On Sept. 19, the chiefs of defence of NATO's 32 member nations met in Copenhagen and elected Gen. Carsten Breuer of Germany as the next chair of the alliance's military committee. The other candidate was Canada's chief of the defence staff, Gen. Jennie Carignan. She would have become the first woman to hold the post in NATO's 77-year history.

Canada, a founding member of NATO, has provided three chairs of the committee. Germany, which joined six years later, has provided five. When Breuer takes office in summer 2027, he will be the sixth.

Women's presence on the committee itself remains exceptional. Only two women have sat on it at the chief of defence level: Gen. Alenka Ermenc, who led Slovenia's armed forces from November 2018 to March 2020, and Carignan, since July 2024.

This matters beyond symbolism. The chair is NATO's senior military officer and principal military adviser to the secretary general, responsible for carrying the consensus advice of all allied chiefs of defence to the alliance's political bodies. Whoever holds the post shapes whom NATO and its members recognize as a leader.

The record

Carignan was commissioned as a combat engineer in 1990 and deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Golan Heights and Afghanistan. In 2008, she became the first woman in Canadian Armed Forces history to command a combat arms unit, and the following year she led the Task Force Kandahar Engineer Regiment.

She went on to command the 2nd Canadian Division, more than 10,000 soldiers, and directed its response to the 2019 Quebec floods. From November 2019 to November 2020, she led NATO Mission Iraq, the first woman to command a NATO mission. As Canada's first chief of professional conduct and culture, and since 2024 as chief of the defence staff, she has led one of the most difficult institutional reforms any allied military has attempted.

Breuer's record is also substantial. He has led the Bundeswehr as inspector general since March 2023, and Germany's defence minister credits him with helping to reorganize the armed forces at a decisive moment. Both candidates were qualified. A highly qualified man was elected, and that deserves respect.

The counterarguments

There are serious arguments for the outcome that have nothing to do with gender. With Washington pressing Europe to carry more of the alliance's weight, many allies saw a German chair as a signal of European responsibility. Breuer will also take office just as the results of the American force posture review are being put into effect.

Some allies may have weighed Canada's long record of falling short of NATO spending targets. Others may have noted that electing Carignan would have pulled Canada's top soldier out of her post in the middle of a transformation she is leading.

Those arguments are legitimate. But there is always a legitimate argument, and in 77 years it has always pointed the same way. When an exceptionally qualified woman reaches a two-candidate contest and the outcome looks as it always has, we should ask what it will take for NATO's highest military leadership to look different.

The commitments

NATO has long recognized the role women play in security and defence. In 1976, the alliance formally recognized its Committee on Women in the NATO Forces, and in 2007 it agreed its first policy on women, peace and security, updated several times since.

At the 2024 Washington Summit, allied heads of state and government endorsed an updated policy that explicitly links women's meaningful participation and gender perspectives to operational effectiveness. It calls for greater representation in senior decision-making and for gender-responsive leadership and accountability. That October, Secretary General Mark Rutte said:

"Women's leadership, perspectives and contributions are critical to how we respond to security challenges. For NATO, for me, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda is so much more than a commitment. It is about who we are and what we stand for as an Alliance."

As the secretary general affirmed, women's meaningful participation is more than a policy commitment. It is part of the values that distinguish the alliance from its adversaries, and those values must also be reflected in its choices.

Biographies cannot establish who should have won. They do establish that Carignan offered a serious military choice. Electing her would not have meant choosing a woman simply because she was a woman.

It would have translated NATO's commitments into action and shown that proven leadership can break the traditional association of military command with men, without lowering professional standards. Above all, it would have shown an alliance prepared to lead by example.

NATO had an exceptionally qualified woman and long-standing commitments on paper. It missed the chance to bring them together and make a historic choice. What more were we waiting for?