NATO’s Rutte is Doing a Tough Job. Europeans Should Help

8 Apr 2026 02:37 PM

Mark Rutte has come under attack for demeaning NATO, going beyond his remit and being ultimately ineffectual. Rutte is actually doing his job. And as he meets Trump this week, European allies could do more to help.

It is no surprise that the NATO Secretary General meets with the American President ahead of the next summit of the alliance, scheduled for 7-8 July in Ankara. Mark Rutte’s visit to Washington, DC, while long planned, comes at perhaps the most dangerous point since NATO was founded in April 1949, and in the dark shadow of the war in Iran.

A Paper Tiger?

Since the start of his war of choice in the Middle East, President Trump has repeatedly voiced his frustration and even fury with NATO allies for their reluctance to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, calling them ‘cowards’. On 1 April, he griped about British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and the state of the British armed forces in an interview with The Telegraph and went on to claim that US membership in the alliance was ‘beyond reconsideration.’ ‘I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,’ Trump said – as if the US was not the leading member of the alliance and Russia was not America’s adversary.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s comments. ‘We’re going to have to re-examine the value of NATO and that alliance for our country,’ Rubio said. ‘If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked, but them denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement. That’s a hard one to stay engaged in,’ said Rubio.

Yet many of his former colleagues in the US Senate were quick to recall that an American president cannot unilaterally withdraw from NATO, not least due to a 2023 bipartisan bill drafted by then-Senator Rubio. The Senate majority leader John Thune called NATO a ‘very critical, incredibly successful alliance,’ adding that ‘in the world today, we need allies.’

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