NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has told Europeans they should “keep dreaming” if they think they can defend themselves without US support.
“If anyone here again thinks that the European Union, or Europe as a whole, can protect itself without the United States, keep dreaming. It can’t be done. We can’t do it. We need each other,” Rutte said in a speech to the European Parliament in Brussels on Monday.
The NATO chief warned European countries that they would need to increase their defense spending to 10% if they “really want to go it alone”, adding that they would need to increase their own nuclear capabilities at a cost of billions of euros.
“In that scenario, we would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedoms, the U.S. nuclear umbrella. So good luck,” he said.
The comments come after a rollercoaster week for Europe and its Western allies, after President Donald Trump continued to push his demands for US ownership of Greenland before publicly denying the use of force to annex the Arctic island in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) chief continued to praise Trump for raising the issue of Arctic security, acknowledging that Trump’s defense of the president would irritate many in the audience.
“I think he’s right. There are problems in the Arctic. Sea lanes are opening up and China and Russia are becoming more and more active, so there are collective security problems,” he said.
Mr. Rutte outlined two future work streams on the Greenland issue. First, NATO would take more collective responsibility for the defense of the Arctic to prevent Russia and China from gaining military and economic access to the region.
The second involves the continuation of tripartite talks between the United States, Denmark, and Greenland. Prime Minister Rutte said he would not be involved in negotiations, adding that he had no authority to negotiate on Denmark’s behalf and would not do so in the future.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lökke Rasmussen and Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeld met with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington earlier this month. Rasmussen said the talks had been “constructive” but “fundamental disagreements” remained.
The following week, Trump and Rutte met in Davos, where the president claimed he had agreed to a framework for the Greenland deal with the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and said he would no longer impose tariffs on European countries that oppose his ambitions to acquire semi-autonomous Denmark. What the framework will include and Mr. Rutte’s exact role in the negotiations are not yet fully clear, but Mr. Trump’s stunning change of direction has once again put the spotlight on the NATO secretary general.
