growing threats from China.
• Retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, the former head of U.S. Central Command who is also retired, both testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday in a hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal. They blamed the State Department for delaying evacuation orders, contributing to the chaos of the military’s departure. Milley said the order to proceed with a noncombatant evacuation operation “came too late.” McKenzie agreed. “I believe that the events of mid and late August 2021 were the direct result of delaying the initiation of the NEO for several months,” he said.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson reached an agreement with Democratic leadership Monday night on a second “minibus” spending package to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year—President Joe Biden signed into law a $459 billion package earlier this month funding part of the government, but the remaining portion will run out of money on Saturday. It’s unclear if lawmakers will be able to move the deal through both chambers before the deadline. 
• The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a ruling to allow Texas to begin enforcing a state law that empowers local law enforcement to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, rejecting the Biden administration’s attempt to block enforcement. But hours later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit blocked its implementation again. Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra issued a preliminary injunction on the law, Texas Senate Bill 4, but the 5th Circuit issued a temporary stay on Ezra’s order, prompting the Biden administration to make an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that since the 5th Circuit’s stay was temporary, the case should remain in the lower court for now while the proceedings progress. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, noted, “If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this court.” The 5th Circuit quickly scheduled more oral arguments for Wednesday morning.
• Florida, Ohio, Kansas, and Arizona held their presidential primaries on Tuesday. Biden and former President Donald Trump have already clinched their parties’ nominations, and they each easily won in Tuesday’s primaries. Down ballot, Bernie Moreno won the Republican Senate primary in Ohio. Moreno, the Trump-endorsed candidate in the race, beat out state Sen. Matt Dolan, who was backed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Moreno will face Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown in November. 

The NATO Leadership Contest Takes Shape

The process of selecting a new secretary-general of NATO is shrouded in mystery, but one thing does seem increasingly likely to be true of the military alliance’s next leader: He’ll be tall. The two leading candidates—Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis—both stand at about 6-foot-4. 

Outgoing Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg leaves Brussels after roughly a decade on the job, and his tenure will be remembered mostly in the context of Russia’s invasions of Ukraine. NATO members formalized their pledge to spend 2 percent of their respective GDPs on their own defense in 2014, after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. And he also oversaw Finland and Sweden’s accession to the military alliance in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. 

Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, had served two four-year terms as secretary-general when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Though he was meant to hand off the baton in October of that year, alliance members agreed to extend his term twice—in one-year increments—to avoid having to pick a successor in a time of crisis. But the contest to succeed him is still colored by that conflict. Rutte and Iohannis represent an East-West showdown that is laying bare geographical divides in the alliance, with NATO allies in Eastern Europe increasingly concerned about a NATO-Russia war and the U.S. election casting a pall of uncertainty over the proceedings. 

The role of secretary-general is heavy on negotiating and dealmaking. The alliance cannot act if any of its now-32 members are in open disagreement—each country doesn’t have to agree, per se, they just can’t openly disagree, thereby blocking a decision. 

Stoltenberg made good use of his decade at the helm. When NATO members formalized their 2 percent pledge in 2014, only three allies—the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Greece—met that level of spending. Ten years later, 18 member countries of 32 are expected to meet the benchmark—including Poland, which is set to double that figure to spend more as a percentage of GDP than any other ally. And the negotiations to bring Finland and Sweden—two formerly neutral countries—into the alliance were fraught, to say the least. Both countries—but particularly Sweden—met resistance from Turkey and Hungary, intra-NATO disagreements that took more than a year and a half to resolve. “He’s had a good track record and in the end, he’s managed to get Sweden in, despite all the political hurdles, and get Finland in and build support for Ukraine as much as he could,” Iulia Joja, director of the Black Sea program at the Middle East Institute who previously worked at NATO, told TMD. 

Stoltenberg’s ad hoc term extensions reveal just how vibes-based the process of selecting a new leader is. There is no formal vote or campaigning season: NATO officials have suggested they want to announce Stoltenberg’s successor at the July summit in Washington, D.C.—but they want to make the actual decision by the end of March. Tradition, not NATO policy, dictates that the leader be European, rather than American or Canadian. Yet it’s nevertheless true that the U.S. carries a great deal of sway over the other members. Each member’s delegation debates the relative merits of a prospective new leader until they have consensus. 

Rutte—a down-home figure who famously drives a beat-up Saab station wagon—has spent the last 13 years as the Dutch prime minister and earned a reputation as a consensus builder in his home country. And he appears to be the far-and-away favorite to replace Stoltenberg. The U.S.—as well as the U.K, France, and Germany, collectively known as the “Quad” in the alliance—backed Rutte in February, even before any other candidates expressed interest. Politico reported last month that some 20 countries were behind Rutte who, if selected, would be the fourth Dutchman to hold the post. 

Part of Rutte’s appeal seems to be his reputation as a “Donald Trump whisperer,” at a time the alliance is readying itself for a potential second Trump term. Last month, Trump shocked allies across the Atlantic when he suggested that he’d told a NATO member during his presidency that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russians should do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members that fail to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. The comments reignited fears that, if elected, Trump may try to kneecap the alliance or withdraw the U.S. entirely.

At a particularly fraught NATO summit in 2018, Trump lambasted the assembled leaders for failing to meet the 2 percent obligation—after threatening his advisers, including former National Security Adviser John Bolton, that he would withdraw the U.S. from the alliance. Rutte was reportedly key to smoothing Trump’s ruffled feathers, validating his concerns about the 2 percent benchmark and convincing Trump that his pressure campaign had succeeded in increasing members’ defense spending. 

