Those believing that NATO’s recent 2025 Summit of characterized by European submission and strategic hollowness would have been enough demonstration of Trump appeasement, stand to be corrected. NATO Secretary General Marc Rutte also seeks to appease Donald Trump via sweeping reforms of NATO Headquarters.
How? In an avidly opportunistic anticipation of “Daddy’s demands”, NATO Headquarters (HQ) is subject to a presumed “efficiency exercise”, including staff cuts and merging functions. However, in essence it is largely a reform to ensure that NATO HQ is “Daddy’s home”. Taking inspiration from the ill-conceived US “DOGE” exercise, it is largely a sleek ingratiation aligned to US MAGA politics. Under the disguise of “efficiency”, NATO HQ functions which could become the target of Donald Trump’s ire for their presumed “wokeness” or “irrelevance” are either downgraded, tucked away or dissolved.
To illustrate: The team of the Secretary General’s Special Representative for Women, Peace and Security, so far part of the Office of the Secretary General, will be moved to the Political Affairs Division, to ensure lower visibility. For similar reasons, the Climate and Energy Security Section will move from the Emerging Security Challenges Division to be merged within the Defence Policy and Planning Division.
The Division arguably worst hit so far by the “efficiency” exercise is the Public Diplomacy Division. Similar to the Executive Management Division, it will lose its standing as a division with a senior political appointee, i.e. an Assistant Secretary General in the NATO jargon, leading it. This, in itself, is not a drama, as many previous incumbents have rarely excelled in terms of leadership and management.
Incidentally, in the case of the Public Diplomacy Division, NATO nations could in fact stop its downgrading: The Division was created in 2003 by consensus via a decision of the North Atlantic Council. It would therefore also require a consensus decision of the same Council to dismantle it.
What is even more concerning is that the team managing a large-scale public diplomacy programme to foster informed discussions on NATO and wider defence matters in our societies will be dissolved. In particular, NATO’s co-sponsorship grants programme which over decades supported think tanks, universities and other civil society initiatives in all NATO nations and partner countries will come to a grinding halt.
Perhaps the nifty idea behind all this it to all make NATO communications as such more Trump-like, with a main focus on the use of social media channels (eventually aided by US artificial intelligence tools to be purchased by NATO) in addition to standard platforms such as media conferences where critical questions frequently remain unanswered. There will be little if any space left for people-to-people communications where the real discussions take place.
While, of course, on a lower scale than the US dissolution of USAID, it is equally shortsighted and counterproductive. With disinformation campaigns from Russia or China on the rise and no end in sight, with populism in many nations eroding also an informed debate on security and defence matters, it would seem key to intensify just such a debate – especially now that the NATO plan to move to 5% GDP for defence investment must be explained to often reluctant citizens. NATO HQ goes the opposite way. Should Putin notice, he will like it!