Ottawa

NATO: Action on the Eastern front

The Economist sets a cat among pigeons by touting Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, as secretary-general of NATO. He’s a good choice to lead a military alliance between Europe and the United States, because he’s a former defence minister whose government wants to reinforce its commitment to the European Union, and he has impeccable contacts in Washington (here’s his wife). He’s a former journalist, although that was long ago and perhaps it should no longer be held against him. And as far as I can gather, Sikorski is less eager on the question of extending NATO membership to poorly-governed war zones than is Poland’s president, Lech Kaczynski, and at least one of my colleagues here at Maclean’s. The idea is warmly greeted in Warsaw; no word yet how it’s viewed in Berlin and Paris, although with a Chancellor who grew up under communism and a President of the Republic who’s also trying to mend fences between Old and New Europe — when he is not simply trying to run everything himself — anything is possible.

None of the speculation about a new secretary-general for the alliance names any Canadians. Surprise.

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