.jpeg)
Sweet
Nothings: Rutte’s Trump-Whispering Is Counterproductive
Leonard
A. Schütte
February
11, 2026
Sweet
Nothings: Rutte’s Trump-Whispering Is Counterproductive
NATO
Secretary General Mark Rutte might have been the only European in the room who
enjoyed President Donald Trump’s lengthy, meandering speech last month at the
World Economic Forum at Davos. He was lavishly praised not once but twice by
the president, who called him an “excellent Secretary General” and, later, “a
very smart man.” In subsequent bilateral talks, Rutte appeared to have used his
chemistry with Trump to help reach a framework deal on the future of Greenland,
which at least for the time being has eased tensions between the U.S.
administration and Europeans. This episode was only the latest sign of Rutte’s
ostensibly outsized role in managing the president.
Indeed,
Rutte and his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, have perhaps been the two premier
non-American Trump-whisperers. Both built close accords with Trump based on
public flattery and behind-the-scenes diplomacy. And both are credited with
effectively using their influence to pull Trump back from the brink of
destroying the alliance. However, there are important differences between their
approaches and in the historical context, too. Rutte has not only gone much
further in flattering Trump, crossing the border into undignified
obsequiousness — for example, by referring to Trump as “daddy.” But at a time
when grand strategic shifts in the United States and continued Russian
aggression require a fundamental readjustment of the alliance, his strategy of
subordinating everything to placating the U.S. president has also come at the
expense of driving NATO’s urgently needed “Europeanization.” While perhaps
momentarily successful, Rutte’s Trump-whispering thus ultimately risks
weakening, not strengthening, the alliance.
Stoltenberg’s
Playbook for Managing Trump I
NATO
secretary generals have long been treated as peripheral figures — more
secretaries than generals. European politicians usually close to their
retirement have traditionally served in this post that comes with few formal
powers. NATO, unlike the European Union for example, remains a heavily
intergovernmental organization in which member states formally call the shots.
However, this view of NATO officials as mere passive servants of the allies is
outdated, if it ever was accurate. An emerging research agenda has highlighted
the increasingly important role secretary generals play, particularly in crisis
situations, across major international organizations, including NATO.
In 2021,
I published a research paper in the journal International Affairs on how
then-Secretary General Stoltenberg had a “striking degree of agency in helping
NATO survive” Trump’s first term. The U.S. president had been extremely
critical of the alliance and repeatedly threatened to withdraw. Drawing on more
than 20 interviews with NATO and national officials, I detected three tactics
used by Stoltenberg to avert this. First, he publicly flattered Trump. Playing
to his narcissism, Stoltenberg continuously praised Trump for his “leadership
on defense spending” and credited him for an “extra $100 billion allies would
have added to their defense spending” by the end of Trump’s first term. And
Trump proved receptive to Stoltenberg’s adulations, exclaiming that “the media
never gives me credit but he gave me credit, now we’re up to way over $100
billion.”
Second,
Stoltenberg used the procedural powers as chair of the North Atlantic Council
to avert disaster at the most perilous moment for NATO during Trump’s first
presidency: the NATO Brussels summit in July 2018. Following a highly
contentious meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the first day of
the summit, tensions escalated the next day when Trump threatened fellow allied
leaders that the United States would “go its own way” should his burden-sharing
demands not be met. Sensing the impending danger, Stoltenberg called for an
impromptu crisis meeting on burden-sharing — an unusual move given the
ritualistic nature of NATO summits. This allowed Trump to vent his frustration
and put pressure on Europeans to make concessions before taking credit for
almost all NATO reforms undertaken since 2014 in the subsequent press
conference, letting him walk away with a sense of victory.
Third,
Stoltenberg effectively built coalitions with supportive actors in the U.S.
foreign policy establishment to coordinate policy and shield NATO’s Russia
policy from the attention of Trump. Defense Secretary James Mattis became
Stoltenberg’s main point of contact. This enabled NATO to reinforce its defense
and deterrence posture through the “readiness action plan” and the
establishment of enhanced forward presence, despite Trump’s calls to the
contrary. In sum, I argued that Stoltenberg’s “astute leadership” was critical
in helping the alliance survive.
Rutte’s
Playbook for Managing Trump II
Rutte has
taken a page out of Stoltenberg’s playbook. Selected for the role of NATO
secretary general because he had already forged close relations with Trump when
he was still the Dutch prime minister, Rutte adopted Stoltenberg’s tactics of
public flattery. At the NATO summit in the Hague in 2025, he infamously
described Trump as the “daddy” (even if this was uttered in the context of
tensions between Iran and Israel). Prior to the summit, he had sent Trump a
text, which the latter posted online, which effusively congratulated the
president: “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could
get done … Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be
your win.” As Trump’s Davos speech illustrates, in so doing Rutte has managed
to win favor with the president.
