Mark Rutte Needs to Stop Talking

Can Mark Rutte please just stop talking? The NATO secretary general, who infantilized an entire continent last year by referring to Donald Trump as “Daddy,” continued his campaign of flattery at the most recent meeting of the G7: “The U.S. action to prevent the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and degrade its ballistic missile capability improves security for us all,” he told reporters.Diplomats are paid to lie for their country, but this may be the greatest and most obvious falsehood ever uttered by a diplomat not named Sergey Lavrov. Even the most enthusiastic backers of Trump’s war do not believe this nonsense. The one thing we can be sure of is that the U.S. action did not improve security for anyone, except possibly for Iran, and certainly not for Europeans.Not only have Europeans suffered from higher energy prices, but the result of the war is that Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz and will for the foreseeable future. That means that European nations, like the Gulf States and every other nation dependent on access to the strait, will be at Iran’s mercy. Never mind the new “fees” that everyone is going to have to pay Iran for use of the strait. Any nation that currently maintains sanctions on Iran is going to have to drop them quickly. When Tehran tells, say, the U.K. that the queue to get in and out of the strait is awfully long, and that the paperwork it provided the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–controlled strait authority is not quite right but could probably be fixed once sanctions are dropped, what is London going to do? If Rutte’s self-debasing flattery of Trump actually worked, that would be one thing. To help save NATO: That is Rutte’s rationale for his toadying. Unfortunately, Trump takes servile flattery as his due. Giving it to him satisfies his need to feel superior and dominant, but it buys you nothing. Trump will turn on an “ally” or “friend” in a heartbeat and with stunning viciousness. The latest victim is, of course, Bibi Netanyahu, who