Latest from Time Magazine
Time Magazine
36 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Materialists Exposes the Inhumanity of Modern Dating
Matchmaking has been an unpaid cultural practice all over the world for millennia, but over time it has become a booming industry. More and more of my dating clients either inquire about my opinion about matchmaking or share that they have used a matchmaking service in the past. One client even had a matchmaker solicit her on LinkedIn with promises of her 'perfect match.' This increased interest in an explosion of matchmaking is due in part to the popularity of shows like Million Dollar Matchmaker, Jewish Matchmaking, Indian Matchmaking, and Muslim Matchmaker. These shows highlight the culturally specific ways that matchmakers can help daters find long-lasting love and the benefits of trusting someone else with the process. That's why Celine Song's new film, Materialists, has come out at such an interesting moment. As people consider their relationships with matchmakers and dating in general, the movie exposes the underbelly of the matchmaking industry. (Spoilers are ahead!) Materialists deftly uses matchmaking to show us just how much modern dating has become an inhumane and often unfair playground that benefits the rich. Throughout the movie, we witness hopeful clients disclosing their unfiltered ageist, classist, racist, and fatphobic requests for partners, all while their matchmaker Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson, listens intently and empathetically. That is, until her career is upended by the revelation that one of her clients, Sophie, has been sexually assaulted by a man who Lucy matched her with—a man whose credentials all turned out to be lies. While attending the wedding of one of her clients, Lucy explains to a potential love interest and brother of the groom, Harry (Pedro Pascal), that being a matchmaker is like being a mortician or insurance claim adjuster because of the job's focus on stats like height, weight, race, and income. She reduces her matchmaking process down to 'math' and even extends this to her own dating life. Harry, who courts Lucy aggressively, is tall, successful, and incredibly rich. Lucy discloses that she makes $80,000 and that he can do better than her. He responds that he has plenty of material assets and is more interested in her intangible assets. The longing for romantic and financial security is ever present throughout the film, making it a tense watch at times. But, as I was leaving the theatre, I heard a group of women say that the movie was 'so cute,' Taken at face value, the plot is pretty simple romance. Girl meets rich boy, but also reconnects with broke ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), and through a series of events, girl decides that love is more important than money. But so much of the film mirrors the horrors of contemporary dating, from discussions of someone's value in the dating market to explicitly stating what makes certain daters more desirable. For men, that means making over $100,000 (the more the better) and being at least six feet tall. For women, that means being young, thin, and beautiful. It seems that all parties want someone 'fit,' and the clientele represented in the movie skews heavily white and heterosexual. This depiction of outlandish dealbreakers, while often raw and horrifying, does not stray too far from the realities of the current dating cultural climate. Song, a former matchmaker herself, does an excellent job of showing the complexities of dating and being the one responsible for facilitating near impossible matches. Lucy is cold and exacting, debating her clients' viability in mainstream or niche markets. This is the kind of calculation I see my clients doing as they try to determine their odds on various dating apps. It's a process that can feel demoralizing unless you become desensitized to it over time. All of this math, these stats, and the quest for the best value completely obviate the search for real love. In fact, for a movie about love, the term is used sparingly. Instead the viewer is privy to the myriad reasons why people partner instead of love: to make one's sister jealous, to have or bear children, to make one's parents happy. Lucy sells her service by talking about how people should be looking for a nursing home buddy, but that's just the hook. Once her clients are on the hook and paying top dollar, they want a product worth their investment. Materialists doesn't have a traditional happy ending, though it does conclude with a wedding. Just because Lucy has chosen John, and all of the financial uncertainty that comes with that choice, perhaps Song wanted us to feel that she has not fully settled. As the couple awaits their turn at a bustling City Hall Wedding Bureau during the final credits, there's an anxiety about whether they will make it. Lucy's materialism is what drove the two apart before. Throughout the movie, Lucy states that marriage is a business agreement, and it always has been. Are we to believe that she's decided to make a bad business decision? We are also left hanging when it comes to whether or not Lucy will accept a promotion at the matchmaking agency or leave the industry completely. All of this ambivalence—of Lucy's moral stance, her standards, her belief in love—is what viewers must contend with. And it's similar to the position of everyone trying to find what they're looking for in dating in this economy. Even in the best of business deals, the numbers don't make sense.
