NATO stuck in a Rutte with new boss Teflon Mark, by Finian Cunningham

Meet the new glad-handing head NATO apparatchik, same as the old glad-handing head NATO apparatchik. From Finian Cunningham at strategic-culture.su:

His job is to bring Europe to its knees despite the obvious disaster that the U.S.-led NATO is inflicting on Europe.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is to take over as the next secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rutte’s appointment is to ensure that a “safe pair of hands” steer the military bloc full steam ahead on an increasingly confrontational course with Russia and China.

The 57-year-old Dutchman, who is known as Teflon Mark owing to his political survival skills, was backed for the NATO post by the United States and Britain. The opinions of the other 30 members of the alliance are pretty much irrelevant, albeit with a semblance of discussion.

As Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented sardonically, there will be no change in NATO policies under Rutte “because the Americans run the show”.

Rutte takes over from Jens Stoltenberg who served as NATO secretary general for two terms over 10 years. Like Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, Rutte has no military expertise and is more suited to financial management and political horse-trading. This continues the trend of recent NATO civilian bosses being more secretaries than generals.

There have been 14 secretary generals since the NATO alliance was formed in 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The first titleholder was British General Hastings Ismay who famously admitted NATO’s primary mission was less the defense of Europe and more to bolster Washington’s transatlantic control over European “allies” by, as Ismay candidly put it, “keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”.

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