NATO’s new boss just sent Trump a love letter

Once a budget hawk, now a military spending hype man — Mark Rutte’s about-face tells you everything about the state of Western leadership

When Mark Rutte sent his text to Donald Trump this week thanking him for bombing Iran, it wasn’t diplomacy. It was choreography. The newly anointed NATO Secretary General was playing a part written for him somewhere between Langley and Brussels, and he performed it with the practised enthusiasm of a man who has made a career out of never blinking at the absurdities handed to him.

“Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran,” Rutte wrote in a private message published publicly by Trump. “That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.”

You read it once and wonder if it’s satire. You read it again and realise: no, this is real. This is where we are. The Dutchman who, not so long ago, was holding the line on NATO spending increases in The Hague, is now offering up giddy praise for pre-emptive airstrikes and vowing that Europe (sic) will pay “in a BIG way.”

This is not conviction. It’s performance. And it marks yet another low in Western Europe’s posturing since the return of Trump to the White House in January.

Just days ago, Trump walked out of the G7 early. Reports say he was furious with Emmanuel Macron, whom he doesn’t consider pliant enough. The signal from the US president was clear: he has no patience for lectures or lip service. He wants tribute.

And now, as NATO gathers in the Netherlands this week, it appears Rutte is determined to give him exactly that. “You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,” he wrote. “It was not easy but we’ve got them all signed onto 5 percent!”

Five percent. That’s more than double NATO’s longstanding 2% guideline — a leap so vast it borders on the absurd for European economies already struggling under inflationary pressure and domestic demands. But there is no hint of resistance in Rutte’s message. No caution. Just applause.

“Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” he continues. “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.”

It reads like fan mail. One half expects him to sign off with a kiss emoji. It’s the kind of thing a Soviet commissar might have sent to Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Western European leaders at least pretended to care about balance, restraint, and the occasional glance at legality. Now they perform allegiance like children in a school play, hoping the headmaster notices their lines were well-rehearsed.

And Rutte? He is the perfect symbol of this new era: a leader without convictions, only scripts. As Dutch prime minister, he was a master of the tightrope walk, always leaning whichever way the wind was blowing from Berlin or Washington. One week he would wax lyrical about climate responsibility. The next, he’d be assuring gas lobbyists that energy security came first.

His real ideology is adaptability. His real politics is performance. And now, at NATO, he’s been given a new stage and a bigger audience.

Let’s be clear: NATO is not a debating society. It is a military alliance. But its cohesion, especially in recent years, has rested on the illusion of shared values. What this message to Trump reveals is that those values are now secondary to one thing: appeasement.

Appeasement of a man who has made no secret of his disdain for the European Union, who has floated leaving NATO altogether, and who would, given half a chance, turn alliance into obedience. And so Rutte flatters him. He flatters him not because he believes it will lead to peace, but because he believes it will buy time.

That is the most damning thing. It is not that Rutte agrees with the bombing of Iran. It is not even clear if he understands the implications. It is that he doesn’t care either way. The point is not the policy. The point is the pose.

This is what the Western European elite has become: a class of actors mouthing slogans they no longer believe in. There is no conviction, no real debate, only a desperate need to remain in the good graces of whoever appears most powerful this week.

Rutte may think he’s bought the region another few months of Trump’s patience. But at what cost? When the next demand comes — and it will come — who among them will say no?

Western Europe once had statesmen. Now it has script readers.

And Mark Rutte, God help us, is getting top billing.