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Lukas Nelson Is Ready to Make a Name for Himself
Even if you can't name one song by Lukas Nelson, chances are you've already heard his music. The 36-year-old singer-songwriter (and son of country music mainstay Willie Nelson) has not only been releasing country-roots albums with his band the Promise of the Real since 2010, he and his band have been touring and recording with Neil Young since 2016. Nelson has also written for the screen: In 2020, he won a Grammy for his work on a little film called A Star Is Born, for which he wrote and co-produced several songs, as well as appeared on screen as a member of Bradley Cooper's band. Despite all of these accolades and accomplishments, Nelson has a grander vision for himself. He'd love to graduate from behind-the-scenes player—let's say your favorite country artist's favorite country artist—into a top-billed superstar in his own right. There's no reason to think that he won't meet the moment. Nelson's debut solo album, American Romance (produced by Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon), is brimming with universal observations about love, loss, family, perseverance, and the cycle of birth and death. It's all set against a classic American backdrop of diner counters and truck stops, East Coast turnpike exits and snow-tipped Montana mountains. Led by Nelson's acoustic fingerpicking and aching, reedy vocals, American Romance goes down with the familiar ease of a time-worn Townes Van Zandt record while distinguishing itself enough to stand on its own in the modern-country landscape. Ahead of his album's release on June 20, Nelson spoke to TIME about the long road to American Romance, finding the right way to discuss his lineage, and why he's a 'disciple of Dolly Parton' when it comes to politics. Nelson: Well, Promise of the Real was a band that I started when I was 19. I was always the songwriter, and those guys traveled with me through thick and thin. We became Neil Young's backing band for five years. Then we're trying to do both my songs and Neil's songs and straddle that line. But a lot of the fans that we got were fans of Neil and, of course, my father. Eventually I realized, if I don't establish myself as an artist right now, then I won't be able to. So I just decided to go out and play for my own fans and my own generation and figure out who I am. I had to just become Lukas Nelson. I stopped smoking weed, I became sober. I faced my fear of flying by becoming a pilot. And I sort of let go of a lot of the legacy ideals that I had grown up with and felt pressured by. There's a song on the album—it's the first song I ever wrote, when I was 11, called 'You Were It.' I wrote that before I started telling myself a story of who I was meant to be. That song came to me on a school bus. My dad liked it so much that he recorded it. Then Kris Kristofferson said, "I love that song. Are you going to be a songwriter?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "Well, you don't have a choice." That inspired me to become a musician. But now I'm trying to ask myself: What do I mean musically? How do you feel American Romance might begin to answer that question? I'm working with some of my favorite musicians of our time: Stephen Wilson Jr., Sierra Ferrell, Anderson East. 'God Ain't Done,' I wrote with Aaron Raitiere, who just had a hit with 'You Look Like You Love Me' with Ella Langley and Riley Green. I'm writing a lot with Ernest [Keith Smith], who's written all the number one hits on Morgan Wallen's recent album. I've always believed that I could stand toe-to-toe with anyone as a songwriter. I am a songwriter first and foremost—I play good guitar, and I sing well, and I perform well, but the songs are the most important thing, what brought me to A Star is Born and what really, I think, caused Neil [Young] to take notice. You have artists like Kacey Musgraves, Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton, Tyler Childers—these are the artists that I respect, and I want to be part of that conversation and musical landscape. I want to have a career that lasts as long as my father's. And when my father played, he played for his generation, and they followed him now up into his nineties. So in order to have that longevity, I have to be smart and play to my own people. I've always known and respected [Shooter] for his musicality. I'd always wanted to work with him. I think now was the perfect moment, because he's established himself separate from his legacy, as an incredible producer. Now I feel like the conversation is less about, 'Oh, isn't it cool that these kids are doing it and their fathers were friends?' That becomes a little bit of icing on the cake. Those who don't know us will probably still look at it that way. And that's something I deal with my whole life. [But] we've gotten past the idea that we are only just the sons of [ Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings]. We have our own careers that we've built. I respect [Shooter's] work ethic. When I started playing with the band, we did 250 shows a year for a good part of 10 years, just in order to prove to myself. I knew I was going to have to work twice as hard. People who don't know me are always going to have an opinion on whether I got anything handed to me, but I know how hard I worked, and so at the moment of my death, that's what I'm going to look at. I can see that Shooter has the same approach. I can imagine you having so many different internal conversations with yourself. Like on one hand, when Kris Kristofferson tells you that you were born to be a songwriter, that's amazing. At the same time, like with any family business, did you feel like there was ever even a choice? I'm so grateful