Rutte
also learned from Stoltenberg’s success as a meeting manager and designed the
Hague summit with one goal in mind: preventing a public row. He shortened both
the summit proceedings and the traditional declaration to cater to Trump’s
attention span. The agenda was also laser-focused on the approval of a new
defense spending pledge, according to which allies would commit to spend 5
percent of GDP on defense (3.5 percent on core defense and 1.5 percent to
defense-related issues) by 2035. Ukraine received much less attention compared
to the previous summit, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky relegated
to the sidelines of the meeting. In the end, the summit achieved the important
agreement to increase defense spending, which allowed Trump to hail it as his
personal triumph.
Compared
to many other international organizations, NATO has so far weathered the wrath
of Trump. Rutte’s role in allaying the American president has undoubtedly been
significant: In addition to helping convince the president to ease his threats
against Greenland, his flattery has evidently struck a chord with Trump and
appeared instrumental in ensuring a smooth NATO summit, which was by no means
predetermined. In doing so, he has — theoretically — bought NATO time.
However,
Rutte’s Trump-whispering approach is problematic and could ultimately prove
counterproductive for two reasons. First, the success of Rutte’s approach may
be overstated. One reading of the Greenland issue is that it was not so much
Rutte’s personal diplomacy that led to Trump’s climbdown, but in fact Europe’s
threats of retaliation. Given other examples of countries successfully pushing
back rather than submitting to the president, a strategy of strength rather
than sycophancy may work better against Trump. Indeed, research rooted in
psychology suggests that submissiveness to the bully only invites more
contempt.
Second,
even if one accepts that Rutte has been successful in preventing the worst in
the short term, his overriding prioritization of pleasing Trump comes at the
cost of adapting NATO. Stoltenberg could still pursue a policy of mere survival
because he could plausibly hope that Trump was only an aberration and rely on
“adults in the room” to help manage him. But Rutte cannot. A fundamental U.S.
strategic reorientation toward the western hemisphere and Indo-Pacific (though
the administration’s China policy remains ambiguous) and away from Europe is
underway. This is aggravated by the administration’s ideological antagonism
toward Europe, as evidenced by both the
National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. To survive, NATO
Europe needs to prepare for a contingency in which the United States offers
much less, if any, assistance to defending the continent.
But, for
one, Rutte’s focus on Trump crowds out political capital for other initiatives.
The Hague summit epitomized a new “era of low expectations.” NATO avoided
potential disaster only by agreeing to much higher defense spending. But allies
failed to make real progress on other substantive issues — including on forging
a common position on support for Ukraine, a plan and timeline for shifting some
of the burden of defending the continent to European allies, and strengthening
the credibility of the non-U.S. nuclear deterrent anchored in NATO.
For
another, Rutte actively prevents the adaptation of the alliance beyond just
higher defense spending. Based on his reality-distorting view that there is
“total commitment by the [United States] to NATO Article Five,” he has opposed,
even ridiculed, European initiatives to proactively seize some of the burden of
defending Europe. He clings onto the notion that greater European efforts would
create a self-fulfilling prophecy of driving U.S. retrenchment, dismissively
telling Europeans to “dream on” and wishing them “good luck” if they thought
they could defend the continent without America. This belittling of allies is
not only unbecoming of a secretary general, but also undermines the credibility
of Europe’s deterrence posture.
Shout It:
“Europeanize” NATO
The NATO
secretary general should walk a fine line. He should of course continue to use
his extraordinary influence with Trump to keep the United States engaged, but
simultaneously and quietly prepare the alliance for much less, perhaps even no
America in the future. That means driving, rather than blocking, the
“Europeanization” of NATO by replacing those U.S. troops, assets, and
command-and-control capabilities most urgently needed for Europeans to defend
against Russia. This is undoubtedly a herculean task, as European capability
gaps and dependency on the United States are real. But as the Trump
administration (and in fact previous administrations, too) has amply
demonstrated, maintaining the status quo is untenable. By denying the grand
strategic shifts underway in the United States, Rutte’s approach risks leaving
Europe unprepared for when U.S. retrenchment from the continent occurs and
provides excuses for those Europeans inclined to avoid hard decisions. Rutte
has helped Europeans buy time. He should now switch gears and push Europeans to
use it.
Leonard
A. Schütte, Ph.D., is an international security program fellow at the Belfer
Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting fellow at the German
Marshall Fund. He has published widely on European security, U.S. grand
strategy, and German defense policy.
Image:
The White House via Wikimedia Commons
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário