NATO chiefs vote Saturday on Jennie Carignan or Carsten Breuer

Chiefs of defence from NATO’s 32 members meet in Denmark this weekend to pick the next chair of the Military Committee. The ballot is secret. The two names are Gen. Jennie Carignan of Canada and Gen. Carsten Breuer of Germany. The winner becomes the alliance’s senior military officer, the principal military adviser to the secretary general, and the person who sits between 32 national chiefs when they disagree.

The current chair’s term runs to mid-2027. The successor is chosen now so there is a year to hand over. Canada last held the post when Gen. Ray Henault served from 2005 to 2008. Only two Canadians sat there before him: Gen. Charles Foulkes in 1952-53 and Adm. Robert Falls in 1980-83. A Carignan win would also be the first time a woman has chaired the committee in the alliance’s 77 years.

How the two candidacies arrived

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius put Breuer forward in February. Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty put Carignan forward on 20 May. McGuinty called her experience and judgment the reason. She has been chief of the defence staff since July 2024, a combat engineer by trade, with tours in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Golan Heights and Afghanistan, and she led NATO’s non-combat advisory mission in Iraq.

Mark Carney’s government has treated the race as part of a wider turn toward Europe. This week Carney applied to join the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force, a ten-nation group focused on the northern seas, after meeting British Prime Minister Andy Burnham. Von der Leyen’s “associate member” offer to Canada landed in the same news cycle. A Canadian officer at the head of NATO’s military committee would fit that story. It would also need 17 of 32 chiefs to vote for her in a room without cameras.

What the chair actually does

The Military Committee is not SACEUR. It does not command operations. It is the forum in which national chiefs agree, or fail to agree, on military advice to the political side of the alliance. The chair sets that agenda, carries the advice upstairs and keeps 32 chains of command in one conversation. In a week when the Pentagon is studying cuts of 25,000 to 40,000 US troops in Europe, and when Canada is writing new European defence ties, the person in that chair will spend two years translating American force posture into allied plans.

Breuer arrives as the incumbent inspector general of a German force that has spent three years trying to rearm in public. His case is weight and geography. Germany is the largest European economy in the alliance and sits on the logistics lines that feed NATO’s east. Carignan’s case is operational breadth and a capital that is, this month, asking Europe for a deeper seat.

The American variable

CBC asked whether President Trump would get in Carignan’s way. The vote is among chiefs, not among presidents. The United States still has one vote. How that vote is used will be known only by the count. Trump has already cut the scale of some US-South Korea drills and has publicly graded allies on Iran. Canada is an ally he has also targeted on trade. None of that is in the committee’s terms of reference. All of it is in the air in Copenhagen.

Saturday is discussion. Sunday is the ballot. Carignan remains Canada’s chief of the defence staff until, and unless, she wins and later takes up the NATO post. The alliance will have a name by the weekend. The work attached to that name starts in 2027, inside a committee that will by then be living with whatever troop numbers Washington has chosen to leave in Europe.