NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met US President-elect Donald Trump in Florida. “They discussed a number of global security issues facing the alliance,” NATO spokeswoman Farah Dakhlallah told the German Press Agency in Brussels. She did not provide any details. She only added that the meeting had already taken place on Friday and that Rutte had also held talks with Trump’s designated national security adviser Mike Waltz and other team members.
According to information from alliance circles, the meeting was supposed to focus, among other things, on Russia’s war against Ukraine and the issue of defense spending. During the election campaign, Trump claimed that he could end the Russian war of aggression within 24 hours and demanded that all allies spend three percent of their gross domestic product on defense in the future. In addition to the USA, only four of the 32 NATO states currently achieve this mark. Germany is estimated to reach just 2.1 percent this year.
Allies are worried about Trump’s second term in office
In NATO, most member states would have preferred a victory for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. Trump’s statements in the past had raised doubts about whether the United States would fully support its commitment under his leadership. During his term of office from 2017 to 2021, he repeatedly complained about what he considered to be too low defense spending by European allies and at times even threatened that the USA would leave the alliance.
Rutte remained calm after Trump’s election victory. “Through NATO, the United States has 31 friends and allies who help advance U.S. interests, multiply American power and ensure the security of Americans,” he said. Together, the allies represented half of the world’s economic and military strength. Cooperation in NATO helps to deter aggression, protect collective security and support the economy.
It was Rutte’s first meeting with Trump in his new role. As head of the Dutch government, he had already met the Republican several times. During a meeting with Rutte in 2019, Trump said he and Rutte had become friends.
