NATO Chief Meets With Trump Amid Rising Tensions With Russia

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte (R) meets with President-elect Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 22, 2024. NATO via Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in Palm Beach, Florida, on Nov. 22.

The transatlantic alliance confirmed the meeting in a brief statement on its website on Nov. 23.

“[Trump and Rutte] discussed the range of global security issues facing the Alliance,” according to the statement.

Rutte also met with Trump’s prospective national security team members, including Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), whom Trump has chosen to serve as his White House national security adviser.

A former prime minister of the Netherlands, Rutte assumed the role of NATO secretary-general in October.

The Nov. 22 meeting appears to be the first between Rutte and Trump since the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.

Following Trump’s election win, the NATO chief said he looked forward to working with Trump and echoed the president-elect’s calls for the various NATO members to step up their defense spending.

During his first term in the Oval Office, Trump criticized the NATO alliance and pressured member states to step up their defense spending to meet the pledge to contribute 2 percent of their gross domestic product to their militaries.

Trump has also indicated that he would prefer to quickly negotiate an end to the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war.

Supporting the Ukrainian war effort has been a key NATO project since the war began in February 2022. Trump’s past comments about NATO spending and the war in Ukraine have fueled consternation about his continued commitment to the alliance.

“We have to work together,” Rutte said at a Nov. 7 conference of European leaders in Budapest, Hungary. “I look forward to sitting down with Donald Trump to discuss how we can face these threats collectively, what we need to do more.”

It remains to be seen how Trump will handle negotiations to end the Russia–Ukraine war and whether he will stay the course set by the administration of President Joe Biden if his negotiations fail to bring a quick end to the war.

The Biden administration has moved to free up weapons and financial support for Ukraine in Biden’s final weeks in office.

This week, the Biden administration announced another arms package for Ukraine, worth about $275 million. The administration also reversed a policy opposing the use of anti-personnel landmines this week and agreed to begin providing Ukraine with such weapons.

Reports have indicated that the Biden administration has also permitted Ukraine to begin using U.S.-made long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russia’s borders. The administration has yet to confirm this policy change.

Reported Western decisions to permit Ukrainian long-range strikes inside Russia have already escalated tensions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his forces had used a hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile to strike targets in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Nov. 21 as a response to Ukrainian long-range strikes into Russia this week.