Freeland is Washington’s frontrunner as next NATO Chief
by Dan Fournier, published Monday, Nov. 8, 12:49 EST on fournier.substack.com
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No other candidate has ticked as many boxes as Chrystia Freeland when it comes to finding a replacement for the current NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
A recent New York Times article suggests she is the clear frontrunner and Washington’s top pick to head US-led NATO amidst the current war between Russia and Ukraine.
“Where any of the candidates come down on support for Ukraine in the war against Russia will be a critical factor,” stated Steven Erlanger of the Times.
Freeland, who is of Ukrainian descent, has demonstrated fierce support for Ukraine going back decades.
According to the NYT, as reported in RT, Freeland travelled to Kiev in 2014 to celebrate the overthrow of “Kremlin-backed” Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich. Not long after the US-led Maidan revolution, she met with Petro Poroshenko who had stronger ties to the West and became Ukraine’s next President.
Such close ties with Ukraine’s leadership resulted in Freeland being added to the Kremlin’s list of unwelcomed visitors, even earning her the codename of “Frida” by Russian intelligence.
According to The Wilson Center, an American non-partisan policy forum, Freeland was a “pro-democracy agitator from 1988-1989” during a semester spent in Ukraine as a Harvard undergraduate. This lead to her falling under the radar of the KGB, the main security agency of the Soviet Union, and more importantly, of its top spy chief Vladimir Putin.
As Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Freeland has demonstrated strong support for the Ukraine amidst its invasion by Russia. Canada is throwing “everything we have at this,” Freeland stated back in March shortly after the invasion began.
Freeland’s own heritage and writings also suggest her allegiance to the plight of Ukrainians. “For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine,” proclaimed Freeland in her 2015 essay My Ukraine, continuing “That dream persisted into the next generation, and in some cases the generation after that.”
Her Ukrainian grandparents’ background has not been without controversy. Her grandfather has been singled out as a Nazi collaborator, at least according to the Ottawa Citizen.
Freeland’s primary strengths which make her the ideal candidate include her fluency in multiple languages including Russian and Ukrainian. In addition, Freeland, a Rhodes scholar and member of the World Economic Forum’s Board of Trustees, has a deep understanding of Russian history and considers herself a Russophile. She has also spent time in Moscow as a bureau chief for the Financial Times while she was a journalist.
Though Freeland has yet to publicly speak about her consideration for the job as next Secretary General of NATO, her candidacy has already sparked much debate given Canada’s strong stance and support in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Canada-Ukraine A timeline of Middle Power Bilateral Relations, source: The Wilson Center’s Canada Institute
Notes:
This article is also published in The Counter Signal.
