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Mark Rutte, incoming secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), during a transition ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday, October 1, 2024. Mark Rutte , the affable and meticulous former Dutch Prime Minister, has a daunting task ahead of him to keep the defense alliance a global force.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday welcomed US President Donald Trump’s warning that Russia could face more tariffs and sanctions if it does not end the war in Ukraine.
“I was very, very happy with Trump’s position to put more sanctions on Russia. We know that the Russian economy is doing terribly.[ly]and sanctions will help,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
He expressed the hope that Europe will now also “step up” with sanctions in an attempt to “suffocate the Russian economy” and decrease Moscow’s war chests.
“Trump is right, Ukraine is closer to Europe, but Trump is also right that it is a geopolitical conflict so I am sure that the United States wants to end it with a good and strong deal,” added Rutte.
Trump said on Wednesday that if there was no agreement to end the Russia-Ukraine war soon, the United States “would have no choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs and Sanctions on everything that is sold by Russia to the United States, and many other participating countries.
“Let’s let this war, which would never have started if I were president, end!” Trump said on the Truth Social platform. “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better.”
Trump has already boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of being elected, and has threatened to cut military funding for Kiev. Concerns have grown in Europe that a financially and weapons-deprived Ukraine could be pushed into a bad peace deal involving territorial concessions to Russia.
Rutte said the outcome of any peace deal had to be “sustainable,” noting that Russia’s allies, including China and North Korea, would be “high-fiving” otherwise.
“We have to get to a position where Russia will never, ever, ever again try to capture a square kilometer of Ukraine, so it must be a strong deal,” Rutte said.
February will mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, and while war fatigue has grown among some allies, the war has shown no sign of ending anytime soon with Russia looking to gain, and Ukraine preventing more territorial losses, before any possible peace talks.
When asked for his current assessment of the war between Ukraine and Russia, NATO chief Rutte said “at the moment, it is not moving in the right direction.”
“At the moment, it is [the war] not moving in the right direction, [the frontlines] it should move to the east and it moves to the west… We have to change this, we have to change the trajectory of the war,” he said.
Defense spending
Trump’s relationship with the Western military alliance has been acrimonious during his first presidency, with the Republican leader often criticizing NATO member states for failing to meet a 2014 target of spending at least 2% of GDP in defense every year.
Ahead of his second term, Trump signaled that the debate over military spending — and Trump’s perception that NATO members are overly dependent on the United States for their own security — would return to agenda, affirming in January that the 32 members of NATO. countries must contribute even more to defense.
“I think NATO should have 5% [as a target]”, he said. “Everyone can afford it, but it should be at 5%, not 2%,” he said at a press conference.
US President Donald Trump arrives at the NATO summit at the Grove hotel in Watford, north east London on December 4, 2019.
Christian Hartmann | AFP | Getty Images
Rutte said he agrees with Trump’s call for higher defense spending among NATO members, saying that countries that have not reached the 2% target, such as Spain, Italy and Canada, “should reach 2% in the coming months. be done this year”.
“Fortunately, thanks to Trump in his first term, we have stepped up defense spending … but we all have to reach 2%,” he said, adding that Europe also needs to strengthen its industrial base defense
Rutte himself faced a debate as to why Dutch defense spending was still below the NATO target of 2% for most of the time when he was the country’s prime minister. Alliance data shows that Dutch defense spending has been below the NATO target for 2014-2023, but is estimated to have reached 2.05% of the nation’s GDP in 2024.
