The competition for NATO leadership will be settled this week
Photo: Reuters
Joe Biden welcomes the Prime Ministers of Great Britain and Denmark to Washington this week for meetings that will include the topic of providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine but also discussions about the NATO summit in July and, probably, the future head of the Alliance, The Guardian and Reuters report. Britain and Denmark are playing a key role in the joint international plan to provide Ukraine with modern military aircraft, an effort that is only just beginning after Biden recently approved it after months of rejecting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s requests to receive the planes. American Biden will meet with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Monday and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday. The talks come at a crucial time in the 15-month war as Ukraine prepares for its long-awaited counter-offensive. “One of the topics we will be looking to get their views on—and the president will be keen to share his perspective—is represented by the long-term security needs of Ukraine,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “And this is really where the F-16 comes into play,” he confirmed. Denmark has purchased dozens of American-made F-16s since the 1970s and has indicated it is open to supplying Ukraine with some. Britain has strongly advocated for a coalition to supply Ukraine with fighter jets and says it will support Ukraine in getting the F-16s it wants. But Britain does not have any F-16s and has ruled out sending Royal Air Force Typhoons. Instead, Britain says it will provide Ukrainian pilots with basic training on Western-standard aircraft starting in June to prepare them to fly the F-16. The Ukrainian pilots will then go to other countries for the next stages of training.
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen will meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday, amid speculation that the White House will take advantage of this visit to choose her as the first female NATO Secretary General. According to diplomats, 45-year-old Mette Frederiksen is emerging as a serious candidate to replace Jens Stoltenberg, who is due to retire as head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in September, Reuters reports. She came into the international spotlight last year as a staunch supporter of Ukraine in its war with Russia, gaining respect for her efforts to strengthen Western unity in the face of the conflict. “I could spend a lot of time saying good things about Mette Frederiksen. She is one of the most skilled heads of state in Europe,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said last week when asked about Frederiksen as a potential candidate for the post of NATO chief. “There is great respect in Europe for the work he did as prime minister and for the person he is in international cooperation,” he said. The main obstacle to its potential bid is that Denmark has long been a modest defence spender, and pressure was needed to get Copenhagen to bring military spending to 2 percent of GDP, a key goal for NATO member states. But in December, Frederiksen and his new centrist government brought forward the plan to meet NATO’s goal by three years, until 2030. Last week, Copenhagen also announced big defence investments over the next 10 years and increased military aid to Ukraine. Frederiksen, a career politician who is also head of the Social Democratic Party, became the youngest Danish prime minister in history in 2019. She was re-elected last year after being widely applauded for leading the Nordic country through the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it has a limited profile beyond national borders. “It can be said that it didn’t really have an international profile,” said Jacob Kaarsbo, a security and defence analyst at Think Tank Europe. “But that changed when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began,” the analyst points out. Mette Frederikson has visited Ukraine three times since the war broke out in February 2022. And Denmark has provided significant financial and military aid to Ukraine, despite major deficiencies in its own defence. The country has also taken a leading role in training Ukrainian pilots and said it is open to supplying F-16 fighter jets. When the Nord Stream pipeline exploded in Danish waters last September, Frederiksen reacted by forming a rare coalition across the traditional left-right divide, arguing that political unity was needed at a time of international uncertainty. In February, she imposed an unpopular decision to eliminate a day off, a national holiday, which she said was necessary to finance increased defence spending. “She has a strong position in Denmark, but she is also a person who divides the population. Many see her as too domineering and greedy for power,” Hans Engell, a former Danish defence and justice minister, told Reuters. When former US President Donald Trump proposed in 2019 that Denmark buy Greenland, a sovereign territory of the Danish kingdom, Frederiksen rejected the offer as “absurd”. On the international stage, she managed to avoid open clashes with the president of Turkey, Tayyip Erdogan, and the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, demonstrating her ability to be pragmatic despite conflicting ideologies. “She is a tough and very ambitious lady. I think she will say yes if she feels that NATO countries can rally around her, of course, especially if Biden asks her to do so,” Engell said. Although she says that she is not running, she recently stopped saying that she is not interested in this position: “I am not running for any position. I have been invited to visit President Biden, which I am looking forward to,” said Mette Frederikson.
By Paul Bumman
