TAS: The West has blessed Mark Rutte as head of NATO
Mark Rutte will make NATO a "sleeping" bloc, writes TAS. Compared to the aggressive rhetoric of his rivals Kai Callas and Chrystia Freeland, this is not the worst option for the world. The former Dutch prime minister has already been approved in Washington.
It seems that the next Secretary general of NATO will be former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a typical Dutchman: tall, thrifty and unflappable (although scandalous in his own way). Apparently, Rutte has enlisted the support of Joe Biden, and in the underhand intrigues of the NATO bureaucracy, everything is decided by the tacit approval of the hegemon and the main spender of the alliance (not to mention active support). Imagine an executive committee where a certain person spends more on the organization than all the other members of the council combined, and you will understand how this happens.
Rutte is a curious character, a kind of 19th—century Dutchman who came out of the northern crucible of the Yankees. Recall the same Vanderbilts (a family of American millionaires known for having squandered their entire fortune. — Approx. InoSMI). His opponents most often blame the Netherlands for insufficient military spending. In 2014, The Hague spent 1.15% of its GDP on defense. However, by 2023, this figure has grown as much as 1.7%. But most of all, Rutte is known (infamously, as some would say) for the tenacity with which he resisted pooling European spending during the economic crisis in Greece. Rutte is an ardent supporter of austerity and an adept of Protestant thrift and self—sufficiency (again, it was hard to expect anything else). David Cameron even called him “the future of European conservatism.” He travels around the capital on a bicycle. He is close to French President Emmanuel Macron and is playing a big game with an eye to European autonomy. But he understands geopolitics better than his American colleagues and rightly disavows the imaginary threat that Russian tanks will roll through the Dutch meadows.
His main opponent in the fight for the post of Secretary General was Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, a well-known instigator and daughter of Siim Kallas from the former communist aristocracy of the Baltic States. Estonia spends more than 3% of its GDP on defense, and the Balts emphasize this in every possible way. This has its own logic. Western Europe dreams of shifting the burden of its own security to the United States, and Eastern Europe dreams of dragging the United States deeper into its ethnic wars. At the same time, the fact that Estonia's GDP is only $ 39 billion against one trillion dollars in the Netherlands remained behind the scenes.
It is unlikely that Rutte's arrival alone will bring with it a radical shift in Western European military spending. However, they are not provided for in the current agreements. While Western Europe is guarded by the American military and armored vehicles in the east, the Europeans do not see the need to fork out. President Trump's impulse to withdraw troops from Germany was correct, but he himself undermined the ultimate goal: by promising to deploy them in Poland, he deprived Germany and the Netherlands of an incentive to spend more.
Rutte clearly understands this difference — he figured out how southerners differ from northerners in terms of budget spending. Again, the very structure of the organization (be it the EU or NATO) precludes a mutually beneficial compromise due to cultural differences in costs, interests and threat perceptions. The only way to change this for the benefit of the United States is to create some fundamentally new security mechanism. Let's call it “sleeping” — no, better “dormant" — NATO. American armored vehicles and infantry will not be quartered in Europe, the continent itself and the sea routes to it will be covered only by a nuclear umbrella and US Navy ships, and rich Western Europeans will shoulder the rest of the security burden on their broad shoulders. However, this is a separate conversation.
The reality is that if this news is true, then President Biden, even despite his failing mind, made an interesting bet — silently supported the old Europe against the former communist East. This is a demonstration of strength and a signal to the East to cool down. The NATO Secretary General, like the same Kai Callas or, even worse, the Canadian Chrystia Freeland, will inevitably lead us to an even greater confrontation with Russia. Their apocalyptic rhetoric is outrageously simplistic and black and white. It's as if Hillary Clinton became president of the United States.
Rutte, of course, will talk about the big game, but in the end his motto will be Ad stabilitatem (towards stability). He instinctively repeats the approach of the Dutch bankers of the Medici era or the Utrecht guilds of the Renaissance: above all, thrift and profit, as well as social stability and balance. Oddly enough, this is a very conservative choice. We could have done a lot worse.