But Rutte’s own government has never met the 2 percent spending figure in his 13 years as prime minister—though the informal benchmark existed as early as 2006. Though the Netherlands looks set to spend 2 percent this year, Dutch tardiness on the issue could nevertheless undercut his candidacy. “Trump or not Trump, these things matter, of course,” Joja said. “It’s also about, how much are you contributing to the alliance that you want to lead?” 

Rutte isn’t without his detractors. His previous support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal with Russia has raised concerns that he may not be sufficiently tough on Moscow to meet the moment—even though his government also spearheaded efforts to get F-16 jets to Ukraine. 

He’s also having trouble garnering support among Eastern European allies. Hungary has already indicated it won’t support his candidacy, citing Rutte’s previous criticisms of the country’s democratic backsliding. “We certainly can’t support the election of a person to the position of NATO’s secretary-general, who previously wanted to force Hungary on its knees,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said earlier this month, referencing Rutte’s 2021 comments from 2021 regarding Hungary’s harsh LGBT policies. “My goal is to bring Hungary to its knees on this issue,” Rutte had said. 

Rutte now faces a challenge from Iohannis, who has been president of Romania for 10 years. Iohannis serves as a potential champion for the countries most imperiled by Putin’s war in Ukraine—most of which have significantly increased their military spending and emphasized the importance of a Ukrainian victory as a bulwark against Russian aggression. Those same countries have been frustrated by what some top eastern flank leaders feel is a rushed decision to back Rutte. Iohannis jumped into the race earlier this month, after the Quad had made clear its support for Rutte. 

“Solidarity, unity and cohesion are the cornerstones of NATO, fit for an ever-evolving environment thanks to decades of meaningful transformation and adaptation,” Iohannis wrote in an op-ed for the European edition of Politico. “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has shattered peace and gravely altered our security environment, reverberating beyond the confines of the Euro-Atlantic area. And Russia will remain the most significant and direct threat to the Alliance for the foreseeable future.” 

Romania has a stronger record on spending than the Netherlands. Since 2017, the Romanian government has committed to spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense every year through 2027. In 2022, the defense budget was set at 2.5 percent of GDP. 

Iohannis brought together nine of the easternmost NATO members—Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia—in 2015 for what’s come to be known as the Bucharest Nine format. The informal grouping has met regularly since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and has advocated for laying the groundwork for Ukrainian membership in NATO “once conditions allow.” Notably, though, Iohannis visited Ukraine in June 2022 not with leaders of fellow members of that informal bloc—many of whom visited Kyiv much sooner after Russia’s invasion—but with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and then-Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. 

The new secretary-general “must be someone who comes from Eastern Europe but straddles the East-West fault line within the alliance, and who can also strike a firm but balanced tone on the Russian threat,” argued Gabriel Elefteriu, deputy director at the British think tank Council on Geostrategy. “That choice is Klaus Iohannis.” 

Neither man’s path to the secretary-generalship is clear, at this stage. Iohannis jumped into the race so late that it could be difficult to generate momentum, but Rutte still faces steep opposition. And still other names are circulating as potential candidates, including Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas—the lone woman being considered—and Krišjānis Kariņš, the Latvian foreign minister who was previously prime minister, though neither has officially announced a bid. However, they’ve both been outspoken about their concerns regarding Rutte’s candidacy. “There is a feeling among the new member states—and 20 years is not so new any more—and it seems to be quite universal: Is it perhaps the right time to open up the discussion and to look also at these countries as a potential source of a leader?” Kariņš said last week. “Are our arguments and concerns really being heard or not?”

Worth Your Time

• Classical education is making a comeback, Emma Green wrote in The New Yorker. Green even took a reporting trip to Kenya to see the growth of the movement in Africa. “Classical schools offer a traditional liberal-arts education, often focussing on the Western canon and the study of citizenship,” she wrote. “The classical approach, which prioritizes some ways of teaching that have been around for more than two thousand years, is radically different from that of public schools, where what kids learn—and how they learn it—varies wildly by district, school, and even classroom. … In Texas, enrollment in classical charter schools is growing most quickly among Asian and Hispanic students. In Arizona, a charter-school network called Espiritu, which mostly serves immigrants, recently overhauled its curricula to be more classical. And yet, perhaps inevitably, the movement has also felt the gravitational pull of the culture wars. With many classical schools focussed on moral formation and civics—and, incidentally, white male authors—this educational mode is primed to be co-opted into something that’s not just traditional but reactionary.”

Presented Without Comment

The Hill: Bernie Sanders Launching Podcast

The 82-year-old lawmaker wrote Tuesday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that he would release the project this week. Sanders added he plans to discuss his recent book, “It’s OK to be Angry about Capitalism,” in the first few episodes.

Also Presented Without Comment

Politico: Brazil’s [former President Jair] Bolsonaro Is Indicted for First Time Over Alleged Falsification of His Own Vaccination Data

Toeing the Company Line

• What did Trump mean by his “bloodbath comments”? Who will be the next leader of NATO? Will Congress actually ban TikTok? Mike was joined by Drucker, Mary, and Grayson to discuss all that and more on last night’s Dispatch Live (🔒). Members who missed the conversation can catch a rerun, either video or audio-only, by clicking here. 
• In the newsletters: Nick unpacked (🔒) the strange combination of transactionalism and radicalism animating Trump’s candidacy. 
• On the podcasts: On the latest episode of The Remnant, Jonah interviewed Civil War historian Allen Guelzo about his latest book Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment. 
• On the site today: Michael Sobolik argues that congressional action against TikTok “couldn’t come a minute too soon,” Kevin suggests that one way to fix journalism would be to get rid of journalism school, and Jonah criticizes the media’s response to Trump’s “bloodbath” comments on the grounds that such overreaction allows the former president to call himself a martyr.

Let Us Know

Do you think classical learning should be the future of public education?