AP, ANKARA
Since he started work as NATO secretary-general almost two years ago, Mark Rutte has spent much of his time trying to keep the US anchored to the world’s biggest military alliance, employing outright flattery to dissuade US President Donald Trump from acting on threats to abandon it. However, the goalposts keep shifting, raising the stakes ahead of this week’s summit in Turkey. Initially, it was about money. Trump has long railed against NATO allies for spending too small a fraction of their national budgets on defense. However, those problems were addressed at their summit last year, when US allies committed to invest as much as the US, in gross domestic product terms.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, right, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pose for a photo during a NATO summit in The Hague on June 25 last year.
NATO’s real problem now is turning that money into military capabilities, particularly as European countries worry about a possible attack from Russia. Still, Rutte tried to put to bed any lingering concerns at a White House meeting last month, with a new pitch using a chart labeled the “The Trump Trillion” in gold letters — showing US$1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.
