Mark Rutte prepares for top NATO job amid Ukraine, US uncertainty By Reuters

By Andrew Gray

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte took over as NATO chief on Tuesday, tasked with keeping the Western military alliance afloat with the war in Ukraine at a critical juncture and a crucial U.S. presidential election approaching.

At a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Rutte will take over as Secretary General of Norway Jens Stoltenberg, who has overseen the organization during a turbulent decade marked especially by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

NATO officials and diplomats expect Rutte to uphold Stoltenberg’s priorities within the 32-member alliance — rallying support for Ukraine, pushing NATO countries to spend more on defense and keeping the US involved in European security.

But uncertainty hangs over both the conflict in Ukraine, which has turned into a war of attrition, and future US support for NATO and Kiev, with NATO skeptic Donald Trump in a close election race with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Rutte, who stepped down as Dutch prime minister this year after a record 14 years in the job, has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine. He also urged Europeans to “stop complaining” about former US President Trump and get on with strengthening the continent’s defences.

CENTRAL ROLE

The war in Ukraine has put NATO – founded in 1949 to deter and defend against any attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union – back at the center of international affairs.

Sweden and Finland abandoned long traditions of non-alignment to join NATO and benefit from its collective defense clause, according to which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all.

The war also prompted NATO to send thousands more troops to its eastern flank and radically revamp its defense plans to take the possibility of an attack from Moscow more seriously than at any time since the end of the Cold War .

While Western leaders emphasize that NATO is a defensive alliance, Moscow has long portrayed it as a threat to Russia’s security.

One of Rutte’s key tasks will be to convince NATO members to come up with additional troops, weapons and spending to fully realize the new defense plans, diplomats and analysts say.

The United States is NATO’s dominant power, but the alliance makes decisions by consensus, so much of the secretary general’s job is to broker compromises between allies.

Diplomats say Rutte’s long experience leading coalition governments makes him well-suited for the new role.

But they say he may have to curb an occasional tendency to bluntly criticize other European countries and an insistence on fiscal frugality that has irked eastern Europeans who want joint European Union loans for defense projects.