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Jens Stoltenberg is the Norwegian politician and international diplomat whose destiny it was to be secretary general of Nato in the second most fraught period of its postwar history (if we accept that the Cuban missile crisis is in pole position). He was in charge from 2014 to 2024 and this documentary, with remarkable access, shows us his final 12 months – day-by-day, moment-by-moment – after Joe Biden had persuaded him in 2023, when his tenure was technically at an end, to stay on for another year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Perhaps, until that moment, Stoltenberg had been happy to assume that for all the meetings and stress, the secretary-generalship was an agreeable prestigious technocratic position without any real danger. But now he was faced with the possibility of executing Nato’s raison d’être. Ukraine can’t be admitted to Nato because that would mean war on Putin. But how about Nato giving money and weapons to Ukraine for attacks on Russian soil? Wouldn’t Russia see that the same way?
So the film shows us Stoltenberg taking endless public love-in photocalls with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, promising to bring him over to Norway for a fishing trip. Zelenskyy’s reply was: “After the war, after our victory, we will have time …”; it is like the beginning of a poignant poem. And Stoltenberg is shown fixing dissent within his own ranks, bro-hugging and backslapping friendly western leaders while keeping the nationalist-naysayers on side. When Turkey’s Erdoğan objects to Sweden joining Nato, Stoltenberg buys him off with American F-16s; when Hungary’s Orbán objects, Stoltenberg contrives an “opt-out” exempting Hungarian taxpayers from the cost of bankrolling Zelenskyy. And the fiercest sceptic of all, Trump, is appeased by getting everyone to stump up more cash.
The film, for all that it finally verges on complacency and self-congratulation, subtly shows us that these temporary problems are in fact not so very bad for Stoltenberg and Nato; they always need a diplomatic excuse for delay, for not taking bold action against Russia. And then there is the long-term game: maintaining the body language of unity while the war and sanctions grimly continue.
The international cabaret theatre of summitry with Zelenskyy is maintained: the sequined high-kicking chorus-line of western leaders who must keep smiling no matter what the backstage tensions are. And they have to be prepared to play the waiting game. Who will crack first? Putin knows more than anyone what the answer was to that question the first time, in 1989 – with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. Stoltenberg is a cool customer: outwardly bland but a shrewd fixer. He comments that the TV character he most sympathises with is Tony Soprano – who has to keep everyone happy.