that he gave me that inspiration because it lit a fire. And I had the confidence to say, 'OK, put my head down, ignore everything anyone else is saying and just work, and I think I have some sort of innate understanding of this songwriting thing that I can actually nurture.' I'm really grateful to that 11-year-old boy who understood that the time that he put in then would pay off now. And it has. It was about just closing my ears to any of the chatter and playing guitar eight hours a day and through the night, much to the chagrin of my mother, and just obsessing over songwriting, not giving a crap about parties in high school. I never had one sip of a beer until I was in college. I just focused. The greatest part about being the son of my father, and of my mother [Annie D'Angelo] too, was the inspiration and support. Like Colonel Tom Parker seeing Elvis and saying, "I'm going to focus all of my efforts on that man," he invested and made him a star. So somebody has to champion you, and I was lucky to have that growing up. Yeah, it's a double-edged sword. Say you have no industry connections and want to make it as an artist, you're going to need someone to take a chance on you. Meanwhile, as you've described, say you do come from a family with every connection—someone will still have to personally vouch for you, because people will make assumptions. Now I've gotten to this place where I think I'm clear-headed enough to understand how to talk about it. I didn't really know how to describe what I was feeling. I was in my Beatles Hamburg days—just playing show after show after show. And when people would ask me [about my father], I'd be like, 'I don't even have time to answer that. Ask me about my record.' You know what I mean? I love my dad and he's a good man, and I love my mom and she's a good woman. And my brother and sisters. It's a good family. I'm lucky. Not because he's a successful musician, because he's a good person and a kind person and is in touch with his empathy. That's what I'm most grateful for. How did you end up settling on the album name American Romance? The title came from the song, [which is] like a portrait. This whole album is a bunch of different chapters, kind of in a John Steinbeck Travels With Charley, memoir-like [way] about different moments that shaped me growing up in this country that raised me. The loves and the losses and the heartache, and then the elation. There were moments where I've spent Thanksgiving dinners at a truck stop having the turkey special, and then having the kindly waitress feel bad for me, although she was working too. It's the Walmart parking lots. It's the sirens at night, the rendezvous in the night. There's a thousand different stories I have in hundreds of hours of travel, but I tried to just put it into an album of 13 songs. At the same time, it's an album about the future. I've got a song called 'Pretty Much' that talks about how I envision the hour of my death and what I hope is in store for me in terms of love and relationships. I'd love to be surrounded by my family and them desperately wanting all the information about how I met the love of my life, who's right there beside me, and telling all the different stories about when I fell in love. It's about the future and the past and the present. You split your time between Nashville and Hawaii now, and between Hawaii and Texas when you were growing up. When people ask, where do you say you're from? I was raised by America, by the United States. The roads raised me. I may have been born in Texas, and I spent some time there. I spent some time in Hawaii. But most of my life was spent on the road growing up from Walmart parking lot to motel, to hotel to diner to stage. It's easier almost to say the greater United States than it is to say anywhere in specific. Country music has such a legacy of storytelling about America, encapsulating the good, the bad, the mundane. But 2025 is such a unique time to release a body of work about the country, seeing as the country itself has rarely been more divided. As someone who has traveled it so extensively, what are some commonalities that you think everybody living in the U.S. still shares? That's a great question. I believe that we all share the heart. There's a song I have called 'Turn Off the News (Build a Garden).' 'I believe that every heart is kind, some are just a little underused' is the first line. I think that when we can connect with our hearts, we can open up empathy inside of ourselves. Now, there are exceptions to the rule. Obviously some people are sociopathic. So barring that, I feel like music has the power to cut through the mind and reach the heart. What we can all relate to is suffering in love and relationships and heartbreak. Those things are really universal. My belief is that I can change people's minds more by doing what I do than by standing and making statements. I can put it in my music. I believe that strongly, and I've seen it work. There's a guy named Daryl Davis who is a Black musician, and he has converted over 200 Klansmen, to the point where they give him their hoods because he sat there and talked to them. This guy has some balls. He somehow reached their hearts. I think the only way to change people's minds, if they have hatred, is to try and reach their hearts. I don't think calling them a monster will do it. Some people are beyond changing, I understand that. But music has the power to open up hearts. I know I'm good at one thing, and I do it. I am not a politician. I have friends that span the aisles, as they say. But kindness and compassion are where I try to live from. I look at someone who's suffering, and I always believe in helping that person out. I'm a disciple of Dolly Parton, let's just say.
