'Daddy Donald' and the death of NATO dignity - How Rutte became Trump's puppet
A NATO Secretary General might endure many indignities in the name of diplomacy, including backroom compromises, bruising negotiations, and the occasional awkward photo op with despots in suits.
But calling Donald Trump 'daddy' isn't one of them. At least, it never was until Mark Rutte arrived. The former Dutch prime minister and now NATO's top official referred to Trump as 'daddy' - a grotesque, grovelling gesture that might have raised eyebrows in a diplomatic dispatch but instead exploded into public farce during a high-stakes summit of alliance leaders.
'Sometimes daddy has to use strong words,' Rutte beamed, defending Trump's crude outburst in front of reporters, where the president shouted, 'They don't know what the f*** they're doing,'** in reference to the Iran-Israel ceasefire fiasco he claims to have masterminded.
Forget diplomacy. Forget leadership. NATO, under Rutte, has started to resemble a glorified babysitting service for a toddler with nuclear launch codes. It would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. Rutte's nauseating sycophancy is not just a personal humiliation; it's a strategic collapse.
At a moment when the alliance should be asserting its independence and clarity of mission, it has instead wrapped itself around Trump's ego like a silk cravat on a noose. Gone is the guarded caution of past NATO heads. In its place, we now have something akin to Joseph Goebbels writing fan mail to Hitler - an image that feels uncomfortably close when you read the actual text message Rutte sent to Trump, which the president gleefully published.
'Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran,' Rutte wrote, referring to Trump's unilateral bombing campaign. 'That was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.' It doesn't. And Rutte surely knows that.
The strikes were condemned as reckless and 'unwise and unnecessary' by senior officials, who warned they could provoke the very conflict they were supposedly meant to deter. Trump's claim to have held the Israel-Iran ceasefire together lasted barely 24 hours. Rutte's message, meanwhile, read less like praise and more like erotic fiction.
'You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening… Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment… You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.' Who knew the nuclear deterrence strategy of the West hinged on breathless love notes?
What makes Rutte's behaviour particularly grotesque is the sheer hypocrisy of it. As Dutch prime minister, he consistently failed to meet NATO's defence spending target of two per cent of gross domestic product.
Now, in his desperate quest to stay in Trump's favour, he's bragging about getting European leaders to commit to a staggering five per cent of GDP on defence - a militaristic fantasy straight from Trump's own wet dreams.
Rutte has gone from pragmatic European liberal to a kind of grinning courtier, performing loyalty rituals for an emperor with no clothes. He's not the only one, of course. NATO leaders have spent the latest summit tiptoeing around Trump like terrified interns trying not to spill coffee on a tantrum-prone CEO.
The summit was stripped down to three hours. The official communique was slashed to a single page. Not to streamline diplomacy, but to avoid provoking Trump into one of his trademark rage exits. It would be comical if the stakes weren't existential. The alliance was forged to deter tyranny, defend liberal democracy, and confront authoritarianism. Under Rutte, it is flirting with all three.
The Secretary General's job is to unify 31 nations in a common cause, not whisper sweet nothings to a man who once threatened to pull America out of the alliance entirely. What kind of message does this send to allies? To Russia? To Iran? To China? That NATO no longer leads, it follows - not strategy, not principle, but personality.
And that the only way to hold the West together is to soothe the tantrums of a man who treats global diplomacy like reality TV. We can't afford this. NATO is not Mar-a-Lago with fighter jets. Its credibility is fragile, its mission vital, and its unity under threat from within.
Mark Rutte was supposed to bring experience and backbone to the role. Instead, he's turned NATO into a stage for Trump's delusions. While porn star Stormy Daniels may have once called Trump 'daddy', Rutte's humiliation came without even taking off his clothes.
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