- Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has been elected as the next Secretary-General of NATO.
- Rutte will succeed Jens Stoltenberg, who has led NATO since 2014.
- Nicknamed the “Trump whisperer,” Rutte could play a key role if Trump returns to the White House.
NATO has selected outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte as its next Secretary-General.
Rutte, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will succeed Jens Stoltenberg on October 1, ending a decade at the helm of the alliance.
The 57-year-old, the Netherlands’ longest-serving prime minister, takes up the post at a crucial and turbulent time for the ally, with the US presidential election looming in November and conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza still raging.
Philip Dickinson, deputy director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategic and Security Studies, said the situation was “frightening” for Rutte.
“NATO must strengthen alliance-wide defense and deterrence in the face of a hostile and belligerent Russia, help Ukraine defeat Russia by welcoming Kiev into the alliance, and establish NATO’s role in addressing the growing challenge posed by China,” Dickinson added. “Meanwhile, we must evolve the Alliance to keep up with rapid technological change, without neglecting NATO’s counter-terrorism and crisis management responsibilities.”
And that’s to say nothing of the US elections just one month after Rutte took office.
But the Dutch politician knows Trump well and was even nicknamed the “Trump whisperer” after successfully calming the former president, who warned at a NATO meeting in 2018 that the US would “go its own way” if other countries didn’t increase their military spending, Politico reported.
After a brief period of awkwardness, Rutte reportedly “saved” the situation by telling Trump that other countries were increasing their spending and that Trump should actually be grateful.
Rachel Rizzo, non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, added that Rutte’s experience and personality could be key to making NATO “anti-Trump” if he wins the November election.
“He is seen as calm and collected, he knows how to handle big egos, he has worked with Trump before (at times praising him), and he understands that European allies need to shoulder more of the European security burden,” she said.
Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, told Business Insider that Rutte is a “consensus builder” and “someone with a proven track record of improving his country’s defense burden-sharing efforts.”
Rutte is also a leading supporter of Ukraine and has been a key driver of European military support for the country since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Rutte’s comments were inspired by the 2014 shooting down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 196 Dutch citizens, in which the Netherlands alleges Russia played a key role.
“If we don’t stop him now, he won’t stop in Ukraine. This war is bigger than Ukraine itself. It’s about upholding the rule of international law,” Rutte said of Putin in 2022.
