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Rutte, who took over as NATO chief last October, plans to eliminate two divisions and cut dozens of positions at the headquarters in Brussels.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is cutting jobs within the world’s most powerful military alliance as part of a major restructuring effort. Rutte, who took over as NATO chief last October, plans to eliminate two divisions and cut dozens of positions at its headquarters in Brussels, three current NATO officials and one former senior official told POLITICO.
“He’s essentially DOGEing NATO,” said an alliance official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the reform, referring to the drastic effort led by Elon Musk to shrink the U.S. federal government earlier this year.
The reorganization, which has not been previously reported, comes as fears grow that US President Donald Trump, a NATO skeptic, could one day leave the military alliance, and ahead of a crucial summit starting Tuesday in The Hague, which the American leader is scheduled to attend.
The reforms also take place against a complex geopolitical and defense backdrop, with wars roiling Ukraine and the Middle East, and the Trump administration repeatedly warning that the US could be left behind in the future when it comes to Europe's security.
When Rutte took over from Jens Stoltenberg last year, after the latter's decade-long tenure at the helm, he used his inaugural speech to announce that there was "work to do" to improve NATO.
"It is my job to make sure that... we continue to adapt our alliance to a more complex world ," he said.
The former Dutch prime minister has wasted little time restructuring the alliance's bureaucracy. He held two internal staff meetings in recent months to announce a wave of changes, including cutting NATO's international staff divisions from eight to six. The divisions being cut are the Public Diplomacy Division, which serves as NATO's press service, and the Executive Management Division, the alliance's human resources department.
Their functions will largely be absorbed by other divisions. But the assistant secretaries general — division heads appointed by the secretary general with input from the alliance’s member countries — will simply cease to exist, an official with direct knowledge confirmed to POLITICO.
The Assistant Secretary-General of the Public Diplomacy Division, Marie-Doha Besancenot of France, left in March and has not been replaced. Carlo Borghini of Italy, who heads the Executive Management Division, will also lose his post.
Dozens of positions will ultimately be cut as part of the reorganization, another official told POLITICO, adding that the cuts “do not appear to be significantly high” and that staff will also be hired.
“This is something that happens when you have a new secretary general ,” a former senior NATO official told POLITICO when asked about Rutte’s plans to restructure the alliance.
The former senior official said Rutte's reform was not as reckless as Musk's infamous Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which saw US federal employees laid off and US agencies closed with little or no warning, although in many cases the employees were eventually rehired.
“ This is done by people inside who really understand the priorities, structures and existing processes. So it’s a much longer-term and deliberate process than DOGE ,” the official said.
NATO is headquartered in Brussels and employs around 4,000 people, including around 1,500 international staff for whom Rutte is responsible.
Many of them are temporary, or “temporary” workers — often younger staff, with shorter contracts of six months. Two current officials told POLITICO that there is a noticeable shift happening to reduce the number of temporary roles and make more positions permanent.
" It's hard to have stability if you keep moving from one temporary position to another ," said the former senior NATO official, adding that discussions about reducing reliance on highly volatile, short-term staff have existed since the Rutte era.
"They are extremely talented and dedicated people, and we hope they will have a chance to apply for appropriate contractual positions based on their experience and the fact that they already have a security clearance ," the former official added.
Rutte, who has been dubbed a “Trump whisperer” for his ability to charm the unpredictable US president, will spend the next three and a half years trying to ensure that Trump does not abandon the alliance, as he has repeatedly threatened to do.
Part of Rutte's proposal to Trump and other allies next week will be that he can make NATO more efficient and use its resources "wisely and sparingly," said Alexander Mattelaer, VUB Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow at Egmont.
“Rutte is reshaping the support staff structure at headquarters in line with what he sees as major priorities ,” said Mattelaer, whose research focuses on NATO and transatlantic security, namely “reinvesting in defense and making it as efficient as possible.”
The secretary-general was apparently implementing his cuts "in close consultation" with the US, Mattelaer added.
While the reforms are "more symbolic measures" and unlikely to free up much money, they reflect ongoing discussions among NATO countries about how much of the euro and dollar goes into the civilian budget and how much goes into the military budget./ Adapted from "Politico"
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