Rutte Heads to White House to Calm Trump Before NATO
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- Mark Rutte is set to meet President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, aiming to ease tensions over NATO's refusal to back the US Iran campaign and Washington's threats to draw down troops in Europe ahead of the July 7-8 summit in Ankara.
- Trump has been angered by NATO allies' reluctance to support the Middle East conflict or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz after a US-Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28 disrupted the key oil shipping route, and openly questioned whether the US should honor NATO's mutual defense pact.
- Pete Hegseth last week berated "free-riding" allies at a NATO meeting and announced a six-month review of US troop deployments in Europe that could result in force reductions, following a separate decision to shrink the pool of US military capabilities available to the alliance in a crisis.
- Rutte has served as the alliance's crisis manager with Trump since November 2024, steering NATO back from the brink during the Greenland dispute and earning the "Trump whisperer" label, though analyst Stephen Wertheim warned Trump remains "upset and erratic."
- Rutte told Fox News that incidents of NATO members denying US basing and overflight rights for war-related activities were "isolated," noting hundreds of US planes took off from European bases and pledging to reveal "huge" new allied defense spending figures to Trump on Wednesday.
- NATO members at last year's Hague summit pledged to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense within a decade at Trump's demand, but implementation has been uneven, with some European countries sharply increasing spending while others lag behind.
Why it matters: The Ankara summit could redefine the transatlantic alliance: if Trump follows through on questioning Article 5 mutual defense or cuts US troop commitments, European NATO members would face a security vacuum in defending Ukraine and deterring Russia without American backing. Hegseth's troop review and the shrinking US capability pool already signal Washington is operationalizing a partial withdrawal, making Rutte's diplomatic mission urgent.
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