Mark Rutte Needs to Stop Talking

By Robert Kagan

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

Can Mark Rutte please just stop talking? The NATO secretary general, who infantilized an entire continent last year by referring to Donald Trump as “Daddy,” continued his campaign of flattery at the most recent meeting of the G7: “The U.S. action to prevent the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and degrade its ballistic-missile capability improves security for us all,” he told reporters.

 

Diplomats are paid to lie for their country, but this may be the greatest and most obvious falsehood ever uttered by a diplomat not named Sergey Lavrov. Even the most enthusiastic backers of Trump’s war do not believe this nonsense. The one thing we can be sure of is that the U.S. action did not improve security for anyone, except possibly for Iran, and certainly not for Europeans.

 

Not only have Europeans suffered from higher energy prices, but the result of the war is that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz and will for the foreseeable future. That means that European nations, like the Gulf States and every other nation dependent on access to the strait, will be at Iran’s mercy. Never mind the new “fees” that everyone is going to have to pay Iran for use of the strait. Any nation that currently maintains sanctions on Iran is going to have to drop them quickly. When Tehran tells, say, the U.K. that the queue to get in and out of the strait is awfully long, and that the paperwork it provided the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–controlled strait authority is not quite right but could probably be fixed once sanctions are dropped, what is London going to do?

 

If Rutte’s self-debasing flattery of Trump actually worked, that would be one thing. To help save NATO: That is Rutte’s rationale for his toadying. Unfortunately, Trump takes servile flattery as his due. Giving it to him satisfies his need to feel superior and dominant, but it buys you nothing. Trump will turn on an “ally” or “friend” in a heartbeat and with stunning viciousness. The latest victim is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, who had much more reason than Rutte or any European to believe that Trump was reliably on his side. Rutte’s latest fawning occurred just as practically the entire nation of Israel was crying out in shock at its sudden abandonment by Trump.

 

And the Trump administration’s response to Rutte’s absurd flattery? The very next day, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at NATO headquarters, informed the allies that Washington was beginning a six-month review to “examine America’s force posture and basing in Europe” with the clear intention of continuing what has already been a significant and steady drawdown of U.S. forces on the continent. He took the occasion to chastise the Europeans, again, for failing to help in the Iran war that the Trump administration undertook without consulting allies and which has now turned into a debacle. Rutte’s response? “I’m happy he does this.”

 

We all understand the predicament Europe is in. It needs time to adjust to the fact that the United States is no longer a reliable security partner, to say the least. It doesn’t want to pick a fight with the United States, and possibly face even worse punishment, while making that transition and at a time when the risk from Russia seems to be growing. Above all, it doesn’t want to jeopardize what little remaining support the United States provides Ukraine. European leaders also live in fear of additional punitive tariffs.

 

Yet one thing ought to be clear by now: Trump tends to capitulate when faced with determined opposition—whether it’s China’s trade retaliation, Iran’s unbowed belligerency, or the resistance of ordinary American citizens in Minnesota. Those who appease him, however, find themselves on a never-ending treadmill of concessions and self-abasement, because whatever you did for Trump yesterday is forgotten today.

 

Europe’s approach from the beginning has been appeasement. Instead of collectively lining up to retaliate against Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last year, for instance, Europe, with an economy as large as China’s, caved. Instead of responding to the Trump administration’s bullying and insults with the defiant self-respect befitting proud nations, the European approach has been Thank you, sir. May I have another?

 

This strategy is not going to work. In fact, it’s having the opposite of the desired result, as Hegseth’s latest proclamation shows. Europeans need to understand that right now and for at least the next couple of years, they live in a world of three predatory empires. Trump is as likely to seize Greenland in the next two years as Xi Jinping is to take action against Taiwan. The Europeans will either become vassals of those empires or learn to stand on their own.

 

What Europe does matters to the rest of us. As the United States slips deeper into authoritarianism, likely culminating in the Trump administration’s attempt to nullify the results of this fall’s congressional elections, Europe right now may be the last best hope for liberal democracy. Those of us who care about keeping liberalism alive need Europeans to start defending it against all of its enemies—in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington.