NATO’s new Secretary General is trying to speak harshly before Donald Trump takes office. He certainly knows that Brussels is in a tough position, given that during Trump’s first administration, the president (rightly) beat NATO member states for not paying their fair share of defense spending, while relying on Washington to shoulder the burden.
Mark Rutte has warned Trump in a Financial Times interview that if Ukraine is pressured into a “bad” peace deal favorable to Moscow, the United States and Europe will face a “terrible threat” from Iran, China and North Korea.
All these “rogue” countries (in the lexicon of some Western leaders) have deepened their relations with Russia during the almost three-year war in Ukraine. North Korea, and Russia in particular, even signed a defensive pact last summer, as a result of which about 10,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to support the Russian side. All are also coordinating U.S.-led sanctions evasion.
Like some pundits in obscure U.S. think tanks, Rutte sought to frame the outcome of the Ukrainian war as extremely important to Taiwan’s freedom. According to FT:
Rutte noted the risks that come with Russia supplying missile technology to North Korea and cash to Iran. In an apparent reference to Taiwan, he said Chinese President Xi Jinping “may get some thoughts on something else in the future if there is not a good deal [for Ukraine].”
“We can’t have a situation where we have [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un and Russian leader and Xi Jinping and Iran at a high level because we came to an agreement that’s not good for Ukraine because in the long run it’s a serious security threat not only to Europe but also to the U.S.,” Rutte told the FT in his first interview as head of the Western military alliance.
Rutte had met Trump a week and a half ago at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. It was their first such meeting since Trump won the election on Nov. 5.
It’s clear that the NATO leader was trying to convince Trump to maintain essentially as strong an attitude toward Moscow as the Biden administration. It seems that he was trying to make the same “domino effect” argument reminiscent of the Cold War – which sounds something like “the X-enemy is not stopped here, then the Y enemy will also feel encouraged and seek military conquest”, etc.
“Look at the missile technology that is currently being sent from Russia to North Korea, which poses a serious threat not only to South Korea, Japan, but also to the U.S. mainland,” Rutte told Trump, as quoted in the FT.
“Iran receives money from Russia in exchange for, for example, missiles, but also drone technology. And this money will be used to support Hizbollah and Hamas, but also to lead the conflict outside the region,” he claimed.
“So the fact that Iran, North Korea, China and Russia are working so closely together . . . [means] those different parts of the world where conflict is and which must be led by politicians are increasingly involved,” Rutte explained.
“And there’s one Xi Jinping who’s watching very carefully what’s coming out of it,” he added, apparently referring to Taiwan. “Those were the points I made,” the NATO chief stressed.
But we doubt that the Ukrainians, young and old, who are tragically dying on the front lines in this terrible war of attrition, care much about NATO and the West’s great strategy of touching faraway places like China or North Korea.
