Last week the Annual NATO Summit was held in Turkey, a summit that was marked by European defense spending, support for Ukraine and the verbal attacks of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, towards his allies. What conclusions are drawn from this meeting?
Eduardo Saldaña and David Gómez explain in The World Order of Julia in the wave that one of the elements that have been most present throughout the summit have been “the rantings” of Donald Trump, who has had “several departures from the pot” at the level of confusion. For example, he called Vladimir Putin “Mr. Putin” or said “Islamic Republic of Japan” when he wanted to talk about Iran. Something that could remain an anecdote, if it weren’t for the fact that Trump was a “stalker” of Joe Biden every time he made a mistake and because more and more focus is being placed on the extent to which Donald Trump “is mentally well focused.”
Rutte’s “servile” attitude towards Trump
Another of the moments of the summit has been the “flaunt of servility of the official bully of the Atlantic Alliance, Mark Rutte”: “He has left us very stellar moments and that display of servility that he is doing with Donald Trump is the last nail in Rutte’s political coffin,” say Saldaña and Gómez.
However, that servility was met with a very uncomfortable moment following a question from a Danish journalist, who told him that he sat next to the American president while he talked about conquering Greenland, lashed out at allies like Spain or talked about starting trade wars, “things that the old Mark Rutte doesn’t seem like he would approve of,” the journalist said. “Does this have any effect on your self-esteem when you sit next to him and stand there without saying anything?”
Rutte was “absolutely knocked out” and answered timidly, assuring that what he was doing was recognizing the advances and progress that Donald Trump had made for the Atlantic Alliance.
Rally or strategy?
But, despite the criticism, it seems that the NATO Secretary General has no intention of leaving his adulation to Donald Trump, which leads international experts to wonder to what extent this strategy, if it is a strategy, can work for him. Is Mark Rutte’s attitude towards Trump simple bragging or is there some other type of intention behind it?
They explain that what Mark Rutte’s team defends is that its main mission is to keep Trump within NATO and prevent the organization from collapsing. From that perspective, adulation towards him would not be so much a submission, but rather the price to pay for guaranteeing and transforming that alliance. But in that framework, anything goes with the United States as long as Trump remains calm within the organization: “It is a kind of appeasement policy. Even enduring a certain degree of humiliation is acceptable for the secretary general of NATO.”
Everything is more understandable if you look at Mark Rutte’s political career.
Saldaña and Gómez explain that if one looks at the political career of the NATO Secretary General, this strategy is not new: “Already when he was Dutch Prime Minister between 2010 and 2024, Rutte was known as ‘Teflon Mark’ for his ability to survive any scandal and also to form very disparate alliances.”
In fact, as head of the Dutch Government he achieved different parliamentary support from the green left to the radical right of electing builders. So we see that Rutte, throughout his history, has been characterized by pragmatism. But that pragmatism that Rutte tries to cultivate “it is not clear that it will work so much with Donald Trump, for example, with Greenland. But what is evident is that along the way, what he is doing is squandering the dignity and credibility of the European allies,” they explain.
