NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte welcomes United States President Donald Trump during a reception for heads of state and government of allied countries in Ankara, Turkey on July 08, 2026.
Vin McNamee | Getty Images News | getty images
A confrontational NATO summit took place in Turkey this week, with US President Donald Trump threatening to break trade with one ally and annex territory from the other. But Coalition bosses were full of praise for the man they described as “Dear Donald”.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte thanked Trump, calling his effort to motivate NATO countries to increase defense spending a “stunning” achievement and a “huge victory” for the military alliance.
Rutte’s approach of using flattery to win over the president has led some to question whether it has brought any tangible benefits to the coalition.
During two days in Ankara, Trump threatened to cut trade ties with NATO member Spain over defense spending, said he was deeply disappointed by NATO’s response to the U.S. war with Iran and rekindled his feud with Denmark, another alliance member, over Greenland.
But for Rutte, Trump had only praise, calling him a “great leader” and the coalition’s “greatest asset.”
Sitting side by side during a bilateral meeting on Wednesday, Rutte lauded “Dear Donald” for getting Canada and European countries to spend an additional $1.2 trillion on defense during his two terms in office and said he called it the “Trump trillion.”
Rutte used the term during a visit to the Oval Office late last month, where he presented Trump with charts detailing increased spending by NATO countries.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte shows a chart during a meeting with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Aaron Schwartz | AFP | getty images
The NATO chief also intervened on Wednesday after Trump sharply criticized former US presidents for failing to get the rest of NATO to increase their defense spending commitments: “But you did what Eisenhower tried to do … and all the other presidents, none of them succeeded. You were the first one. This is your victory.”
Trump responded, “That’s why I like him.”
The back-and-forth was a continuation of the approach taken by Rutte, a seasoned diplomat known as a consensus builder during his nearly 14 years as Dutch prime minister. is being made NATO chief in late 2024.
Marion Messmer, program director for international security at Chatham House, told CNBC that her takeaway from the Ankara summit was that there is not any one person That can only manage Trump in the long run, and Europe would be better off focusing on strengthening its security instead.
“While Rutte has managed to stay in Trump’s good books with his mix of flattery and politeness, other NATO leaders are becoming more irritated by the unsavory behavior,” Messmer said via email.
In part, Messmer said, this is because Rutte has not managed to turn his personal relationship with Trump into a benefit for NATO, as the US president is clearly dissatisfied with the military alliance.
He said, “There are concerns that Rutte’s approach to managing Trump does not help the alliance as a whole and may send the wrong message to Russia, that European states feel weak without the US and are prepared to tie the US to Europe no matter what.”
What did other NATO leaders say?
In contrast to NATO’s Rutte, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen spoke in a defiant tone following Trump’s latest push for US control over the self-ruled Danish territory Greenland.
A day earlier, Finnish President Alexander Stubb sought to defuse any tensions regarding Trump’s Greenland comments. Speaking to CNBC, Stubb said: “Be more Arctic, be more calm. If it’s about Arctic security, we have seven countries in our alliance that are Arctic nations.”
He added: “Finland has trained 1 million soldiers in Arctic conditions; we basically live in Arctic conditions. Let’s keep that in mind. Let’s, you know, continue the process that the Danes, the Americans and the Greenlanders have.”
Latvia’s President: Rutte did a ‘fantastic job’
At the time, journalists questioned Rutte’s approach and particularly his description of the US President as “daddy”, which Rutte later described as “a question of taste”.
US President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for bilateral talks at the Beytepe Presidential Compound during the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey on July 08, 2026.
Vin McNamee | Getty Images News | getty images
A year later in Ankara, a journalist asked the NATO Secretary General about his “self-esteem” during a press conference, suggesting that he had failed to come to the defense of NATO nations threatened by Trump during the summit.
Rutte said he wanted to “accept praise when it’s due, and I think we should praise Donald Trump for the fact that NATO is so strong.” He said Europe’s increased defense spending had made the continent “more relevant” to the US as a strategic partner.
However, not everyone was critical of Rutte’s approach to managing Trump at the summit.
“Mark Rutte is the Secretary General of NATO, not the Secretary General of the EU, not the President of the Commission, his only job is to keep the alliance going,” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick on Wednesday.
“His only job is to keep the trans-Atlantic relationship intact. His only job is to do whatever it takes to make this alliance work, and he does a very good job,” he said.