When Mark Rutte Bends Over On Behalf of NATO

At what cost will you keep your job? It's a very good wage, it keeps you within the upper classes and grants you access to private clubs; you wear expensive clothes, drive luxury cars, own fine houses; you send your children to private elite schools and universities; you travel around the globe, and you occupy a position within the decision-making elite. Would you risk your job and lose all these privileges and resources? Or do you keep doing what your master tells you to do, even if you could trigger a major conflict between nations?

To answer that question, one must first ask: what is my job? What is it about what I do that is so important the whole world relies on me? Am I a doctor, an anesthesiologist, a brain surgeon, a heart surgeon? Am I an environmentalist who studies the relationship between spiders and plants regarding plant defense or pollination to preserve biodiversity? Or am I a physicist working on black holes so we can finally know and explain that the Big Bang is real, and the world wasn't created by gods?

If you're doing one of those jobs, we have great appreciation for your services because they are highly needed. Nonetheless, if we're talking about a more political and protocolary job, let's say the Secretary General of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), then those questions start to become relevant. But let us altogether find the answers to this high-profile, bureaucratic position on which half of the world depends before we stumble into a third, fourth, or fifth world war.

So, the job is to maintain, to keep, the alliance, military and political, of Western countries against a possible military action from any enemy: Russia or China, basically. The alliance was born during the Cold War, out of Western paranoia, the schizophrenic conviction that a Soviet attack was imminent and perhaps it was. Therefore, the Secretary General of the alliance is supposed to facilitate consensus among members, chair the North Atlantic Council, and serve as NATO's chief spokesperson. In other words, this person's job is somewhat like that of a defense minister, but without any binding decision-making power, all military and strategic decisions rest with the member States themselves.

The wage comes from a percentage that each member must pay for his services, though since 2019, the United States has contributed the same share as Germany to NATO's direct budget: roughly sixteen percent each. Yet in raw military spending, America still dwarfs everyone: two-thirds of the alliance's total defense expenditure comes from Washington. The United States remains the muscle, and muscle demands deference. Hence, if Washington doesn't want to defend, well, our useful secretary has little choice but compliance. And so surrender becomes the strategy.

Now, we are all aware, hopefully, of the US vs. Greenland matter. Our US “Napper-Toddler-in-Chief" has been yelling everywhere that the Danish island must become part of the United States. The argument is as valid as it was during the Cold War: Russia and China are real threats to the Arctic, and so, by that logic, is every other country with an Arctic presence. However, the idea of annexing foreign land, a territory belonging to a NATO member, is simply ridiculous, according to the very charter all NATO members signed. Trump is willing to buy the island, whereas Greenland's Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has clearly said, “We don't want to be Americans. No, we don't want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders." A strange thing to say when the Secretary General can't bring himself to condemn the threat, too busy deflecting questions and assuring everyone that NATO is “working together" to keep the Arctic safe. That is the cost of keeping his job.

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