A Leiden law student wants to know from Mark Rutte what the rise of the internet meant for politics: hadn’t he experienced all that as prime minister? Rutte has just given his guest lecture in the Cleveringa room at Leiden University – about Russia and Ukraine and about his prediction that this will be ‘the year of America’, and not China. He looks up in surprise and seems to realize that he must immediately correct this student’s idea; he has not been Prime Minister of the Netherlands for that long. “You already had the internet in 2010, you know.”
But it is abundantly clear: the three hundred first-year students in the room hardly remember another prime minister. It was Rutte himself who had referred in his lecture to the possible end of his premiership. He opened up about a woman who had said: “My daughter thinks it is about time you left.” The students laughed. Rutte said that that made him “always a bit peevish”: “Because fine, of course, but what are you going to do about it? If you really find it, take action. Get politically active and get rid of me.”
But that was necessary, he also said, not yet. Again there was laughter.
A large part of Rutte’s lesson was an appeal to the students to become politically active in order to keep democracy afloat. “Get up, get involved,” he said. “Read newspapers and find something.” In Ukraine and Iraq, people had to “fight for freedom and democracy, and we here in the Netherlands have inherited it and that creates obligations.”
Also read this opinion article by Mark Rutte: With support to Ukraine, we defend our way of life
Statesman on campaign
A year ago, the university had asked him to give a guest lecture as part of a lecture series on democracy. The VVD had known for some time that it would be in the middle of the campaign for the provincial elections. Rutte used the performance to show himself as a statesman – with his story about the war in Ukraine and the rest of the world. He also said that there is “no alternative to transatlantic cooperation, with a strong America in a strong NATO.”
That Rutte praises the US in this way will certainly stand out in Washington and the European capitals. He is seen as a possible successor to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (63), who has announced that he really wants to stop as SG in the autumn. He has been there since 2014, his term has been extended a few times. Everyone in NATO knows: only someone who is approved by the US will be able to succeed him. And those who want to keep silent about it until it is decided. Former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said earlier about this NRC: “A bird that whistles early is for the cat.”
Rutte said after the lecture in Leiden that the NATO countries will now really start looking for someone who is suitable for that position. And that this was not yet necessary in the time that Stoltenberg’s term was constantly being extended. Rutte also said that it does not necessarily have to be a head of government, as has been the custom at NATO for some time. According to him, it can also be a former minister of Foreign Affairs or Defense, as before. About Jens Stoltenberg, Rutte said that he is “very reliable and has a lot of authority, also in the White House, which is very important”. But it was “inevitable that he wants to stop sometime”.
He laughed. “That even applies to me someday.”