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Danish PM Brushes Off Talk of NATO Boss Ambitions, While Allies Gear Up for Her Exit

© AP Photo / Geoffroy van der Hasselt / Pool Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen arrives for an EU summit in Brussels, Tuesday, July 2, 2019.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen arrives for an EU summit in Brussels, Tuesday, July 2, 2019.  - Sputnik International, 1920, 06.06.2023
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Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's youngest prime minister, has been repeatedly touted as the main contender to lead NATO. Should this rumor come true, she would become the first woman to head the US-led military bloc.
Despite the fact that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has once again rejected speculation about having ambitions for the post of NATO Secretary General, talk about her being the frontrunner for this position still persists.
After a visit to Washington, where she met with US President Joe Biden in the White House and CIA Director William Burns, Frederiksen personally addressed the NATO rumors that have been circulating following Denmark's recent decision to add billions of kroner to the defense budget.
According to the Danish PM, the meeting, which notably lasted longer than expected, had nothing to do with the NATO job prospect.
"I am happy to be prime minister of Denmark. I am not here to look for a job. I'm here to take care of a job," Frederiksen said.
Over the past few weeks, Frederiksen has been repeatedly named among the leading candidates for the post of NATO chief, outpacing other contenders such as UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace and Canadian Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland.
To this, Frederiksen replied that she was "happy to enjoy international support," stressing that it was positive for Denmark "no matter how you spin it."
Nevertheless, Frederiksen's political allies inside Denmark, the Moderates, have demanded that the government's political projects must be "reconfirmed" if Frederiksen is suddenly no longer at the helm. This cryptic message from Moderate leader and Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen further fuelled speculations about Frederiksen's future.

Who Is Mette Frederiksen?

Mette Frederiksen, 45, was elected Prime Minister of Denmark in June 2019. She is the second woman to hold this office, and the youngest Prime Minister in Danish history.
Born and bred in Aalborg, she graduated from Aalborg University, having studied administration and social science. Frederiksen became a member of the Social Democrats' youth branch at the tender age of 15, and became an MP at 24. There, she served as her party's spokesperson for culture, media, and gender equality, as well as Minister of Employment and Minister of Justice. Frederiksen notably had no career outside of politics.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen - Sputnik International, 1920, 14.12.2022
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Frederiksen's record is not without controversy, namely her decision to cull 15 million farmed minks at the peak of the COVID-19 panic, thus eradicating an entire fur branch in which Denmark ranked among the world's leaders. However, despite making a bigger mess for herself by erasing key messages from her phone (which surfaced in a subsequent probe and earned her the nickname Slette-Mette, with 'slette' meaning "delete" in Danish), she managed to pull through the Minkgate culling scandal relatively unscathed as a politician by aptly shifting the blame to the Ministry of Environment and Food and other officials and offering a tearful apology.
Should Frederiksen assume the office of Secretary General of the US-led military bloc, that would make her the third Scandinavian NATO leader in a row, following her compatriot and fellow ex-Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen (who led the alliance from 2009 to 2014) and former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (who has held this post since 2014). While Frederiksen would indeed check the box of being the first woman to take the reins of NATO, which bears a large symbolic value for the gender-obsessed West, critics argue that a leader from Eastern Europe would better reflect the alliance's unrelenting militaristic push eastwards.
Stoltenberg's successor will be announced at the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
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