ANKARA — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has one message for NATO allies about Donald Trump: The U.S. president was right.
He was right on pressing NATO allies to boost defense spending, he was right in getting them to modernize their militaries, and he was right to launch a war with Iran, Rutte told POLITICO in an interview for “The Conversation with Dasha Burns” podcast at this week’s alliance leaders’ summit in the Turkish capital.
“I just like the man. I think what he is doing for NATO is great news,” Rutte said.
It was a full-throated endorsement of the president’s policies that have at times rankled other alliance members, many of whom question Trump’s commitment to the alliance after his threats to annex Greenland, his questioning of the NATO’s Article 5 common defense pledge, his attacks on fellow leaders, his decision to withdraw some U.S. troops from Germany and the ongoing broader Pentagon review of the American military presence in Europe.
“President Trump [is] basically achieving what, since Eisenhower, American presidents tried to achieve, which is to equalize the defense spending between the U.S. and Europe,” Rutte added.
The NATO boss said this year’s summit would be “transformational” for the alliance, and also pump billions more into critical defense programs.
The numbers, so far, are massive. Over the past two years the 31 non-U.S. NATO members have pledged $250 billion in new programs and defense investments, with a slew of new deals and pledges expected over the next two days.
All that has come against the backdrop of Trump demanding allies spend and do more as Washington shifts to homeland security and to a lesser degree, the Pacific region.
Rutte insisted that European countries are doing much more to build up their military capabilities to shoulder a fairer share of defending the continent.
“You have to build a NATO which is sustainable and therefore is not over reliant on the U.S. as a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO, where the Europeans and the Canadians are really stepping up,” the NATO chief said.
But it’s not just pressure from Trump that is getting the alliance to boost its defense spending. The other key driver is Vladimir Putin. Allies are determined to continue supporting Ukraine with cash and weapons and also to build up their own defenses to deter a possible Russian attack.
“We’ve got to do this because of the Russians’ threat, and we see what the Russians are doing in Ukraine,” Rutte said, adding that the goal is to defend the 1 billion people in NATO countries “against the Russian threat, the massive Chinese build-up, and the fact that Russia, China, North Korea, Iran work together.”
Trump has also vented about the reluctance of many European allies to help in the war he launched against Iran.
“We were let down,” Trump said last month when Rutte met him in the Oval Office. “We didn’t need help on this at all. We demolished [Iran] literally in the first week but it would have been nice if they would have said, ‘We’d like to help.'”
But Rutte again underlined that European countries were crucial to the bombing campaign against Iran.
“The U.S. probably could not have done Epic Fury without using Europe as one big platform of power projection,” he said, noting that Romania closed its largest commercial airport to allow American planes to take off and land, and as many as 5,000 aircraft took off from European airfields this winter despite Trump’s continued insistence that allies didn’t help.
A senior White House official said that Trump is coming to Ankara with “a combination of optimism but also a level of being perturbed over Iran. It’s both. I know that may be an oxymoron but there’s hopefulness that even after what happened after Iran that maybe there’s a path forward.”
Rutte insisted that despite differences, the alliance is still united with the U.S. as a full partner.
“I think the president has a point that there are individual cases where he is rightly disappointed, but when you look at the bigger picture of what the Europeans are doing, it is massive,” he said, adding: “This is evidence that European nations have really been extremely helpful based on all these bilateral agreements to make Epic Fury possible.”