BRUSSELS — NATO’s most senior commanders elect a new leader on Saturday in a consequential vote that will help shape how the alliance prepares for a potential Russian incursion and navigates persisting transatlantic tensions. The alliance’s 32 chiefs of defense staff will elect a new chair of NATO’s most senior military body, the military committee, in Copenhagen in a hush-hush ballot — and choose between two candidates: Germany’s Gen. Carsten Breuer and Canada’s Gen.
They oversee dozens of working groups of NATO military staff, and broker consensus on formulating military advice. The position is a “highly complex role,” said Eleonora Russell, the spokesperson of former chair Adm. Rob Bauer, because it requires simultaneously gaining the trust of both the military and the political leadership across the alliance — and not taking sides.
Such a role is particularly challenging today given enduring transatlantic tensions, she said, and important as sensitive talks on NATO’s next four-year war planning cycle will kick off in October. Berlin is now Europe’s leading defense spender, the officials said, and the U.S. has previously nudged Germany toward leadership roles in the alliance as it seeks to reduce its military engagement on the continent. Strained bilateral ties between Ottawa and Washington might also make Carignan’s case more difficult, the officials said.
That support was on display in Washington on Jul. 23, when Breuer briefed Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby on Germany’s new military strategy. Colby later called the strategy “historic” and “highly laudable” and said Germany was positioning itself as “a key leader of Europe’s conventional defense” in a post on X. Breuer’s pitch for the job has included its leadership role on NATO 3.0, the officials said, as well as the four-star general’s strong existing relationships with his counterparts since he took over as Germany’s chief of defense in 2023.
Carignan, Ottawa’s top general since 2024, has focused her campaign on reinvigorating the role of the military committee, the officials said, and signaling enduring transatlantic unity inside NATO. That comes as the alliance has repeatedly been rocked by feuds with U.S. President Donald Trump since he retook office last year.
Germany’s defense ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Canada’s defense ministry said Carignan’s “candidacy reflects Canada's enduring commitment to NATO and to strengthening collective defence and transatlantic security.” Yet the campaign is enigmatic and behind closed doors — all the way down to the blind vote. That’s because “the whole point of this is for this to be a military group of professionals who trust each other,” Russell said, since “on the military level you need to have boundless loyalty, and if you know exactly who voted for you and who didn't, then you lose that.” To ensure that loyalty, the vote count will stop once a majority — or 17 votes — is reached, leaving the real result unknown, one NATO official said.
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