Is the ‘Trump whisperer’ Ukraine’s last hope in defeating Putin?

Brussels: The only time Mark Rutte cried in his almost 14 years as Dutch prime minister was when he received the news that a train carrying bodies from downed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 had finally set off for Kharkiv.

For days after the passenger flight carrying 298 passengers and crew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by Kremlin-backed forces over eastern Ukraine, Rutte had badgered Russian President Vladimir Putin to allow the bodies to be retrieved. Among them were 193 Dutch nationals and, of course, 27 men, women and children who called Australia home.

“You’re the one who has to do it now!” he reportedly told Putin in one of their conversations. The pair, until July 2014, had enjoyed a reasonably cordial relationship.

Then US president Donald Trump greets Mark Rutte as he arrives at the White House in Washington in 2019.Credit: AP

Several months later, Rutte, still furious at Putin’s behaviour, cornered him on the sidelines of an international summit in Milan to remind him of “the almost sacred obligation of a country to bring everyone back”.

When Rutte, 57, left parliament in June, ahead of his new post as secretary-general of NATO, the 32-member military alliance across Europe and North America, he said the MH17 tragedy had forever changed his worldview.

“It made me realise how crucial it is for our country not to stand alone in a world full of turmoil and threats,” he said. “This thought should motivate us to continue supporting Ukraine – for peace there and security here.“

As Europe teeters closer to full-blown conflict with Russia, and the US heads towards perhaps its most consequential election day in generations, Rutte perhaps is seen as Ukraine’s last best outside hope.

It’s part of the reason he won the role as head of the alliance, as it grapples with what the potential return of Donald Trump, a vocal sceptic about NATO and aid to Ukraine, would mean.

“We should stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump”, he told the Munich Security Conference in February. “We have to work with whoever is on the dance floor.“

Rutte, who stands at 194 centimetres, was viewed by many at the alliance as a “Goldilocks” candidate. He’s cool, handsome and charming, and he is often seen riding his bicycle to work in his suit, sometimes eating an apple along the way.

He’s also a skilled dealmaker, having formed four governing coalitions of the Netherlands – both with left-wing and very right-wing parties – during his time in office. Insiders observed Rutte became a master of compromise, especially when negotiations were at breaking point.

Debris from Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The tragedy has forever changed Mark Rutte’s worldview.Credit: Kate Geraghty

It earned him nicknames domestically such as the “Houdini prime minister” for his ability to dodge political peril, or even “Teflon Mark”.

But among NATO leaders, Rutte earned the nickname “the Trump whisperer” years ago.

It was July 2018 and his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, had ushered everyone but the leaders, ambassadors and a handful of staff out of the room in Brussels.

Trump had, minutes earlier, derailed a discussion about Georgia and Ukraine with a tirade warning the US would “go our own way” if other countries didn’t start spending more on their militaries.

French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly tried to reason with the US president, complaining that defence budgets couldn’t be simply upped overnight.

Step forward Rutte, who rescued the situation by assuring the US president that spending had gone up – and, more importantly, it was Trump who deserved all the credit.

It didn’t matter that spending had, in fact, been creeping up since the Obama administration. The argument seemed to hit its mark.

When Trump addressed the world’s media that day, he was ebullient, citing “a very amazing two-day period in Brussels” during which he had achieved “tremendous progress”. Trump would later say of Rutte: “I like this guy” and even admitted they had “become friends”.

In response to the Russian threat on its borders, NATO defence expenditure has surged in the past year: 19 of the 32 alliance members have implemented double-digit growth in real terms to their military budgets. According to the latest military expenditure data released by NATO, 23 members will reach or exceed the 2 per cent of GDP target this year, compared with seven members in 2022 and three in 2014.

“To keep NATO together in time of war takes a strength of character that Rutte has in abundance and a political savvy that will help him work over, around, and through obstacles most leaders never have to confront,” said James J. Townsend Junior, a senior adviser in the Scowcroft Centre’s Transatlantic Security Initiative.

Rutte takes charge of the military alliance at a difficult moment for Ukraine, which faces increasing pressure from Russian advances in its east and signs of waning support from Western allies.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had he been president and that he would stop the war 24 hours after being elected.

Rutte said he was confident the Republican presidential candidate would stand by Ukraine despite Trump’s suggesting he wouldn’t, saying he’d worked with Trump for four years when they were both national leaders.

“I’m optimistic about this because everyone I speak with in America, on the Republican side, on the Democrat side, but also here in Europe, understands that if Russia would win in Ukraine, if Putin would get what he wants, that that would mean our security situation is in a much more difficult state,” he said recently.

He again said Trump had been correct to push other NATO members to boost military spending and stand up to China.

On China, Rutte might just appeal to Trump’s instincts. He described Beijing as an “enabler of Russia’s brutal war of aggression”.

While still Dutch prime minister in March, he had visited China and told leaders there that their support for Moscow “has got to stop”.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Beijing this year. Rutter has told Chinese leaders that support for Moscow “has got to stop”.Credit: AP

It is why Rutte also wants NATO to increase co-operation with Indo-Pacific allies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, including for the first time inviting them to a regular gathering of NATO defence ministers this month.

“Russia gets support from North Korea, from Iran, but also from China,” he said. “There are also other issues at stake in the Indo-Pacific, and that is why we need to strengthen our ties with our Indo-Pacific partners. And we also have to discuss to get more and more meat to the bone.”

Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokeswoman who is now at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence and security think tank in London, said Rutte would need to step carefully.

“As autocracies such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea work to disrupt the international order, Rutte’s ultimate goal must be to keep the democracies of Europe and North America together,” she said.

Rutte’s political bible, famously, is The Years of Lyndon Johnson, a four-part series by US writer Robert Caro that’s both a biography of the former US president and a study of the exercise of power.

Caro, described as the greatest political biographer of our times, thinks Rutte can prevail.

“There is so much tension in Europe,” he told The New York Times. “But if I ever met a person who could pour oil on troubled waters, Mark is that person.”

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