An alliance under strain turns to a consensus builder in Rutte

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Outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has a reputation as a political consensus-builder who regularly rides his bicycle to work from the home in The Hague where he has lived for 30 years, but he is also known as a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and has pushed his country to increase its military support to Kyiv.

That pairing proved attractive for the 32-member NATO alliance, which formally named Mr. Rutte, 57, as secretary-general after a lengthy and, at times, divisive search.

Jens Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, held down the post for a full decade. He stayed on far longer than scheduled as the alliance dealt with the crisis in Ukraine and struggled to coalesce around a successor.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis announced last week that he was dropping out of the contest for the five-year appointment.

Mr. Rutte will formally take over from Mr. Stoltenberg on Oct. 1.

Security analysts said Mr. Rutte could get along with people of differing viewpoints and opinions, a useful quality as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has unified and exposed divisions inside the alliance.

Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Mr. Rutte’s demeanor and well-honed political savvy could be crucial.

With the move to Brussels, Mr. Rutte may also soon deal with more conservative European leaders who are skeptical of NATO’s Ukraine mission and a second administration for Donald Trump, who repeatedly clashed with allies over defense spending, deployments and other issues during his first four-year term in the White House.

“Secretary-general is, in some ways, a job about herding cats and getting 32 members to kind of be on the same page,” Mr. Bergman told reporters during a briefing Wednesday about the NATO summit next month in Washington to mark the alliance’s 75th anniversary. Failing to settle on a successor to Mr. Stoltenberg before the summit begins on July 9 would have been a diplomatic embarrassment for NATO powers.

Mr. Stoltenberg has led the alliance since 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Mr. Rutte will take over as NATO continues supporting Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders while bolstering its own security needs.

“It is a tremendous honor to be appointed secretary-general of NATO. The alliance is and will remain the cornerstone of our collective security,” Mr. Rutte said shortly after NATO announced his selection. “Leading this organization is a responsibility I do not take lightly.”

The challenges Mr. Rutte faces are daunting. He will continue the alliance’s campaign to support Ukraine while reinforcing NATO defenses in the face of a hostile Russia. He also will help determine NATO’s role in dealing with potential threats from an increasingly bellicose China and weigh the alliance’s growing role in Asia.

“But the preeminent challenge is a political one. Rutte will take the reins of NATO at a time of significant political uncertainty across the alliance,” said Philippe Dickinson, a former British diplomat now with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. “The new secretary-general will have to manage whatever configuration of leaders the electorates in France and North America choose in the coming months.”

Mr. Stoltenberg called Mr. Rutte a “true trans-Atlanticist, a strong leader and a consensus-builder.”

“I wish him every success as we continue to strengthen NATO. I know I am leaving NATO in good hands,” Mr. Stoltenberg said in a statement after the selection.

White House ties

The White House said President Biden and Mr. Rutte have worked closely over the past decade, including during Mr. Biden’s tenure as vice president during the Obama administration. They agree on the need to support Ukraine while tightening trans-Atlantic bonds, officials said.

“President Biden strongly believes that Mark Rutte will make an excellent secretary-general, and he’s grateful for his willingness to serve in that capacity,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.

Mr. Rutte has long been considered a favorite of Mr. Biden’s.

“In this structure, not even the member states decide anything, let alone the secretary-general,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told the official TASS news agency. “The Americans run everything.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has made no secret of Kyiv’s desire to join the Western military alliance one day, welcomed the selection. “I know Mark Rutte as a principled and strong leader, who has demonstrated his decisiveness and vision on many occasions over the past years,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Rutte also has a reputation as a “Trump whisperer,” a center-right politician who showed he could work with the former and possibly future U.S. president. Mr. Trump has been openly hostile to NATO and regularly criticized European countries for expecting the U.S. to pay for their defense. At the Munich Security Conference in February, Mr. Rutte said Mr. Trump had a point.

“Let’s stop moaning and nagging and whining about Trump. We need to invest in our defense expenditure, [and] we need to massively ramp up arms production,” Mr. Rutte told the gathering. Many of the countries Mr. Trump criticized failed to meet the targeted 2% of gross domestic product for annual defense spending. All NATO countries had signed on to that benchmark.

“This has nothing to do with Trump. This has to do with the U.S., Canada, Iceland, Norway, the United Kingdom, the [European Union] and NATO countries — all of us making sure that we stay safe and that our values are protected by protecting Ukraine and making sure that our defense is at maximum capacity,” he said.

During Mr. Rutte’s tenure as prime minister, the Netherlands failed to meet the 2% threshold on defense spending, which was supposed to take full effect this year. This year, the Dutch are expected to spend 2.05% of their GDP on the military.

Mr. Rutte demonstrated his skills as a politician and negotiator by persuading all 32 members of the NATO alliance to support his campaign. Hungary’s nationalist government under Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly questioned the alliance’s stout anti-Russian stance. It signed on after Mr. Rutte said Budapest would not be obligated to provide funding to Kyiv or send personnel to Ukraine.

“Rutte can be very pragmatic, but at a time when the rules-based order is under serious threat, NATO requires leadership that will have to go beyond what everyone can agree on,” said Dominykas Kaminskas, a visiting fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative. “We know the Dutch prime minister can find consensus when it’s difficult, but whether he will be able to get allies to make sacrifices and decisions that they might not otherwise be comfortable making remains to be seen.”

Dutch politics is renowned for its intricate and often lengthy coalition-building battles, and Mr. Rutte has suggested he would bring some of those skills to NATO.

Asked at the Munich conference in February about the possible return of Mr. Trump to the White House, Mr. Rutte offered an insight into his pragmatic approach.

“I’m not an American. I cannot vote in the U.S.,” he said. “We have to work with whoever is on the dance floor.”