Estonian Premier Eyes NATO’s Top Job Even Amid Calls to Resign
(Bloomberg) -- Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas threw her hat in the ring for NATO’s top job, confirming a broadly suspected ambition by the hawkish Baltic leader for the post.
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Asked whether she’d be interested in succeeding Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, whose extended leadership runs until October next year, the Estonian leader offered an unequivocal response.
“Yes,” Kallas told a defense-related event in Washington organized by Politico Tuesday. Alliance members are looking for a woman to fill the post from a newer member state that meets the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s target of spending more than 2% of gross domestic product on defense, she said.
Kallas, who has burnished a reputation for standing firm against Vladimir Putin and supporting Ukraine’s war effort, made clear that she fits the bill. But the 46-year-old premier’s geopolitical ambitions clash with Estonia’s domestic political scene, where she faces calls to resign over a scandal involving her husband’s business activity in Russia.
The Estonian leader has vowed to stay on after it emerged in August that her husband’s logistics company had been making deliveries to a client in Russia even as she was calling for all trade with the country to halt.
Kallas insisted that she was unaware of the activity and her spouse, Arvo Hallik, sold his shares in the business. But the revelation triggered accusations across the political spectrum of hypocrisy. Estonia’s president has said she should have quit, while her Reform party is sliding in the polls.
The developments were a setback for the leader of the nation of 1.3 million bordering Russia, who secured a convincing election victory in March on her popularity for standing against the Kremlin.
In the US capital, Kallas met with officials including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to press the case to continue assistance for Kyiv as support shows signs of waning. Her visited coincided with the passage of a funding bill in the House that doesn’t include aid to Ukraine.
“I totally understand and believe that it is beatable,” Politico quoted Kallas as saying, referring to Russia. “Ukraine can win this war.”
Kallas’s gender would be an advantage in a bid, with many member states favoring a woman after a succession of 13 men overseeing the alliance since 1952. But she’ll face competition. Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte signaled last month that he’s open to the job.
The Estonian teased Rutte’s candidacy in her mention of the gender and 2% benchmark profile, two attributes the Dutchman clearly lacks. “So it’s logical it’s Mark Rutte,” Kallas quipped.
But some NATO allies have also viewed Baltic candidates as too hawkish on Russia to secure unanimous support. That dynamic may have changed following Russia’s invasion, which has sparked the biggest overhaul of the alliance’s defenses since the end of the Cold War.
--With assistance from Natalia Drozdiak.
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