NATO’s secretary general is on a mission to keep the US in the alliance, and, for him, losing face is a small price to pay to make it into the history books, a former NATO interim secretary general told Euractiv.

Mark Rutte has said multiple times to people close to him that his mandate must be “solely focused on the mission to keep Trump in NATO,” Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo, who also served as vice secretary general of the NATO alliance from 2001 to 2007, said in an interview.

This consideration is shaping Rutte’s behaviour, Minuto-Rizzo argued, and his approach is already paying off.

“He is essentially saying: in the history books, what will matter is not whether I called him ‘Daddy’ or not, but whether the United States remained in NATO,” he said. “If by the end of his tenure, Trump has not shattered the Transatlantic alliance, we could say that he has won his battle.”

Rutte’s style isn’t meant to win Europe over.

“He risks smearing his name forever, he knows it,” the former NATO official said. “European public opinion cannot comprehend this deferential tone. None of us likes it when he calls him ‘Daddy’.”

For the former secretary general, the alliance is now “living through a historic transition,” but he rejects the idea that Washington’s shift has long been in the making.

“There have always been complaints about the Europeans. I know this because I was there,” Minuto-Rizzo said. “But the nature of the complaints was substantially friendly.”

More importantly, disengagement was never on the table, the Italian diplomat said.

“America’s commitment to Europe never faltered. Obama wasn’t aggressive towards Europeans, and Biden, we could say, was almost more European than us,” he added.

The White House’s animosity towards its European allies is mostly “Made in MAGA,” the diplomat said.

But the fact that Wednesday’s meeting between Rutte and Trump was kept private is a positive sign, Minuto-Rizzo said, arguing that Trump, who has used visits to the Oval Office by foreign leaders to deliver verbal lashings, resisted the temptation with the NATO chief.

Still, the run-up to the leaders’ summit in July will not be an easy road for Rutte to navigate, the former secretary general said, because “the US has a lot of frustration to express about its European allies, and in Ankara this can impact the conversation.”

“I don’t say that is fair, but that’s how things are,” he said. “In a fragmented and increasingly dangerous world, the existence of a tried and tested organisation like NATO is a factor of stability, and it is in our interest that it stays as such.”

(at, cm)