What was billed as a decisive NATO summit in The Hague has turned out to be little more than a diplomatic pageant, carefully orchestrated to please one man: Donald J. Trump. The result? A ritual of submission that confirmed Europe’s full descent into vassalage.

Beneath the ceremonial trappings, awkward photo ops, and gherkin-flecked dinners, a serious transformation has taken root: the dismantling of Europe’s welfare model in favour of a vast militarised agenda, scripted in Washington and rubber-stamped by compliant European leaders.

The core agreement - to raise defence-related spending to an eye-watering 5% of GDP - is not just a budgetary decision. It’s a political surrender, along with the end of the European welfare state that Trump has so long wished (and the consequent further rise of the far-right that Trump also longs for).

The formula, cleverly designed to obscure its enormity (3.5% on “hard defence” and 1.5% on infrastructure and cyber), was packaged to appease Trump, who himself never met such targets in his own budgets.

Spain’s quiet resistance - insisting on a more modest 2.1% - was a rare voice of dissent. Yet even that was met with open skepticism from NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte, who curtly dismissed the possibility of opt-outs, insisting that “NATO doesn’t know side deals.”

Meanwhile, Trump, ever the transactional operator, got what he wanted: a summit without awkward questions, such as on U.S. compromise to Article 5, Zelensky at the backstage, no assurance to Ukraine NATO membership, and with allies fawning and pledging billions to projects that will, not coincidentally, benefit the U.S. defence industry. European journalists timidly avoided querying whether Trump would honour NATO’s collective defence clause - Article 5 - which he has consistently undermined.

What we witnessed was not alliance diplomacy but feudal choreography

European leaders bowed to a ruler they neither trust nor respect, in the hope that he would, at least temporarily, hold his wrath. They’ve traded sovereignty for temporary favour. They’ve mortgaged pensions for missiles. And they’ve done so in a moment where Trump’s appetite for conquest (think Greenland, Canada) remains unchallenged and undiscussed.

Europe does not need NATO in its current form. It needs an autonomous security architecture - one that serves the continent’s citizens, not American imperial ambitions. Until then, Europe will remain a client continent - armed, indebted, and obedient.

Mark Rutte’s Grotesque Performance: A Secretary General in Shame

If NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte was auditioning to be Trump’s favourite European, he certainly nailed the role. The former Dutch Prime Minister has traded statesmanship for sycophancy, becoming a punchline in both diplomatic circles and the press.

His now-infamous remarks - “Daddy [Trump] has to use tough language” and “Dear Donald, congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran” - would be dismissed as satire if they weren’t uttered on record. That Rutte doubled down on these fawning accolades, including praise for Trump’s controversial military actions, marks a stunning decline in the dignity expected of NATO’s leadership.

Let’s be clear: this is not diplomacy. It is grovelling. Mark Rutte’s behaviour was excessively submissive, overly flattering, or humiliating, trying to gain favour from his “Daddy” in power. He abandoned his dignity or self-respect to please or appease Trump, as a sycophant or obsequious.

Rutte’s embrace of Trump’s ego was so complete that he became the face of the “Trump Summit” - a gathering where the European security agenda was shaped not by strategy, but by the need to pacify one man’s whims. Worse still, his role was to validate misinformation, as he echoed unverified intelligence that Russia may be preparing an attack on a NATO member, without offering evidence or answering hard questions.

When NATO’s chief becomes a mouthpiece for speculative threats and a cheerleader for American power, the alliance forfeits credibility. Rutte’s antics cast a long shadow over Europe’s leadership class, raising the question: who, exactly, does NATO serve?

The answer was on display in The Hague - amid red carpets, awkward jokes about Trump’s height, and surreal scenes involving pickles and the monarchy. Rutte made himself small, in the hope that NATO might appear unified. But the result was the opposite: he exposed the alliance’s fragility and its shameful dependency on a U.S. president who threatens the very fabric of democracy and multilateralism.

Europe deserves better. The European Union leadership also embarked on the military NATO project, gave up EU ideals of peace and prosperity for its citizens, and also disrespecting EU citizens. NATO needs visionaries, not courtiers. And Europe’s citizens deserve leaders who answer to them, not to the man in Air Force One.

Ricardo Martins ?PhD in Sociology, specializing in International Relations and Geopolitics. Courtesy

https://journal-neo.su/2025/07/02/nato-summit-2025-europes-capitulation-to-american-imperialism/