{"id":449540,"date":"2026-04-03T17:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T15:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/04\/03\/rutte-da-trump-il-faccia-a-faccia-dopo-le-minacce-di-ritiro-usa-dalla-nato\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T18:11:56","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:11:56","slug":"rutte-meets-trump-in-face-to-face-talks-amid-us-nato-withdrawal-threats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/04\/03\/rutte-meets-trump-in-face-to-face-talks-amid-us-nato-withdrawal-threats\/","title":{"rendered":"Rutte meets Trump in face-to-face talks amid US NATO withdrawal threats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels \u2013 Next week will see a <strong>face-to-face meeting between the NATO Secretary General and the US President<\/strong>: as announced by NATO, from 8 to 12 April, <strong>Mark Rutte<\/strong> will be visiting Washington D.C., where <strong>he will meet<\/strong> (on 8 April) <strong>Donald Trump<\/strong>, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth; he will deliver a speech and take part (on 9 April) in a discussion organised by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Institute; and from 10 to 12 April he will attend the Bilderberg Group meeting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The meeting will take place against the backdrop of<\/strong><span style=\"margin: 0px;padding: 0px\"><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/01\/trump-says-he-is-absolutely-considering-withdrawing-us-from-nato\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>a serious crisis for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation&nbsp;<\/strong><\/a><strong>following Trump\u2019s comments about<\/strong><\/span><strong>&nbsp;considering a US withdrawal from NATO<\/strong>. The reason? The allies\u2019 reluctance to join the war launched alongside Israel against Iran on 28 February. Last Wednesday (1 April), Trump told Reuters news agency that he was \u201c<strong>seriously considering withdrawal from NATO<\/strong>,\u201d which he had previously described as a \u201cpaper tiger\u201d in an interview with The Telegraph. \u201cI\u2019ve never been convinced by NATO. I\u2019ve always known they were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/video\/2026\/04\/01\/trump-considers-pulling-us-out-of-paper-tiger-nato\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a paper tiger<\/a>,\u201d he stated. And he did not mince his words in making it clear that Washington\u2019s consideration of withdrawal is an \u201cirrevocable\u201d matter due to the allies\u2019 refusal to join the Israeli-American war against Iran. \u201cUkraine wasn\u2019t our problem, yet we were there for them, but they weren\u2019t there for us,\u201d he said. And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, responding at a press conference to a question about a possible US withdrawal from NATO, pointed out that for Moscow it is \u201ca hostile alliance.\u201d \u201cAs for NATO, it is a hostile alliance for us. An alliance that regards us as its enemies and adopts hostile measures accordingly,\u201d he explained.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Although Alliance sources are urging calm, pointing out that Trump is no stranger to such provocations, the fact remains that <strong>his threats and attacks<\/strong>\u2014ranging from those directed at the British Prime Minister, <strong>Keir Starmer<\/strong>, regarding the Royal Navy (\u201cYou don\u2019t even have a navy. You\u2019re too old and you had aircraft carriers that didn\u2019t work\u201d) to personal attacks against the French president, <strong>Emmanuel Macron<\/strong> (\u201cHis wife treats him terribly; he\u2019s still recovering from the punch he received in the face\u201d)\u2014<strong>are already fracturing the Atlantic Alliance<\/strong> and prompting responses and reactions from his counterparts on this side of the Atlantic. And <strong>Rutte will also have to take this into account in his face-to-face meeting with the tycoon<\/strong>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In response to Trump\u2019s accusations, Starmer pointed out that NATO is \u201cthe most effective military alliance the world has ever seen.\u201d He added: \u201cIt has kept us safe for many decades and we are fully committed to NATO.\u201d Meanwhile, Macron stressed that \u201c<strong>if doubts are cast<\/strong> on its commitment every day, <strong>its substance is undermined<\/strong>\u201d. He pointed the finger at the White House: \u201cIt is a responsibility that the American authorities are taking on today by saying every morning that we will do this, that we will not do that, or whatever else.\u201d For the French president, \u201cthere is too much talk, and there is confusion\u201d, whilst \u201cwe all need stability, calm, a return to peace; this is not a spectacle.\u201d In particular, \u201c<strong>we must be serious, and when you want to be serious, you do not say every day the opposite of what you said the day before<\/strong>.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In any case, for Trump, leaving NATO could prove more complicated than he imagines, given that, although there remains some uncertainty regarding the President\u2019s constitutional powers in matters of foreign policy, he would need a two-thirds majority in the US Senate to withdraw from the Atlantic Alliance. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/en\/about-us\/official-texts-and-resources\/official-texts\/1949\/04\/04\/the-north-atlantic-treaty\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Article 13 of the 1949 NATO Treaty, however, provides that<\/a> each member state has the option&nbsp;to withdraw after the first twenty years following the Treaty\u2019s entry into force. In practical terms, any member state may formally notify the United States, which is the depositary of the Treaty, of its intention to withdraw, which will take effect one year after notification. Despite Article 13 and internal criticism, and despite tensions or even political parties calling for withdrawal from NATO, no country has ever completed its withdrawal from the Alliance. At least not until now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Secretary-General is due to meet the US President on 8 April, following the tycoon\u2019s statement that he is considering withdrawing from NATO due to the allies\u2019 reluctance to support him in the war against Iran<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7874,"featured_media":449535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[30809],"tags":[33667,31521,33668,33669,29164],"class_list":["post-449540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-security","tag-incontro","tag-nato-en-10","tag-ritiro","tag-rutte","tag-trump-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449541,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449540\/revisions\/449541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}