Aletho News

NATO stuck in a Rutte with new boss

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 27, 2024

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is to take over as the next secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rutte’s appointment is to ensure that a “safe pair of hands” steer the military bloc full steam ahead on an increasingly confrontational course with Russia and China.

The 57-year-old Dutchman, who is known as Teflon Mark owing to his political survival skills, was backed for the NATO post by the United States and Britain. The opinions of the other 30 members of the alliance are pretty much irrelevant, albeit with a semblance of discussion.

As Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova commented sardonically, there will be no change in NATO policies under Rutte “because the Americans run the show”.

Rutte takes over from Jens Stoltenberg who served as NATO secretary general for two terms over 10 years. Like Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, Rutte has no military expertise and is more suited to financial management and political horse-trading. This continues the trend of recent NATO civilian bosses being more secretaries than generals.

There have been 14 secretary generals since the NATO alliance was formed in 1949 at the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The first titleholder was British General Hastings Ismay who famously admitted NATO’s primary mission was less the defense of Europe and more to bolster Washington’s transatlantic control over European “allies” by, as Ismay candidly put it, “keeping the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”.

Over its 75 years, NATO has had British, Belgian, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish civilian heads. Rutte is the fourth leader from the Netherlands to take the job. Oddly, it may seem, there have been no American secretary generals. But that’s because the United States doesn’t need one of its nationals in the chair. The real power is with the American General who oversees the Supreme Allied Command of Europe (SACEUR). That post is always held by an American military figure, which goes to show who wears the trousers in the NATO bloc.

The civilian titular head is given to Europeans as a token of partnership. The purpose of the European secretary general (emphasis on the secretary) is public relations, to give an illusion of pluralism and mutualism instead of the reality that NATO is simply an instrument of American imperialist violence.

Rutte, who is a bland politician prone to cutting coalition deals and going to work on a bicycle, is “perfect” for the job. He projects the image of a benign, if boring, liberal. But scratch the surface and underneath the cowardly exterior is a dangerous sociopath.

The 32-nation bloc has ambitions to expand its role as a military enforcer for American geopolitical hostility towards Russia and China. That collision course becomes clearer by the day with American missiles raining down on Russia and stockpiling in Taiwan off China’s mainland.

That entails a tricky, duplicitous balancing act to keep an unwieldy coalition together as it hurtles to open confrontation with nuclear powers. There will be a lot of gyrating public relations to do to sell this warmongering adventurism as somehow necessary for a “rules-based order”.

Jens Stoltenberg, the outgoing Norwegian wooden Pinocchio figure, was an able Yes Man in that role of cohering NATO members to splurge military spending on American weapons and pumping Ukraine with arms. Stoltenberg was an ideal cipher for Washington’s imperialist aims. He also orientated the NATO bloc to take a more hostile stance towards China. So “good” was Stoltenberg as a loyal lackey, that he was given a two-year extension to his NATO post.

Rutte promises to be a very capable successor in terms of being a total minion for Washington. He brings a quaint Dutch accent, bicycle clips and an air of European reasonableness as a plausible cover for the barbaric function of imperial violence.

The Dutch premier has no qualms about indulging NATO’s dirty wars. During the NATO covert war for regime change in Syria, Rutte’s Netherlands government sponsored Islamist terror groups in Syria to overthrow the Syrian government with the full knowledge that the recipients of Dutch aid were murdering and abducting civilians. Rutte personally authorized that covert operation.

In the Ukraine proxy war against Russia, Rutte has led the way in delivering F-16 fighter jets to the NeoNazi Kiev regime, who “justify” the bombing of families on beaches in Crimea because they are “civilian occupiers” who need to be “cleansed”.

Moscow has warned that this escalation of NATO involvement will be seen as a step towards a nuclear confrontation. Rutte has no problem with such escalation.

Rutte’s ability to please his master in Washington and to further his career knows no bounds. His ability for political dancing around and negotiating skills make him an ideal secretary to keep the NATO bloc together as it aggresses recklessly against Russia and China.

Rutte is the kind of quisling that the Dutch and other Europeans were adept at being for the Third Reich against their own compatriots. One can easily imagine the ever-flexible and expedient Rutte informing and betraying others to save his skin.

His job is to bring Europe to its knees despite the obvious disaster that the U.S.-led NATO is inflicting on Europe. The likes of this sycophantic sociopath are leading the world to the abyss.

June 28, 2024 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | NATO