The Secretary General of NATO pushes through criticism for his compliments for U.S. President Donald Trump, pointing to higher spending by the alliance’s members and noting this “would not have happened” without Trump pushing the matter.
America is “completely right” that NATO’s other members — Europe and Canada — had not been paying enough into the alliance, but that is now improving and its states are now heading towards equilibrium and President Trump is to thank for that, Secretary General Mark Rutte said. The remarks came in an interview with the New York Times at the weekend which tried very hard to get the Secretary General to state any agreement at all with the legacy media-authorised view on the alliance that, actually, President Trump is a threat to it.
This talking point was baked in before Trump even became President the first time around and lingers now, even in the face of NATO leader after NATO leader saying quite clearly that President Trump’s shock therapy has made NATO stronger, not weaker. Journalists also tried to tease Trump with this matter at last week’s NATO summit but, ultimately got a contemptuous brush-off.
Again Rutte brushed off these leading questions and accusations he had been fawning or grovelling to Trump when he’d complimented the U.S. President for bolstering NATO, and told the paper: “I think when somebody deserves praise, that praise should be given. And President Trump deserves all the praise, because without his leadership, without him being re-elected president of the United States, the [spending boost] would never, ever, ever have been [achieved].”
On the achievement of getting all NATO members to agree to boost defence spending — including infrastructure spending — to hit five per cent of their GDP figures, Rutte continued: “…the biggest ally is the United States. That biggest ally has paid, since Eisenhower, more than the Europeans. And now, for the first time in 65 years, we will equalize between what the U.S. is paying and what the Europeans are paying. And without Trump, that would not have happened.”
The NATO boss also discussed the Russian threat, which he judges as very serious to the United States, as well as its European allies. Calling Russia’s ability to mobilise society to produce weapons in vast quantities — despite its economy being comparatively small — as “amazing”, Rutte nevertheless dispensed a withering put-down for the Kremlin’s chief of foreign affairs, who has been in post since 2004.
Rutte said: “I know Sergey Lavrov very well. He has been foreign minister of Russia since the birth of Jesus Christ, and I’ve never taken him seriously.”
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