[Salon] Europe's authoritarian, unelected ruler, Ursula von der Leyen, in a growing dispute with NATO leadership

Europe’s authoritarian, unelected ruler, Ursula von der Leyen, in a growing dispute with NATO leadership

In his farewell event on Thursday hosted by the German Marshal Fund in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg came as close to denouncing European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen as you can in Euro-speak before journalists whom he knew would be weighing his every word.

As The Financial Times put it, Stoltenberg made ‘blunt remarks’ as he condemned the build-up of competences, personnel and budgets for EU command structures and planned rapid response force, fearing that this will divert resources from NATO.

See “Nato chief warns EU against setting up ‘competing’ force” by Henry Foy in yesterday’s FT.

If this is what Stoltenberg is saying in public, you can well imagine that the NATO-EU fight for the lead role in Europe’s defense is running at a fever pitch behind closed doors. It is a contest that has been gathering force for a good many months now. We saw it discussed in a Politico article back in April: “Who’s the boss when it comes to defense: NATO or the EU?” by Stuart Lau and Jacopo Barigazzi.

What we are witnessing is an intertwining of personal and institutional ambitions. In this regard, it is all classic material for an opera as they were composed in the golden years of Verdi.

The personal ambition part relates to Ursula von der Leyen, whose continuing at the head of the Commission had been in some doubt earlier this year. In those circumstances, the lady had put her name in the running to replace Jens Stoltenberg at the head of NATO.

Rumors spread. The Daily Mail in the UK said at the time that she had the backing of Joe Biden. Whether that is true or not, it was not enough to win her the appointment to NATO. Instead, she pursued another term as head of the Commission and, thanks to the decent electoral results in the spring of the Center Right European People’s Party, of which her own native country Germany is the largest member, von der Leyen succeeded in holding onto her post. Not only that, but she has by general consensus of observers, consolidated her power in every way. This is set out in some detail by The Financial Times in its article “Ursula von der Leyen, the politician tightening her grip on Brussels,” also by their Brussels-based journalist Henry Foy. He describes the delicately balanced ‘matrix’ of her cabinet, which he quotes one observer as calling ‘The Ursula Show.’

Foy’s article on von der Leyen is generally complimentary, calling out that ‘she’s the hardest working’ person in the EU institutions. He acknowledges that critics say she ‘routinely overstretches her powers and bypasses proper due process.’ But he grants her that in the spirit of ‘you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.’ So he concludes what is supposed to be a well-rounded appreciation of von der Leyen, saying that ‘admirers, including many EU leaders, revere her ability to get things done by cutting through the byzantine layers of European bureaucracy.’ It is entirely fitting that Foy avoids calling this approach what it might otherwise be called: authoritarian.

What is missing from this piece of seemingly balanced journalism from the FT is what we opened this essay with: von der Leyen’s ongoing duplication of NATO functions. This is self-aggrandizing as it expands her powers. It is also changing the European Union from a peace project, as it was originally conceived, into a war project. In this regard, all the instruments that von der Leyen has deployed to ensure her degree of control over the Commission that Foy describes also infuse the Commission and the EU Institutions more generally with the war agenda of the New Europe (as Donald Rumsfeld described the former Warsaw Pact countries) that is directed against Russia. Here we find the unifying mission of both EU and NATO institutions.

One of the obvious ways that von der Leyen intends to control the EU is through her closest coordination with the commissioners drawn from the Baltic States and extending into the other member states of Eastern Europe. These commissioners are all, by definition, much easier for the Commission president to dominate than are commissioners put up by the large member states like France, Italy and Germany. They have been given heavy responsibility portfolios out of all proportion to the political, economic, demographic weight of the countries they represent. This is why the utterly shallow prime minister of Estonia, which has a population of 1.3 million, was chosen by von der Leyen to head the key portfolio of foreign relations as the EU’’s spokesperson to the world.

Of course, Kaja Kallas, who herself had been a contender to succeed Stoltenberg at NATO, was and is one of the most aggressive Russophobes in the EU. Several weeks ago, the lady said that the objective of the EU should be “to bring Russia to its knees” by inflicting a humiliating defeat on the Kremlin in its war on Ukraine. Needless to say, the other Eastern European commissioners, for example, from Lithuania, are also warriors against the supposed barbarians populating Russia.

For those of us who have been around for a while and knew the EU institutions when they were erected by men of great stature like Jacques Delors, it is painful to see how the project has been reduced to a War Project by people of much lower moral standing and vision for the future.