NATO watches from the stands

Mark Rutte spoke today from Skopje, North Macedonia, where he was celebrating the Balkan country's contribution to collective security. While the Middle East burns, NATO's secretary general was in the Balkans talking about Kosovo. "NATO is not involved," he told reporters. "But I can assure you that NATO will defend every inch of NATO territory."

The nuance matters. Rutte said he senses "widespread support in Europe" for the American campaign. He spoke with many leaders over the weekend and claimed the destruction of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capability, and Khamenei's death, "is applauded by many of my colleagues in NATO." In an interview with Newsmax, he added that allies are "supporting on a huge scale what the president is doing". On Spain, he noted Madrid still maintains its Patriot system in Turkey as a contribution to the alliance, as if that offset the ban on using its bases.

On Article 5, Rutte kept the ambiguity deliberate: "For good reasons, we will always be ambiguous about when Article 5 is triggered." In other words: allies support politically, several provide logistics and access, some deploy defences, but the alliance as an institution does not participate. It is the most comfortable position possible: backing without fighting, applauding without risking anything. NATO was created in 1949 to defend the North Atlantic from an existential threat. In 2026, its principal member is at war, another had its sovereign base attacked, a third was threatened with a trade embargo for not cooperating, and the secretary general is speaking from North Macedonia. There is something in that image which captures the current state of the Western alliance better than any analysis could.