Former French ambassador to Nato Muriel Domenach: “They [Nato] talk about ‘Trump-proofing,’ but the reality is a sense of panic.” Photo / Getty Images
Former French ambassador to Nato Muriel Domenach: “They [Nato] talk about ‘Trump-proofing,’ but the reality is a sense of panic.” Photo / Getty Images
Analysis by Lee Hockstader
Lee Hockstader has been The Post's European Affairs columnist, based in Paris, since 2023. Previously he was a member of the Post editorial board; a national correspondent, a foreign correspondent, and a local reporter. He was awarded The Post's Eugene Meyer Award for lifetime achievement in 2014
Rutte aims to increase European defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, rising to 3% by 2030.
Key strategies include Euro defence bonds, asset seizure from frozen Russian assets, and supporting Ukraine’s security guarantees.
Nato’s brand-new secretary-general, Mark Rutte, stands 1.93m (6′ 4″), so he can look Donald Trump straight in the eye.
He’s a deft dealmaker who managed four different coalition governments over 14 years as Prime Minister of the Netherlands – during which he got on well with Trump, whose contempt for the US-led alliance made it a stage set for chaos in his first term.
Rutte’s friendly vibe with the President-elect might be his key job qualification, given Trump’s explicit threats to gut the Nato collective defence guarantee that ensures Europe’s security or abandon the alliance altogether. What Rutte needs now, beyond his proven political agility, is a survival guide for Nato, where the officials I interviewed last week were resigned but clearly anxious.
“They’re rightfully traumatised, but they won’t admit it” publicly, Muriel Domenach, who served five years as France’s ambassador to the alliance before leaving in July, told me.
“They talk about ‘Trump-proofing’, but the reality is a sense of panic.”
Rutte, 57, who met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago Friday, has his work cut out. But the components of Nato’s survival in the Trump years are clear enough, even if some would be politically excruciating.
The critical parts are concrete demonstrations that Europe will pull more weight and conveying that commitment in Trump’s own language.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. Photo / Getty Images
That starts with …
Shifting cash
Most of Nato’s 30 European states shrank their armed forces and military industrial capacity for years. Spending climbed sharply after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine; by the end of this decade, Washington’s European allies are expected to have 600 advanced US-made F-35 fighter jets in their arsenals. But the alliance’s 2014 guideline that member states spend at least 2% of total economic output on defence is badly outdated and inadequate to execute existing battle plans.
Rutte should use next summer’s Nato summit in The Hague to set a higher minimum defence spending target for the alliance – 2.5% of gross domestic product immediately, rising to 3% by 2030. (The US outlay is about 3.4% of GDP.) Translation: Tens of billions of dollars in additional annual outlays by Nato’s European members and Canada.
That would mean a massive (and massively unpopular) funds transfer from social programmes, infrastructure projects and schools, a shift some leaders would regard as political suicide. At the least, it would require political courage rarely seen outside the vulnerable states on Nato’s eastern flank: Poland and the three Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Rutte’s focus should be on the alliance’s European Big Four: Germany, Britain, France and Italy, which together accounted for almost two-thirds of Nato’s non-US defence spending last year. Each faces severe budget or fiscal restraints and would struggle to meet the goal – especially Italy, whose meagre defence spending should be a national embarrassment.
Yet even 3% of GDP is less than some major European nations spent on defence during the Cold War. And it is just half the 6% of national income that Russia will spend next year.
More debt
Rutte will also need to press for Euro defence bonds, a form of joint borrowing that could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to expand defence industries and modernise militaries.
The key will be convincing Germany, which has blocked the idea until now. But Rutte might have an opening as Germans prepare for federal elections in February, as well as a solid argument: the European Union jointly borrowed some US$850 billion ($1.457 trillion) to jumpstart pandemic-wracked economies and could do it again to buttress its own security.
Asset seizure
Washington and its European partners haggled for months over using US$50b ($85b) in future profits from frozen Russian state assets, mostly located in Europe, to support and rebuild Ukraine. That’s too little. As lawyers bicker about seizing the underlying cash, roughly US$300b, Rutte can make the case that doing so is a political decision, not a legal one – and this is the moment for Europe to show resolve.
The Ukraine question
A central question in any peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will be security guarantees for Kyiv – ensuring its sovereignty and the territory under its control. That will require ongoing financial and military support, paid for partly by the measures above, and probably a European-led peacekeeping force after a credible ceasefire is agreed.
The peacekeepers might not wear Nato shoulder patches. But Rutte can still play a role in convincing European leaders. The sooner that signal is sent to the incoming US administration, the better.
The strategy game
Trump might like to hasten Washington’s shifting focus toward China and away from Europe. Rutte will need to make the case that the two are intertwined. That’s not only because China has become the Kremlin’s essential ally, energy export market and supplier of critical defence components such as chips – and therefore a threat to Western security. It’s also because the war in Ukraine’s endgame will provide a signal to China of Washington’s resolve or lack of it.
At Nato, there is optimism that Rutte is the right man to keep Washington in Nato’s tent. Let’s hope that’s not just wishful thinking.
