Good choice.
Is it some kind of an unwritten rule the NATO Secretary General needed to be a former head of govt? That was also the case Stoltenberg and Rassmussen before him. I remember some earlier speculation on former British Defense Minister Ben Wallace and there was some criticism he was never PM.
It’s not a rule - but it’s become a lot more common. I know it had become a bit of an unspoken secret that they wanted someone with that level of clout to take over right now, in no small part because of the challenges posed in Ukraine… and by Trump.
Former Foreign/Defence ministers was common until quite recently. See Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (Dutch Foreign Minister) between 2004-09, and George Robertson (UK Secretary of Defence) in 1999-2003.
We’d offered Ben Wallace, and then also suggested William Hague (former Foreign Sec) and Theresa May, when Wallace failed to catch much attention.
