NATO welcomed its 12th Secretary General on August 3 as Denmark’s former Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen arrived for his first day in the organisation’s top job. At a low-key ceremony under the flags of the alliance’s 28 members, 56-year-old Rasmussen was welcomed to NATO by his deputy, Claudio Bisogniero, the head of the alliance’s military committee, Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, and a handful of alliance staff. His task over the next four years will be to chair NATO meetings and summits an...

The last time NATO handed over to a new secretary general, in 2004, the alliance had 19 members, a handful of troops in Afghanistan and a diplomatic hangover from the US-led Iraq war. When Denmark’s former Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, 56, takes over the role, he will inherit a club which has grown to 28 members, an Afghan mission numbering 64,500 men and diplomatic headaches stretching from Georgia to the Gulf of Aden. All those factors are set to shape his four-year tenure, as NATO fi...