NATO chief Rutte to address Des Moines audience in public diplomacy push

All 32 NATO allies met 2% of GDP defense-spending target in 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was scheduled to speak on the evening of Sept. 22 at a public forum in Des Moines, the home city of Matthew Whitaker, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to NATO. The Guardian framed the visit as significant because it brings the debate over NATO’s future directly to a midwestern audience in a red state that operates far from elite foreign-policy circles in Washington. The Iowa event was part of a broader push, the paper said, to make the case for the transatlantic alliance to Americans outside the foreign-policy establishment.

The appearance coincided with an op-ed in the Guardian by Leslie Vinjamuri, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ president and CEO. Vinjamuri argued that European governments cannot secure NATO’s future by persuading Trump alone and must instead make the case for the transatlantic alliance directly to American voters. “Making the public case for Nato, the transatlantic partnership, and shared security across the middle of the country, is essential, not optional,” Vinjamuri wrote. “This case should begin with the American people.”

Vinjamuri’s column drew on polling conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in partnership with Ipsos. The survey found that 68% of Americans supported maintaining or increasing the U.S. commitment to NATO. The same survey found that only 47% of respondents were confident European allies would come to America’s defense if it were attacked — a decline from 62% in 2025. A separate 2024 survey cited by Vinjamuri found that 58% of Americans supported sending additional arms and military supplies to Ukraine, with the same share backing economic assistance.

The author framed the polling gap as evidence that public support for the alliance remains substantial but increasingly conditional. “When it comes to the American public, there is plenty of room for optimism, but in a political context that is ripe for populists to cultivate antagonism toward spending on foreign causes, there is little room for complacency,” she wrote.

Vinjamuri also pointed to NATO’s defense-spending trajectory as a message she said has been poorly understood in the United States. NATO’s Annual Report 2025 found that all 32 alliance members met or exceeded the 2% of GDP defense-expenditure target that year. European Union defense spending rose 20% in 2025 compared with 2024 among the bloc’s 27 member states, and allies have committed to investing 5% of GDP annually by 2035 in defense and related security.

The column highlighted economic comparisons intended to undercut what Vinjamuri described as the “persistent myth that Europeans are free-riding on America’s coattails.” Vinjamuri cited the Commonwealth Fund’s 2023 survey, which found that 46% of U.S. adults with lower or average incomes reported skipping or delaying needed healthcare because of cost, compared with 16% in each of the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

Vinjamuri argued that the alliance’s value should be communicated in terms Americans recognize in their own lives — job security, energy prices, technology resilience, and the prospect of avoiding a wider war. “The transatlantic partnership cannot be secured through presidential diplomacy alone,” Vinjamuri wrote. “European leaders should continue engaging the White House, but they must also make their case to the American public.”

Vinjamuri pointed to parallel public-diplomacy efforts by other foreign-policy institutions. The Ditchley Foundation, a UK-based organization, convened roundtables in South Carolina and Illinois over the summer around America’s 250th anniversary, in what she described as part of a broader effort to cultivate relationships with U.S. audiences outside Washington.

The op-ed situated the public-diplomacy push in the context of Russia’s war in Ukraine and what Vinjamuri described as ongoing uncertainty over the U.S. commitment to European security. While some European leaders have pressed for building autonomous European capabilities, Vinjamuri said, others have framed increased defense spending as a means of keeping the United States engaged in the alliance.

“The long-term future of Nato will depend not only on what presidents decide, but on whether citizens on both sides of the Atlantic continue to see the alliance as essential to their security, democracy and prosperity,” Vinjamuri wrote.