NATO chief Mark Rutte shows he's a 'Trump whisperer' with Greenland diplomacy

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — For days it seemed there was no way out of the latest standoff between Europe and the United States: U.S. President Donald Trump insisted he must have Greenland — and would settle for nothing short of total ownership.

Even after he dropped the threat of force in a speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the impasse remained. Enter: Mark Rutte.

The NATO secretary-general may have been instrumental in persuading Trump to scrap the threat of slapping punitive tariffs on eight European nations to press for U.S. control over Greenland — a stunning reversal shortly after insisting he wanted to get the island “including right, title and ownership.”

In a post on his social media site, Trump said he had agreed with Rutte on a “framework of a future deal” on Arctic security at the World Economic Forum in Davos, potentially defusing tensions that had far-reaching geopolitical implications.

Little is known about what the agreement entails or how crucial Rutte’s intervention was, and Trump could change course again. But for now, Rutte has earned his reputation as a “Trump whisperer.”

That’s only the latest nickname for the man long known as “Teflon Mark” during his domination of Dutch politics for a dozen years.

Rutte's reputation for successfully charming the U.S. president took flight last year when he referred to Donald Trump as “daddy” during an alliance summit in The Hague and sent him a flattering text message.

Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said the dramatic scenes in Davos underscored Rutte's ability to keep NATO’s most powerful leader on board.

“I think Secretary-General Rutte has emerged as one of Europe’s most effective diplomats and Trump whisperers,” Kroenig said. “He does seem to have a way of speaking to Trump that keeps the United States and the Trump administration engaged in NATO in a constructive way.”

Rutte’s success in dealing with Trump appears to revolve around his willingness to use charm and flattery while revealing little of what the two leaders discuss. It's a tactic that Rutte used to marshal coalition partners in nearly 13 years as Dutch prime minister.

Trump himself highlighted Rutte's effusive friendliness before he set off for Davos this week, publishing a text message from the NATO chief on his Truth Social platform. In it, Rutte addresses “Mr. President, dear Donald” and praises Trump for his diplomacy in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine.

“I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can't wait to see you. Yours, Mark,” the message ended.

Rutte became a poster boy for Dutch consensus politics while leading four often fractious ruling coalitions on his way to becoming the Netherlands’ longest-serving leader, surviving a number of domestic political scandals over the years and earning the nickname “Teflon Mark” because the fallout never seemed to stick to him for long.

The back cover of a 2016 book about Rutte by Dutch journalist Sheila Sitalsing, who followed him when he was prime minister, calls him “a phenomenon.”

“With indestructible cheerfulness he navigates the fragmented political landscape, recklessly forges the most extraordinary alliances and steadily works towards a new Netherlands,” it adds.

Rutte and his government resigned in 2021 to take responsibility for a child care allowance scandal in which thousands of parents were wrongly accused of fraud. But he bounced back to win national elections two months later with a slightly larger share of the vote and began his fourth and last term in office.

In another scandal that he survived, Rutte said in an interview that he couldn’t recall being informed about the Dutch bombing of Hawija that killed dozens of Iraqi civilians in 2015. In 2022, he survived a no-confidence motion in parliament in a debate about deleting messages from his old-school Nokia cellphone. Critics accused him of concealing state activity — but he insisted the messages just took up too much space in his phone.

Opposition lawmaker Attje Kuiken quipped: “It appears that the prime minister’s phone memory is used just as selectively as the prime minister’s own memory.”

His winning smile and enduring optimism, along with his habit of riding his bicycle to work while chomping on an apple seemed to help cement his popularity in the Netherlands, where such down-to-earth behavior is prized. When his last coalition collapsed in 2023 in a dispute over reining in migration, Rutte again leaned on that image, driving an old Saab station wagon to a royal palace to hand his resignation to King Willem-Alexander.

Just landing the NATO chief's job showed how adept Rutte is at navigating turbulent geopolitical waters. He managed to convince entrenched doubters, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to back his candidacy.

“It took a very long time. It’s a complicated process, but it’s an honor that it appears to have happened,” Rutte told reporters after securing all the support he needed to become secretary-general.

Rutte's soft diplomatic skills were seen as a key asset for the leader of the 32-nation alliance as it faced Trump's repeated criticism while navigating how to support Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Several hours before Trump made his dramatic reversal on Greenland, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — another European leader credited with having a way with Trump — was asked during a panel discussion on European security in Davos “who or what can diffuse the tensions” over Greenland?

“Oh, Mark Rutte,” Stubb said, to laughter in the audience and among the panel that included the Dutchman himself.

Associated Press writers Lorne Cook in Brussels and Ali Swenson in Washington contributed.

