Rutte is wrong about European defense. The NATO chief needs to be promoting a more balanced alliance with a strong European pillar — not undermining it

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13 comments

  1. Honestly, this entire brouhaha sounds like “Rutte is being soooo rude for saying the truth and calling us out, he’s so mean, it hurts my feelings!”.

    There’s nothing left to undermine because Trump already collapsed it. We need to get our heads out of our asses and rearm, cooperate and prepare. Not just the EU, us as well, and the UK too.

  2. The article rightly points out that after a US President’s statement expressing a desire to annex the territory of a NATO member, it is necessary to reassess what NATO is and what America’s role should be.

  5. Rutte always has a plan with the things he says. I’m sure backroom politics plays a big role too.

  7. > Rutte needs to be promoting a more balanced NATO with a strong European pillar

    vs

    > Domènec Ruiz Devesa is a senior researcher at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs

    Which nation never wanted to increase defence spending? Laughed at the 3.5%/5% target? Was it Spain? Yes, it was Spain.

    It is not the job of Rutte to be nice. It is the job of 32 NATO members to provide an adequate contribution for NATO and especially the richer and bigger industrial nations in Europe were lacking for 30 years. Even when NATO agreed to a 10 year timeframe to increase spending to 2% from 2014 to 2024, almost all nations lagged behind the time table, including Germany.

    It is the job of these 31 Non-US (or 27 in the European Union) nation to increase defence spending, unify the industrial defence sector (how many different MBTs do we have right now? A dozen?), develop an European-centric doctrine which integrates European forces and *heavily* invest into strategic independence over the coming decades and not depend on the US military for the entire infrastructure and logistics for European defence. That is not Ruttes Job. Thats Macrons, Merz, Stamers etc job.

    I think Rutte is purposefully misunderstood. He is not advocating to be submissive to Trump or the US, but he recognises the military fact that a lot of critical military capabilities are in US hands and in case of a Russian aggression NATO / Europe / EU / Non-US-NATO (or however you want to call it) needs these capabilities in the coming 5+ years. And unfortunately for many readers “military capabilities” stop at *”how many tanks do we have”* and do not even go over the *”how many tanker aircrafts do we have”* line, not to mention into *”how much bandwidth would we need in a drone-centric war and how many satellites can provide that”* territory.

    Take the *Gripen* jet fighter for example. How often do you hear in recent times *”Dont buy the F-35, purchase the Gripen for strategic independence”*. Which ignores the fact that the engine of the Gripen is an US jet engine and parts of the electronics on the Gripen are US made. Meaning that the Gripen is fully integrated into the US logistics/maintenance system in order to keep flying.

    And just to emphasise it: on the European sides there are only low level discussions about unifying and improving the European integration of the defence industry. When it comes to putting money on where the mouth talks, take a look at the FCAS project and how easily any idea of European independence crumbles under national industry politics.

    SYL

  8. Rutte has one goal, and one goal only, and that is to keep the US in NATO. Every word he says is purely ment to manipulate Trump. If you’re not Trump, you’re better off ignoring anything he says.

  9. Again this rearming agenda. I feel like all caps-ing this, but i’ll refrain: who the fuck is/will attack Europe? Russia? Properly support Ukraine and integrate it into EU and the Kremlin will have such a massive implosion that they won’t be able to do shit besides it’s far east regions fight to split from Moscow. China? EU is one of their biggest markets and they will never go for a hot war …they’ve already won the future. The USA? That will never ever have support from the public. Who’s left? Africa? Invading hoards of rowboats? WHO THE FUCK ARE WE ARMING AGAINST? 

    I’s an obvious ‘last hurrah’ of the establishment to cash in on the old tech (and financial ‘mechanisms’ with banking), which they currently control, and drag their portfolios on as much as they can, until electrifying (on Chinese tech and manufacturing) becomes inevitable. They’ll do anything and everything else to try to delay that as much as possible, including wrecking the EU.

  10. In all honesty I’m very disappointed about the reaction to Rutte statement. First of all, he is the head of transatlantic alliance, not a European one, and as such he must not have just Europeans interests in mind. Secondly, Europeans states have willingly put themselves in a situation were they can’t wage war without the US approval, because they lack military capabilities and industrial support to wage it completely and durably. In that sense, Mark Rutte is right, most European states cannot wage a high intensity war properly and durably without American support, that is not a opinion but a fact. His statement should be seen as a wake up call and a reminder of the political cost of sovereignty, not a defiance statement. 

    Now that the US is adversarial against the EU, we should be acting much more deeply to restore our military sovereignty. Yet we are not, I always insist upon it, but most European Air Force would be sitting ducks in case of a high intensity war without American support, F-35 would not get software updates, access to combat cloud, spare part and ammunition refill, therefor they would be useless. On the long run that would be the case for most American made planes. Yet, instead of boosting European production by massively ordering European made jets, a lot of EU states have committed against on US made equipment very recently. This is a true non sense and there should we wage our heavy criticism. 

    Yet, Europeans are bashing Rutte for a statement, as provocative it may be, that is not false, far from it, because it put European in front of responsibilities they have yet to assume. 

  11. Europe should just ignore everything he says. We need to be focusing on rearming. And one day he’ll wake up and realize that we don’t need the US or him anymore and it’ll be a shock to him.

    Everything he says is wrong, we shouldn’t give him the attention he wants. It’s just aimed at keeping us on the leash.

  12. His job is to suck Trumps dick so NATO won’t fall apart to soon.

    But indeed we should move to military independance from the US. And kick the US out of Europe.

  13. His job, since the day the treaty was signed, is to keep America in, Russia out, and the Germans down.

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