MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte takes over political leadership of NATO at a tense time for the alliance, with a war raging just beyond its eastern flank. The new secretary general has a big job in front of him, including keeping consensus among dozens of nations and repelling Russia. Teri Schultz reports from Brussels.
TERI SCHULTZ, BYLINE: Jens Stoltenberg was asked to stay on as NATO chief four times. But this time, he's really going.
JENS STOLTENBERG: To mark that moment, I will hand you this gavel donated to NATO in 1963 by Iceland. It's a Viking gavel.
SCHULTZ: Mark Rutte has more than a dozen years' experience keeping fractious Dutch coalitions together, but now he must wrangle 32 governments into consensus around what he says are his main priorities.
MARK RUTTE: Ensure we have the capabilities to protect against any threat, support Ukraine in fighting back against Russian aggression and addressing the growing global challenges to Euro-Atlantic security.
SCHULTZ: Topping those challenges is Russian aggression, right now against Ukraine but with near-constant threats of nuclear retaliation against NATO countries for supporting Kyiv. The former commander of U.S. forces in Europe, General Ben Hodges, has some advice for Rutte.
BEN HODGES: Every time Russia says, you know, well, if you do this, we're going to change our nuclear doctrine, say, great. Here's our nuclear doctrine. And here's how many nuclear warheads we have. And by the way, we just sent another shipload of ammunition to Ukraine.
SCHULTZ: In his first remarks on the job, Rutte said he supports Ukraine's eventual membership as promised by the alliance. Former Finnish ambassador to NATO Klaus Korhonen, who submitted his country's historic application to join, believes it will happen.
KLAUS KORHONEN: These are not legal commitments. They are political commitments. But still, I think it would be impossible for the allies to walk away.
SCHULTZ: Or at least for most of the allies. Russian expert Sergey Utkin, a researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, believes decisions taken in the Kremlin and in the U.S. in November will have more impact on NATO than any of Mark Rutte's plans.
SERGEY UTKIN: Think of a possible victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. And would he try some sort of weird reset with Putin that would be unilateral, that would leave Europe aside?
SCHULTZ: On the other hand, Rutte credits Trump with waking the alliance up to the threat from China. Rutte has already invited the defense ministers from Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea to attend a meeting with their NATO counterparts for the first time later this month. For NPR News, I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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