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U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said he will not be the next NATO secretary-general.
“It’s not going to happen,” Wallace told The Economist in an interview published Wednesday night. The British defense chief has pitched himself for the NATO gig in recent months, with the U.K. at the forefront of providing Western support to Ukraine as it fights to fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion.
But Wallace told the magazine that the U.S. under President Joe Biden wanted current chief Jens Stoltenberg, a Norwegian who has been in post since 2014, to stay on in the role — deferring the decision on a successor until next year. Stoltenberg’s term has repeatedly been extended as the West coordinated its assistance to Ukraine in the wake of the Kremlin’s assault.
Some leaders of EU countries also have little appetite to hand the plum job to a Brit after Brexit, as POLITICO has previously reported.
“Maybe they want a prime minister,” Wallace said. Danish PM Mette Frederiksen — who met Biden in Washington earlier this month — has been mentioned regularly in diplomatic circles as a top candidate to succeed Stoltenberg.
In the interview, Wallace also conceded that French President Emmanuel Macron might be talking sense regarding European strategic autonomy.
“The French have a point in lots of areas,” he said. “The answer to everything is not America first, when it comes to procurement.”
Whoever eventually takes over from Stoltenberg at NATO will have a tough task, Wallace added. That person “is going to have to please both Macron and Biden.”