President Donald Trump, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a meeting on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte speaks during an Ukrainian Breakfast alongside the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

President Donald Trump, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during a meeting on the sidelines of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

JDEIDEH, Lebanon (AP) — It was not how the Rev. Maroun Ghafari had envisioned this Holy Week — for years, he had held Easter sermons in his predominantly Christian village of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, near the border with Israel.

This year, he is preaching from a Beirut suburb, beside a cardboard cutout depicting his church in Alma al-Shaab, now caught in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters.

Since hostilities erupted last month between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group — in the shadow of the wider, U.S.-Israeli war on Iran — over 1,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1 million have been forced to flee their homes.

Among those displaced from the war-torn south are thousands of Christians. They now find themselves far from their ancestral churches in Lebanon, where Christians have maintained a strong presence through centuries of Byzantine, Arab and Ottoman conquest and plenty of modern-day crises.

Christians are estimated to make up around a third of Lebanon's population of roughly 5.5 million people. With 12 Christian sects, the country is home to the largest proportion of Christians of any nation in the Arab world.

Christian villagers who stayed behind in southern Lebanon, ignoring Israel’s blanket evacuation warnings for the area, have increasingly hardened into enclaves surrounded by fierce clashes.

And though villagers in Alma al-Shaab had been uprooted before, in the 2024 Israel-Hezbollah war, this time around, they were adamant they wouldn't leave, even as airstrikes came closer and closer.

The villagers huddled in their church for protection as Israeli warplanes pounded large swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon while Israeli troops stepped up a ground invasion and Hezbollah kept firing rockets at Israel.

In his annual Easter homily, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai of Lebanon’s Maronite Church blamed both Hezbollah and Israel for the suffering wrought by the war.

“The country is going through a critical situation due to Iranian interference through Hezbollah and Israeli aggression,” he said. “Our hearts bleed for the victims of the conflict imposed on Lebanon.”

Ghafari’s brother, 70-year-old Sami Ghafari, was among the villagers who sought refuge at the church in Alma al-Shaab.

But he dashed out briefly on March 8 to tend to his garden, and was killed by an Israeli drone strike. His killing prompted the remaining villagers — including his brother — to pack up their belongings.

The U.N. peacekeepers in the area — a force known as UNIFIL that has monitored the region for nearly five decades — evacuated them to the northern suburbs of Beirut.

“We wanted to stay, but it was always possible that one of us could be targeted or killed at any moment,” the Rev. Maroun Ghafari told The Associated Press from St. Anthony Church in the northern Beirut suburb of Jdeideh, where the displaced from Alma al-Shaab came to worship on Saturday.

“Everyone is tired, and we see that war brings nothing but destruction, death and displacement.”

For many Lebanese Christians, it's a tradition on Holy Saturday — the day between Good Friday, which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus, and Easter Sunday, which marks his resurrection according to the Gospels — to visit the graves of their loved ones.

This year, displaced Christians could only reflect from afar.

Nabila Farah, dressed in black for the Saturday service at St. Anthony Church, was among the last to leave Alma al-Shaab. She still feels heartbroken, a month later.

“You miss the smell of home, the lovely traditions and customs, the sounds of the bells of three churches ringing,” she said, reminiscing about her village. “As much as we experience the Easter atmosphere here, it will never be as it is over there.”

Those who remain face other challenges.

Marius Khairallah, a priest in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, where much of the Christian community has hunkered down, says that he and his congregants are staying put "not out of stubbornness, but out of a sense of mission, to remain alongside their fellow faithful, as witnesses.”

“A significant number of parishioners have been displaced or are absent,” he said. "Yet churches still open their doors. Prayers are still raised — even with fewer voices."

Worries are mounting among Christians in the area as the Lebanese army — which seeks to stay neutral in the Israel-Hezbollah war — pulls out from parts of southern Lebanon, leaving them exposed to Israeli forces pushing deeper into the territory.

St. Antony's main priest, the Rev. Dori Fayyad, used his Good Friday sermon to take solemn note of the war’s widening toll on the southern Lebanese Christians, as the faithful recited prayers in Arabic and Syriac, a dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus.

“Today, you understand what the cross means, not as an idea, not as a concept, but because you are going through it,” he told the fully packed pews, the crowd so thick that dozens had to stand or crouch on the back stairs.

Some wiped away tears as Fayyad named one by one the southern churches, illustrated in the cardboard cutouts next to the pulpit.

“These churches in these villages are not only places of worship,” he said. “They are silent witnesses to suffering and to faith.”

Associated Press video journalist Ali Sharafeddine in Jdeideh, Lebanon, contributed to this report.

A girl kisses a cross held by a priest during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Parishioners walk in a procession after a Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Worshipers pray during Good Friday Mass at St. Anthony Church, which was devoted to expressing solidarity with Christian villagers in southern Lebanon displaced by the war in Jdeideh, a suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)