NATO head Stoltenberg set to head Munich Security Conference

With Jens Stoltenberg, the Munich Security Conference is gaining one of the most experienced and high-profile security experts in the Western world.

And he has the experience the world's most important international security policy summit needs right now: the war in Ukraine, the threat from China, and a possible second US presidential term for NATO-sceptic Donald Trump are just a few of the issues on the table.

As NATO Secretary General since 2014 and before that Prime Minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 to 2013, Jens Stoltenberg has been faced with numerous security policy challenges.

Stoltenberg, now 65, was born into international politics. His father was a Norwegian diplomat and defense minister, his aunt a Middle East expert who was married to a defense and foreign minister.

Nevertheless, there was little to suggest that the young Stoltenberg would later become NATO Secretary General — quite the opposite. As a young man, he took part in protests against NATO and the Vietnam War, and threw stones at the American embassy.

The devastating attack by right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik on a summer camp organized by the youth wing of the Stoltenberg's Labor Party (Arbeiderpartiet) in 2011, in which 69 young people died, also occurred during his second term as head of government.

Among the dead were personal acquaintances of Stoltenberg. In his speech after the attack, he said that the response to violence should be even more democracy and even more openness, but never naivety. He subsequently received a lot of support from Norwegians for his measured response.

Relations with Russia were much calmer when Stoltenberg was Prime Minister. In 2012, he negotiated with then President Dmitry Medvedev to end a Norwegian-Russian border dispute in the Barents Sea over claims to oil and gas reserves.

Call for more arms for Ukraine

The biggest challenge for Jens Stoltenberg as NATO Secretary General has undoubtedly been Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When he took office in March 2014 — with the support of then US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, among others — the Russian annexation of Crimea was already a sign of what was to come.

Like others, he apparently underestimated Russian aggression at the time. But Stoltenberg became a staunch advocate for more defense spending by NATO member states. Germany in particular was repeatedly criticized in this regard, as its defense spending was well below the NATO target of 2% of gross domestic product.

Stoltenberg's tenure as Secretary General of the defense alliance has been extended several times, most recently due to the war in Ukraine, in order to avoid a change at the top during a crisis. In 2022, he resigned his position as incoming governor of Norges Bank, Norway's central bank, to remain NATO Secretary General.

Since the beginning of the war, he has repeatedly called on NATO member states to provide further military support to Ukraine. He sees the country on an "irreversible path" to NATO membership.

Confidence in the event of a Trump victory

Stoltenberg is not worried about the continued existence of the alliance, even in the face of the Russian threat on NATO's eastern flank. "NATO is the most successful and strongest alliance in history because of two things: because of unity, that we stand together, protect each other, and because we have been able to change and the world is changing," Stoltenberg told DW at NATO's 75th anniversary celebrations in April. Russia is now the number one threat, he said, and action will be taken accordingly.

Even if Donald Trump were to win the US presidential election in November, Stoltenberg sees no danger to the existence of the military alliance. The US would "remain a staunch NATO ally because that is in the US' security interests. The US is stronger with NATO than without NATO.”

Donald Trump's criticism was not directed against NATO as an alliance, but against individual NATO members who had not met defense spending targets; in the meantime, spending has increased.

This kind of confidence should be good for the Munich Security Conference, which has a strong transatlantic focus. The Norwegian will be the first non-German to head the conference, which has been held since 1963 and is sometimes referred to as the "Davos for Defense." The new NATO Secretary General will be former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Stoltenberg replaces former diplomat Christoph Heusgen, who became head of the MSC in 2022. According to Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND), Heusgen's longstanding predecessor Wolfgang Ischinger is said to have described Stoltenberg as the "incomparably best choice" for the post of head of the MSC.

This article was originally written in German.

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