NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg will be new Munich Security Conference chief

NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg will be the new chairman of the Munich Security Conference, a person directly informed on the matter told POLITICO exclusively.

The role puts Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, in charge of a crucial transatlantic institution at a time of heightened concern about the direction of the war in Ukraine and the future of NATO after the U.S. presidential election in November.

Stoltenberg will be stepping into the shoes of Christoph Heusgen, a German diplomat who has run the conference for the past two years, starting after its February 2025 edition, the person said. Former longtime chairman Wolfgang Ischinger will remain president of the Foundation Council of the Munich Security Conference Foundation.

POLITICO is a media partner of the Munich Security Conference (MSC).

Since its founding in 1963 by a former Wehrmacht officer and member of the German resistance, the MSC has become a key rendezvous on the international conference circuit — jokingly termed by regulars “Davos with guns,” a reference to the World Economic Forum held each year in Davos, Switzerland.

Attended by top military brass and heads of state alike, the MSC was a favorite haunt of late U.S. Senator and security hawk John McCain, and has become a can’t-miss stop for top U.S. officials aiming to address their European allies.

A highlight of the 2024 edition of the conference was a speech by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in which she spelled out her views on Washington’s role in the world and in NATO. Taking place shortly after the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, it was the first time many European leaders had heard her in such detail on the subject.

The conference has also entered history as the venue where Russian President Vladimir Putin, in 2007, spelled out a new and more aggressive security doctrine highly critical of NATO and that foreshadowed his decision, 15 years later, to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Following the invasion, which began just two days after the conference’s 2022 edition, the MSC has become a high-stakes forum for debating the West’s approach to backing Ukraine against Russian aggression.

It was at that edition of the MSC, when Russia had already amassed a huge force at Ukraine’s borders, that Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko famously lambasted Germany for refusing to provide Ukraine with defensive weapons, and sending instead only 5,000 helmets. (Germany has since become one of the West’s leading donors of arms and supplies to Ukraine.)

More recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has used the MSC to plead with Western leaders to accelerate and enlarge their deliveries of arms to his country — with a U.S. ban on using missiles to strike targets in Russia now a hot topic for the MSC crowd.

With all that in mind, the conference chairman is a highly political role, with their decisions on speakers and the agenda all subject to intense scrutiny.

Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, has been secretary-general of NATO since 2014. He will be replaced in the role by former Dutch PM Mark Rutte Oct. 1.