When Mark Rutte decides to raise his voice, it’s usually for a reason. He’s not the type who loves dramatic statements or patriotic slogans. He weighs every word, often to the point of sounding almost too cautious. That’s exactly why his message in Berlin should worry us more than it apparently has.
Rutte said openly that Russia now sees NATO as its next target, and that the West must “shift to a war mentality.”

For almost three years now, Europe has been discussing the war in Ukraine as if it were a fire to be kept under control, something that ‘sooner or later’ will return. Rutte shoves reality in our faces: Putin does not want to go back in anywhere. He has a power project that is not limited to the occupied territories; he aims to rewrite the European balance of power. And he does so by putting on the table numbers that, if they were not tragic, would seem invented: 1.1 million Russian victims and 1,200 dead and wounded per day in the last year. A rate of attrition reminiscent of history textbooks, not 2024.

A sentence that is not liked, but needs to be understood

The expression ‘war mentality’ is unpleasant. It sounds bad, almost out of place in the European public debate. And in fact many stop there, at the surface, as is often the case. In reality, Rutte is not saying that we should prepare for a direct conflict – and it would be absurd to read it that way – but that we should accept the end of the strategic illusion in which we have been living since the 1990s.

For thirty years we thought that peace was a matter of course, and that security, all things considered, was up to the United States. Today this is no longer the case. It is not just up to the Americans, it is not their ‘historic task’. It is our political duty.

The West is not in decline: it is distracted

Rutte’s central point is that the free world – yes, let’s call it by its name – is experiencing a dangerous phase of distraction. We are not weak, but we are slow. We are not naive, but we continue to believe that it is enough to ‘manage’ the Ukrainian crisis instead of facing it for what it is: the front line between democracy and authoritarian revisionism.

And while we argue, Moscow observes and measures our degree of hesitation. The more uncertainty it perceives, the more it feels entitled to force the situation. Not because it is irrational, but because that is how authoritarian power works: it advances where it finds space.

A true European defence is part of the solution, not a problem

Then there is another element that is often avoided in Europe.
Rutte does not say it openly, but the subtext is clear: NATO is only strong if Europe finally comes of age.

This does not mean replacing Washington or duplicating the Alliance. It means contributing as a mature party, with industrial capabilities, adequate spending, strategic planning.
We cannot go on talking about strategic autonomy while we buy bullets with the dropper. It no longer holds water.

The message nobody wanted to hear

This entire debate irritates us because it shatters a comforting narrative. Europe likes to think of itself as a post-historical continent — a place where borders are symbolic, where war is something that happens elsewhere, where politics is about regulation more than survival.

Rutte does not do scaremongering. He is making politics, in the highest sense of the word.
He is saying: if you don’t get a wake-up call now, you risk finding yourselves reacting when it is already too late. And he is right.
There is no need to be hawks, no need to be belligerents. It is only necessary to understand that peace does not keep itself, and that the world we have lived in so far is no longer guaranteed.

His warning is uncomfortable, yes.
But precisely because of that, now is the time to listen to it. And to act, not tomorrow.

Now.