First money, now ‘loyalty’: Trump’s demands test Nato chief’s flattery tactics
Mark Rutte has long fawned over Trump to keep the US inside the alliance, but that strategy faces new challenges at a summit in Turkey
Since he started work as Nato secretary general almost two years ago, Mark Rutte has spent much of his time trying to keep the United States anchored to the world’s biggest military alliance, employing outright flattery to dissuade US President Donald Trump from acting on threats to abandon it.
But the goalposts keep shifting, raising the stakes ahead of this week’s summit in Turkey.
Initially, it was about money. Trump has long railed against Nato allies for spending too small a fraction of their national budgets on defence. But those problems were addressed at their summit last year, when US allies committed to invest as much as America, in gross domestic product terms.
Nato’s real problem now is turning that money into military capabilities, particularly as European countries worry about a possible attack from Russia.
Still, Rutte tried to put to bed any lingering concerns at a White House meeting last month, with a new pitch using a chart labelled “The Trump Trillion” in gold letters – showing US$1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.
But Trump appeared unmoved, saying he was still disappointed at some Nato allies’ refusal to join the Iran war, which he had launched alongside Israel without consulting them.