The mature Western liberal democracies are lately in the habit of promoting representatives of some Lilliputian states, devoid of any military importance within the alliance, to fill NATO's top job.
This explains the fact that President Obama, himself a representative of a minority, promoted a Danish citizen as Secretary General of NATO in 2009, namely Anders Fogh Rasmussen, representing a minority of small states within the alliance.
In 2014, the same Barack Obama promoted Jens Stoltenberg, the representative of a state of only 5 million people, as Secretary General. (This may also be related to the decline of NATO's importance as a politico-military organization after the demise of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.)
Compare this situation with the one before 2003, when the job of NATO Secretary General was occupied by the representatives of the great European nations: Britain (Lord Ismay, Lord Carrington or George Robertson), Germany (Manfred Worner) , Spain (Javier Solana), or Italy (Manlio Brosio), with two or three Belgians or Dutch among them when tensions during the Cold War were lower in intensity.
If the appointments of new NATO Secretaries-General continue in the same tradition, we can expect Estonians, Lithuanians or Latvians to be appointed to this post. They have in common with their Danish and Norwegian predecessors the fact that their states, although tiny and insignificant militarily, are close to Russia or have a common border with it. This is because NATO's number one enemy is no longer the USSR, but Russia.
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