At the head of NATO, Mark Rette must face threats from Donald Trump. The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands is a pragmatic politician.
President Donald Trump is threatening to leave NATO because of the disagreements between the United States and its allies. The secretary general of the alliance is under threat from the American head of state.
Mark Rütte, however, does everything he can to flatter Donald Trump. “His action is essential in Iran to make the world safer,” he declared on American television.
This annoys the Europeans, and it does not seem to convince the American president. “NATO made a big mistake by not being behind us in Iran. The allies were not there,” lamented Donald Trump. The latter even threatens to leave the organization. Yet there was a time when Mark Rette was nicknamed “The Trump Whisperer”, the man who whispered in Trump’s ear.
But times are changing. During the Republican’s first term in the White House, Mark Rütte was still Prime Minister of the Netherlands. A position he held for 14 years, a record in the country. The politician has the art of adaptation. He admires Margaret Thatcher as much as Winston Churchill and has managed to govern successively with the right, the center and the left over the years.
A pragmatic man
He is also called Mr. Everyman in the Netherlands. Mark Rütte goes to work by bike. When he was Prime Minister, he refused bodyguards and official vehicles. And if he leaves the bike when it rains too much, he gets behind the wheel of his old car himself.
Mark Rütte wants to be pragmatic first of all. This can be useful when you have been at the head of NATO for a year and a half. He has been referring to this pragmatism since a tragedy. One of his brothers died of AIDS in 1989. A shock of course for the man who was still a history student at the time. Pragmatism is found in his career. He dreamed of being a pianist when he was young. But he opted for a position as human resources director in a Unilever butter factory, before devoting himself body and soul to politics.
He is also a man of habits. Before coming to Brussels, he had spent his entire adult life in the same ground floor apartment in The Hague. He doesn’t like change, but he knows how to adapt. Which made him a very popular man in the Netherlands after 14 years in power. The Dutch particularly appreciated that he did not grant himself any favors as head of government during Covid. He had given up on visiting his dying mother.
