Betting on names are underway for the appointment of the new secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The current head of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, will in fact leave his office on 30 September 2023. In office since 2014, the Norwegian politician has benefited from the extension of his mandate three times, the last time in March 2022 after the Russian military invasion of Ukraine. 

"There is a feeling that it is time for the alliance to choose a female leader" and with the war in Ukraine raging for over a year "there is also a feeling that it should be someone from Eastern Europe", is the reflection of Andrew Hyde, analyst of the American thing tank "Stimson Center". 

Among the main contenders are the current British defense minister Ben Wallace and the Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen, both met by the American president Joe Biden, to whom London and Copenhagen have turned to plead the cause. Given the enormous weight of Washington on the final outcome of the choice, the definition of a "very qualified" politician addressed by Biden to Wallace does not go unnoticed. 

Among the other names circulating these days, even if less quoted, are those of the president of Slovakia Zuzana Caputova, the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.