Tri-Service

Comment: Is NATO's Chief A Lame Duck?

Listening to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg being interviewed on BFBS Radio's Sitrep analysis programme it's clear that he may as well have sent his PR man. Stoltenberg had nothing to say.

Forces TV's James Hirst asked him about Russian President Vladimir Putin taking no notice at all when Stoltenberg gave one of his regular speeches telling Russia to get out of Crimea, out of Ukraine and nowadays, out of Syria.

Stoltenberg said NATO's job was to defend alliance members. We could have got that off his answer phone.

Hirst, a good journalist, pushed him and kept asking the same question.

Stoltenberg, as an ex-Norwegian Prime Minister, knew all he had to do was sit out the interview.

The result? A clear reminder that NATO is not willing to do anything about anything when it comes to Putin and that, above all, Putin knows this.

There would never be an East-West confrontation over Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. Also it is unlikely that Putin would have gone into (or sent people into) Ukraine if that place had been a NATO member.

Is NATO's Deputy Secretary General (right) more charismatic than his boss?

What is disappointing is the inability of a Secretary General to forget the 'speak-your-weight-machine' answer to a very important question.

How about an answer that discussed the very question and the dilemma? How about talking about the practicalities of a Secretary General being a ring-master of 28 member states?

Instead the Secretary General gives the impression that he is just a mouthpiece, trusted to say nothing that US President Obama has not already said.

More from Forces TV... EXCLUSIVE: NATO Chief Says "We Are Not In A Cold War"

In the present case, what a pity it is that the talking cannot be left to Deputy Secretary General Sandy Vershbow. Here is a recent US Ambassador to Moscow (and North Korea) plus a former Washington hand responsible for international security.

Vershbow is cool. He talks with the experience and wisdom of having walked the defence and security bazaars for a decade or two, whereas Stoltenberg's subject is climate change and he got to Brussels because he had failed to be re-elected in Norway.

After that Sitrep interview, and in these times, it is pretty clear that NATO needs more Vershbows, and fewer Stoltenbergs.