On diplomacy – Lulu Garcia-Navarro interviewing Mark Rutte in NYT:

‘But the biggest headlines out of the summit were actually about Rutte’s relationship with Trump. Before the summit, Trump posted on Truth Social a highly complimentary private text message that Rutte sent him about the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. And then, during the meeting, Rutte joked that Trump acted as a “daddy” to misbehaving Middle Eastern nations, which Trump clearly loved — Trump’s fund-raising committee even started selling “Daddy” T-shirts.’

(…)

‘Before we get into that substance, I’d like to talk a little bit about style, because your interactions with President Trump in the aftermath of that meeting have been called, and I’m quoting here, “fawning” and “an orchestrated grovel.” I saw someone refer to NATO now as the North Atlantic Trump Organization. How do you see it? I think when somebody deserves praise, that praise should be given. And President Trump deserves all the praise, because without his leadership, without him being re-elected president of the United States, the 2 percent this year and the 5 percent in 2035 — we would never, ever, ever have been able to achieve agreement on this.’

(…)

‘All right. We are meeting after this NATO summit, and the big success is that the member nations — except for Spain — agreed to increase their defense spending to 5 percent of their G.D.P. by 2035. Can you briefly talk me through why 5 percent is the right number? Yeah, and by the way, all 32 agreed. There’s one issue with Spain. Spain is saying, OK, we agree, but we think we can reach all those capabilities with a lower investment. That is absolutely impossible, so history will prove them wrong. But that’s an agreement to disagree.
But to your question: We have an enormous geopolitical challenge on our hands. And that is first of all Russia, which is reconstituting itself at a pace and a speed which is unparalleled in recent history. They are now producing three times as much ammunition in three months as the whole of NATO is doing in a year. This is unsustainable, but the Russians are working together with the North Koreans, with the Chinese and Iranians, the mullahs, in fighting this unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. So here, the Indo-Pacific and your Atlantic are getting more and more interconnected. We know that China has its eye on Taiwan. Given this whole geopolitical setup, there is no way we can defend ourselves if we stick to this old 2 percent.
So when it comes to core defense spending, we have to move up to 3.5 percent. And then of course there is all the defense-related spending. We need to develop the defense industrial base. We need to spend money on cyber, on hybrid. We need to prepare our societies at large beyond the military. That’s the extra 1.5 percent leading into the 5 percent. So, yes, this is an enormous amount of spending. But if we don’t, we’ll have to learn Russian.’

(…)

‘You think that Europe’s going to have to do conscription? No, no, that’s up to the individual countries to decide. Some countries will do it. Finland already has conscription. Others will not do it, but it will mean in general paying good salaries for our men and women in uniform. What I’m particularly worried about is the defense industrial output, and this is a problem across the alliance, because we simply lack the defense industrial base to produce the weapons we need to make sure that we can deter the Russians or the North Koreans or whoever to attack us. And this we are working on very quickly now.’

(…)

‘Secretary General, what I’m asking here is: You say that the commitment is ironclad, and yet what we are seeing, while a war is raging with a resurgent Russia on Europe’s doorstep, is the United States pulling back from Europe. I really have to correct you. The United States is not pulling away from Europe. What the United States expects the Europeans to do is to take care of their own defense at a larger scale than we do currently, which is only logical. Let me assure you that all the plans we have, part of those plans is that Europeans gradually — and this is a shift — take more of the burden for the defense of this part of NATO territory from the U.S., so that the U.S. can therefore pivot more toward Asia, toward the Indo-Pacific, as the U.S. should. This is also in our European interest, because we know that China and North Korea are very much involved in this war effort in Ukraine. So this is all interconnected.’

(…)

‘When I was preparing for this interview, obviously I read a lot about you. One thing that really struck me was that while you were prime minister of the Netherlands, you advocated withholding pandemic funds from countries that weren’t adhering to E.U. democratic values — that countries that weren’t acting in a democratic fashion shouldn’t be the beneficiary of money coming from the E.U. Which was a broadly held view in Europe.
It made me wonder: Do you think countries that aren’t credible democracies should be part of NATO? Well, I’m now leading this alliance of 32 countries. And that means that I have only one job, and that’s making sure that the whole alliance stays together, that we stay on one page. And that means that the last thing I’m going to do is discuss national politics.
But part of the idea of NATO is about allies who share a commitment to democratic values. It was created for that. And now you have as part of this alliance what some would call a democratically backsliding United States. You have Hungary, which calls itself an illiberal democracy. And you have Turkey under President Erdogan, which has been called an electoral autocracy. Can this alliance hold when the very values at its heart are no longer commonly held in the way that perhaps they once had been? I’m not sure I would completely subscribe to all the assumptions in your question, but that is a debate, as democracies, that we can have, and that is why we are indeed an alliance of democracies. I can tell you that in NATO, you will have many debates and issues between countries. There are debates on values, on everything. That’s exactly why this alliance is so alive and so strong, because we sometimes have these tough issues. We fight them out, and then we come together and agree. And at this moment, I can only tell you that this alliance of 32 countries is stronger and more united than ever in recent history. I cannot in my role debate the pluses and minuses of what is happening in each of the 32 countries.’

(…)

‘It’s this overarching question about what is the alliance really about and if these 32 members are still united by a common vision. And they are, and we are.
So it doesn’t concern you that Trump has also talked about annexing Canada, for example, also a NATO member? When I’m not commenting about discussions between individual allies, of course I will not comment on that. No, I can’t. That’s not my role.’

(…)

‘So you think NATO will last with America at its heart? Absolutely. I have no doubt of America being the leader in the world and also within NATO, with the Europeans taking their fair share in terms of the burden, and that’s only good. That makes NATO stronger and fairer and more lethal — exactly as we should be.’

Read the interview here.

A quick course in diplomacy.

The US invading Canada? NATO would like to stay out of it. But NATO will survive, maybe without Canada.

Sacrifice Canada. It’s a relatively small sacrifice after all.

Maybe, Mr. Rutte is an excellent Trump whisperer. Future historians will let us know.