Ian Davis
28 April 2025
On 24 and 25 April 2025, the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, visited Washington DC where he met the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, and the US National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz. According to the US Department of Defense readout of the Hegseth-Rutte meeting, the US Defence Secretary “underscored that European and Canadian allies must increase their defense spending to five percent of GDP and that European allies must take primary responsibility for Europe's conventional deterrence and defense”. In addition, “both leaders discussed ways to accelerate the transition to primary European leadership within NATO”. Earlier on 24 April Rutte posted this on X:
Great to see @SecDef Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon this morning. Thanks for the warm welcome and the good discussion on how to ensure a stronger, fairer, more lethal NATO. Europe and Canada are ramping up defence spending and we’re all working to increase production capacity.
Former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General, Stefanie Babst, posted this response a day later on Linked In:
NATO’s Mark Rutte tries to be a good boy. Two months prior to the scheduled Summit in the Netherlands he seems eager to receive instructions from the Trump/MAGA vanguard in order to make the summit a “splash” (as Rutte put it) during his meeting with Trump.
But Rutte is not paid by Washington but all 32 allies. Neither is a paid to echo Hegseth/Vance/Trump language. A “lethal NATO” is Hegseth 1:1 wording; and neither is Rutte authorized to quietly implement MAGA instructions to trash NATO-agreed policies like Women, Peace and Security and Climate Change-related programs.
I doubt that Rutte has read the Washington Summit Declaration. Only one year ago, in April 2024, on the occasion of NATO’s 75th anniversary, the allies jointly vowed to contain Russia, hold the Kremlin accountable and keep their doors for Ukraine open.
For Trump, the last Summit Declaration is just a piece of paper, with no meaning. So is the transatlantic security bond. But for the vast majority of NATO allies it is still the manifestation of their common strategic vision.
What to make of this disagreement between a former senior NATO official and the current Secretary General?
First, the NATO Secretary General’s tragic submission to President Trump seems to be further undermining alliance cohesion. As I wrote in a recent NATO Watch briefing on the Spring Foreign Ministers meeting, Rutte clearly sees his task as keeping the United States firmly in NATO and historically NATO Secretaries General have been very careful not to single out any individual ally—especially the United States—for direct public criticism. But by failing to publicly admit and denounce the threat that Trump poses it is increasingly likely that Rutte will end up alienating almost everyone else within the alliance.
Second, Babst support for important NATO policies such as cooperating on climate change security and supporting and strengthening the important role of women in peace and security is to be commended. Despite some dismissive comments in the Linked In thread, as one poster notes: “climate change is one of the biggest risk factors in generating future conflict, because it acts as a threat multiplier. Equality (particularly gender equality) is proven to be the most significant factor underlying any lasting peace”.
Third, and most importantly, it is on the issue of Ukraine, however, where the differences between Babst and Rutte are the starkest. In short, Babst is firmly in the ‘Ukraine must prevail and join NATO’ camp, which Rutte has since left in favour of the US-led peace process. In April, for example, the NATO Secretary General congratulated Trump for breaking the deadlock—a deadlock that NATO had previously been instrumental in maintaining—adding, “I’m really impressed how the Americans are conducting those talks, and also about the fact that they keep the Europeans and Ukraine very much updated of what they are doing and what is happening”.
This is a generous interpretation of the US negotiating methods, and Rutte’s own support for the peace process represents a major U-turn in NATO’s policy. In December 2024 at the previous meeting of Foreign Ministers Rutte had emphasised that “we must do more than just keep Ukraine in the fight. We must provide enough support to change the trajectory of this conflict once and for all”. And in June 2024, he said it was about supporting Ukraine “for as long as necessary” and suggesting that the Russians “cannot wait us out”.
In contrast, Babst has remained true to this earlier line. While Head of NATO Strategic Foresight, she reportedly issued the first serious warning in 2013 about Russia’s intentions towards Ukraine—a few months before the annexation of Crimea. Since then Babst has been a firm advocate of a “multifaceted deterrence strategy to help Ukraine not just freeze the war but win it”. This included recommending that NATO invoke “George Kennan's Cold War approach, urging the use of all available instruments - economic, diplomatic and military - to push Russia out of Ukraine”. Apparently, this approach was overruled within NATO.
Babst adds that in international relations, “it is crucial to accurately assess the mindset, capabilities and intentions of another actor” and that “NATO failed to do this with Russia”. This is true enough, but not necessarily for the reasons that she gives. The blind spot in Babst’s and NATO’s approach to Russia, and one that US diplomat and historian, George Kennan recognized in 1997, was that forcing countries to choose between NATO and Russia would eventually lead to conflict. Moreover, since agreeing the open-door policy towards Ukraine in 2008, most of the NATO member states have never seriously committed to fighting for Ukraine’s right to join.
Further, NATO’s failure to support a compromise peace deal in the spring of 2022 and instead encouraging Ukraine to fight on was another strategic mistake. Two years later, the prospect of reaching agreement in the current talks remains in the balance. Significant differences remain between the US vision for peace, Russian demands and what Ukraine and its European allies have deemed acceptable conditions for a ceasefire.
Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on 25 April showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. Ukrainian counterproposals cited by the New York Times include no restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military, “a European security contingent” backed by the United States would be deployed on Ukrainian territory to guarantee security, and frozen Russian assets would be used to repair damage in Ukraine caused during the war. However, European leaders’ proposals to assemble a ‘reassurance force’ operating in Ukraine lack credibility, not least because Putin is unlikely to agree to it and the US has already ruled out providing a ‘backstop’ for it.
Criticism of the direction of the peace talks is widespread within Europe capitals and the media. The Guardian, for example, opined that a “grotesquely one-sided, imposed agreement would encourage territorial aggression elsewhere too”. However, as the International Crisis Group acknowledges it is “good news” that all parties have shown that they are at least willing to negotiate. Ukraine’s options – fight on, but with little chance in the foreseeable future of reconquering the territories now occupied by Russia or accept a formal loss of Crimea – are not attractive. But with NATO membership for Ukraine unrealistic, some form of treaty of neutrality with security guarantees for Ukraine seems the most plausible outcome.