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Mark Rutte learned to forge complicated alliances in the Netherlands. And even critics say he has the diplomatic skills necessary for the NATO post.
He has experienced three US and three French presidents as well as two German chancellors – no one has ruled the Netherlands for as long as Mark Rutte. He was Prime Minister from October 2010 to July 2024. For his party colleague and former campaign manager Frits Huffnagel, the young politician has become one thing above all during this time: a statesman.
“When he started 14 years ago, things looked different,” says Huffnagel about Rutte’s development. “But he managed to make the Netherlands much more important within the EU than we perhaps deserve as a small country.” Rutte had an important position right next to former Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emanuel Macron.
Confessed European and Russia critic
Rutte is an avowed European and a sharp critic of Russia. He is considered to be well connected internationally. He meticulously prepared his path to the top of NATO with countless one-on-one meetings behind closed doors. Even if he likes to emphasize that it wasn’t him who sought the office, but the office that sought him.
I didn’t apply for it at the beginning, but we see what’s happening in Ukraine, the instability in the world. And then there were people who said I should do it.
“You can’t just push this aside,” emphasized Rutte. And of course it is an “incredibly interesting task”.
Cohesion of the NATO allies as Challenge
The biggest challenge will be to keep the 32 NATO allies with their different interests together in these times of crisis and war. Even his critics say that Rutte has the necessary diplomatic skills.
In four cabinets, he has managed to forge alliances with both left-wing and right-wing parties. This was sometimes more, sometimes less successful, says Rutte self-critically in an interview for children’s television.
Things worked out. We are doing better economically than we were 14 years ago. But things also went wrong.
Rutte guilty about Groningen
He then thinks of “the scandal surrounding false accusations against families who applied for child allowances,” explains Rutte. And he thinks of the children in Groningen who are under stress because the house they live in is still not safe.
Earthquakes caused by natural gas extraction have destroyed many houses in the region and made some of them uninhabitable. Rutte admits that politicians – and therefore he too – have failed those affected in Groningen.
Rutte is testing himself as a crisis manager
The trained historian can count his policies during the financial crisis, the corona pandemic and after the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane in eastern Ukraine as successes.
Rutte is a good crisis manager, says Christian Democrat Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. He has proven that he can do it nationally. And internationally he has “earned so much authority that he starts in Brussels with a head start – over everyone who doesn’t have that kind of resume.”
De Hoop Scheffer knows what he is talking about. He was NATO Secretary General himself from 2004 to 2009 – the third Dutchman to hold this office after Dirk Stikker and Joseph Luns. And record Prime Minister Mark Rutte will now be the fourth.