Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, is often called a “Trump whisperer,” able to mix public flattery with private advice to an unpredictable and moody American president whose support is crucial to the alliance and to Ukraine’s war against Russia.
To that end, Mr. Rutte, who took the job in October 2024, has been willing to accept a degree of humiliation for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump sweet and onside, especially on intelligence support for Ukraine. He even called Mr. Trump the alliance’s “Daddy” before last year’s crucial NATO summit meeting.
But Mr. Rutte’s open support for Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war alongside Israel against Iran has brought new, sharper criticism.
The issue is not that he is flattering Mr. Trump. It is that Mr. Rutte is supporting a war of choice that most of the other 31 NATO allies regard as unnecessary and illegal under international law, as President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany called it on Tuesday.
By supporting the war, which does not involve NATO or collective defense, the critics say, Mr. Rutte has gone beyond his remit as secretary general of the whole alliance to become a cheerleader for an unpopular president and an unpopular war.
On Sunday, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Rutte said of Mr. Trump and the war against Iran, “He’s doing this to make the whole world safe.” Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are also a danger to Europe, Mr. Rutte suggested. “What the president is doing here, which is taking out — degrading Iran’s capability to be, again, an exporter of chaos, sheer chaos to the region, to the world,” he said.
Two European officials expressed unease with Mr. Rutte’s latest statements, saying the war Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel initiated has the potential to make matters worse rather than better. Speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic matters, they said it could lead to a harder-line Iranian regime that could try to build a nuclear weapon and a long period of high energy prices that will damage European and global growth. They expressed fear that the war in Iran would take money and arms away from Ukraine’s battle against Russia, which is also profiting from the resultant high energy prices.
NATO did not make Mr. Rutte available for an interview. But Mr. Rutte, in an interview with Reuters earlier this month, said he was aware that his fawning on Mr. Trump was widely frowned upon in Europe.
“I hear the criticism, obviously — I’m not deaf,” he said. But he also credited Mr. Trump for “taking this decisive action, to take out the capability of Iran to pose a threat as an exporter of terrorism and chaos.” He added, “If a president of a country is providing that kind of leadership, some praise is warranted.”
Mr. Rutte’s main task is to keep the 32-nation alliance together and Mr. Trump engaged, supportive and involved. As someone who does not need to face voters, Mr. Rutte appears prepared to swallow some pride in order to please the White House and maintain its willingness to provide crucial intelligence, and to sell vital arms, to Ukraine.
But Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, said that on Iran, “it makes no sense for the NATO secretary-general to support an argument and a war that 31 other countries think is stupid, illegal, unnecessary and deeply destructive of the main goal, to weaken Russia.”
“The number one goal for him,” Mr. Daalder added, “is to keep NATO secure, and right now the biggest threat to NATO is Trump.”
Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Center, a Brussels research organization, said working to keep the United States involved in NATO was crucial. “But as a European leader with responsibility to other European NATO members, Rutte is over the top, leaning too much in one direction,” he said.
Nathalie Tocci, a former European official who now teaches at Johns Hopkins SAIS, said Mr. Rutte appeared as “Trump’s cheerleader, and it’s not his job description, and I don’t think it’s really effective.” The only times Mr. Trump “has responded positively to Europe is when Europeans have straightened their backs,” she said. “NATO is a defensive alliance and this is not a defensive war,” she said about Iran.
George Robertson, who was NATO secretary-general from 1999 to 2003, during the Iraq war, when NATO was deeply divided, said Mr. Rutte was in a tough spot. The job is tricky, he said, especially “with 32 countries around the table and one of them disproportionately influential.”
The job of the secretary general, he said, “is to build the trust that glues the alliance together, and sometimes that means you have to defer to some countries and people when you don’t particularly want to.” And in Mr. Trump, “Rutte has a big figure who is unpredictable and at times capricious, but he has to keep the alliance together.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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