2 October 2024
On 1 October 2024, Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister, took office as the 14th NATO Secretary General. Rutte is taking on the job at a critical juncture in the war in Ukraine, where Russian forces are advancing in the east of the country, and just over a month before the US presidential elections. He was welcomed to NATO Headquarters in Brussels by the outgoing Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, whose term has ended after ten years.
At a special session of the North Atlantic Council, Stoltenberg formally handed over to Secretary General Mark Rutte. “Mark has the perfect background to become a great secretary-general,” Stoltenberg said as he ended a decade in office. “He has served as prime minister for 14 years and led four different coalition governments … therefore he knows how to make compromises, create consensus, and these are skills which are very much valued here at NATO,” he added. In his first press conference, Mark Rutte outlined his three priorities for the Alliance: keeping NATO strong; supporting Ukraine; and strengthening partnerships—all of which appear likely to maintain NATO on the same path as pursued by his predecessor.
Keeping NATO strong
Rutte’s first priority is to ensure that NATO has the capabilities “to protect against any threat”. He said that this requires “more, better equipped forces; a more robust transatlantic defence industry; increased defence production capacity; greater investment in innovation; and secure supply chains”, as well as “significantly more” military spending. European NATO and Canada are collectively forecast to spend $506.7 billion in 2024 and the United States $967.7 billion, with total NATO military spending expected to reach $1.47 trillion, up from $1.29 trillion in 2023. Independent estimates suggest that in 2023 NATO accounted for 55 per cent of the global total in military spending. This raises questions as to how much military spending is enough to provide security for NATO member states.
Support for Ukraine
"My second priority is to step up our support for Ukraine and bring it ever closer to NATO, because there can be no lasting security in Europe without a strong, independent Ukraine" Rutte said, adding “We have to make sure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent, democratic nation”, and he affirmed a commitment made by the alliance’s leaders in 2008 that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.” Rutte also highlighted Beijing’s support for Putin: “China has become a decisive enabler of Russia’s war in Ukraine. China cannot continue to fuel the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War without this impacting its interests and reputation,” he said.
Future US support for Ukraine remains uncertain and there is ongoing opposition from other member states, especially Hungary. Meanwhile, Russian forces have been making limited advances on the battlefield more than two-and-a-half years after Russia’s all-out invasion, and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure in towns and cities behind the front line continue. Ukraine’s army has a foothold in the Kursk region inside Russia, but it remains outmanned and outgunned. Ukraine’s NATO membership also remains a distant prospect, with several member states, including the United States and Germany, believing that Ukraine should not join while it is fighting a war.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media he wants to work “productively” with Rutte towards bringing his country into the military alliance. “I wish him every success in this new role and look forward to working productively together to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security and our partnership with the alliance, as Ukraine continues on its path towards full-fledged NATO membership,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Strengthening partnerships
Rutte’s third is to “deepen our partnerships with like-minded nations, near and far, that share our values”. He named the European Union as a “unique and essential partner”, adding that engagement with partners across the Middle East, North Africa and the Sahel regions would be increased “to foster stability in our Southern neighbourhood”. Enhancing cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners is also on the cards, with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea due to participate in a NATO Defence Ministerial later this month for the first time. Rutte’s comments on China also suggest a continuity with his predecessor’s hard-line views on how to approach Beijing, which in turn, largely echoed the hawkish narratives from Washington.
Working with Trump
The new NATO Secretary General also asserted that he is not worried about the upcoming presidential election in the United States as he could work with either candidate. It has been suggested that the Republican candidate, former US President Donald Trump, could cut support to Ukraine or weaken security guarantees for some NATO members should he return to the White House after the November elections. But Rutte praised Trump for pushing NATO allies to spend more and for toughening their approach toward China. He also hailed the “fantastic record” of Vice President Kamala Harris and described her as “a highly respected leader”. “I will be able to work with both. Whatever is the outcome of the election”, Rutte said. Asked whether the Netherlands, which has only just reached NATO’s military spending target of 2% of gross domestic product, has set a good example to other allies, Rutte said “No. We should have done this earlier”.
The view from Moscow
Russia said it did not expect any change of policy from Mark Rutte: "Our expectations are that the North Atlantic alliance will continue to work in the same direction in which it has been working," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding that President Vladimir Putin knew Rutte well from past meetings. "At one time, there were hopes for the possibility of building good pragmatic relations - at least, such a dialogue was conducted - but subsequently we know that the Netherlands took a rather irreconcilable position, a position on the complete exclusion of any contacts with our country," he said. "Therefore, we do not think that anything significantly new will happen in the alliance's policy".
Further reading:
Ben Coates, Is a No-Nonsense Dutchman Just What NATO Needs? New York Times, 1 October 2024