Stoltenberg rewarded for toeing Washington's line: China Daily editorial

It is telling that US President Joe Biden has welcomed the decision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to extend Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's mandate until October next year.

Biden praised Stoltenberg for his "leadership, experience, and judgment" in the statement, saying that he "has brought our Alliance through the most significant challenges in European security since World War II". But what has really secured the former Norwegian prime minister the fourth extension to his tenure as the head of NATO is his proven readiness to do Washington's bidding.

Rather than being "stronger, more united and purposeful than it has ever been" since Stoltenberg took up the position in 2014, the transatlantic military alliance has never been more of a US puppet.

Over the past decade, with Stoltenberg at the helm, NATO has suspended most of its cooperation with Russia, sowing the seeds of calamity for the Ukraine crisis today. At the same time, it has been expanding eastward, accepting Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020, and northward, with Finland becoming the newest member this year and Sweden on the waiting list, while actively supporting the United States' actions in Central Asia and the Middle East, as well as its China-targeted "Indo-Pacific" strategy.

In other words, as a staunch proxy of Washington, Stoltenberg has overseen the crucial transition of the bloc from a so-called defensive security alliance to a de facto expansive, aggressive warmongering geopolitical tool of Washington. This transition has come at the cost of European interests and strategic autonomy, and world peace and stability. No wonder Biden crowed in the statement that "Today, our Alliance is stronger, more united and purposeful than it has ever been".

A new NATO chief should have been agreed on at the NATO summit in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, next week, with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen appearing to be the front-runner.

However, immediately after an Oval Office sit-down with Biden and a separate meeting with CIA Director William Burns on June 5, Frederiksen said that she was no longer a candidate to be NATO secretary-general and would back Stoltenberg if he was willing to extend his tenure.

To avoid being seen as the cause of that change, the Biden administration has attributed Frederiksen's withdrawal to Warsaw's opposition, as some anonymous US officials pointed out that Poland opposes the next secretary general coming from a Nordic state after Stoltenberg's long tenure. But they stopped short of explaining why Poland's opposition has not prevented Stoltenberg from getting another extension.

To have Stoltenberg on the post for another year is conducive to ensuring the continuity of NATO's support for the US on the two fronts it has opened, with Russia and China respectively.

Notably, the next summit of NATO is scheduled to be held in Washington on July 9-11, 2024, the 75th anniversary of the transatlantic alliance, when Stoltenberg's extended tenure will be nearing an end and the US will be in a better position to earmark his successor according to how the Ukraine crisis and its China containment strategy have evolved by then.