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Sabrina Carpenter Is Not the Problem
America, we have a problem: No one is having sex anymore. With the exception of Gen X women, there is a sharp decline in sexual activity across the nation. The consistent attacks on birth control and reproductive rights, in addition to the rise of tradwives and more traditional forms of motherhood, have no doubt contributed to an environment in the United States where sex feels like not only a means to an end (a baby), but also an inherently fearful act. To put it plainly: we do not live in a sexy economy. So, when Sabrina Carpenter released the cover art for her upcoming album Man's Best Friend, it was no surprise that she ruffled a few feathers— and became yet another placeholder for America's sexual frustrations. On the cover of Man's Best Friend, Carpenter is seen in a black mini-dress, while an out-of-frame man pulls on her hair, insinuating a sexual act. The cover was instantly dubbed as 'controversial,' though Carpenter is no stranger to that. Her recent stage performances and choreography have become the topic of conversation online among parents who view her as a bad role model for children. In a Rolling Stone cover story, the singer said that her critics are responsible for her music's notoriety. 'It's always so funny to me when people complain,' Carpenter explained. 'They're like, 'All she does is sing about this.' But those are the songs that you've made popular. Clearly, you love sex. You're obsessed with it.' She's not wrong. There is a lack of attention towards her acoustic numbers, which are often simplified, intimate moments where she waxes poetically about heartbreak, as compared to her exaggerated, risque acts, in which she engages in touch-in-cheek roleplay with her dancers. (Think her Eiffel Tower reference at her Paris show) The latter is heavily documented and shared on social media platforms, while the former is rarely shown outside of her tour stops. She's also not the first pop star to be accused of sexual immorality. In fact, it is a perverse rite of passage in our pop culture landscape. Just think about the scores of pop stars that have had to endure the same thing: Janet Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera. Ronald Reagan was in office when Jackson released her euphoric single 'Pleasure Principle.' George H.W. Bush was in the midst of a presidential election campaign when Madonna published her 'scandalous' Sex coffee book, which was banned in several countries. George Bush was Commander in Chief when Spears and Aguilera left their girl-next-door personas in favor of sexier images. Sexism is not unique to the music industry, nor is racism, but the standards placed upon women in the music industry are reflective of the societal and cultural norms of the era in which they are performing. The existence of conservatism, which is as rampant as ever in President Donald Trump's second administration, runs in direct opposition to sex-positive pop stars. Although the majority of Americans are not having sex, the overt response to Carpenter's album cover points to the fact that, perhaps, they want to. But instead of being honest about their sexual desires, people pin their frustrations onto society's most visible. This includes pop stars. Because here's the thing: The problem is not that she is emulating sex positions on stage, or that she is on her hands and knees on her album cover. It is neither an attempt to glamorize intimate partner violence nor is it an introductory 101 course on pup play. The problem is the federal actions that have been taken to defund and restrict access to sex education services in the U.S.. The problem is the nation's swing back to conservative idealism, which disproportionately (and negatively) impacts women, people of color, and queer and trans people—all in the name of 'family values.' The problem is we are farther away from making sex fun—and pleasurable—for women than we've ever been. Perhaps Carpenter did not intend to be a participant in the ongoing culture war of sex and conservatism in the U.S. when she released the cover art for Man's Best Friend. Perhaps she is one of the few Americans not experiencing a sex recession. (Which, good for her!) But this album cover does feel like her attempt to participate in a cherished tradition for women in pop music. It is her declaration that women should have agency over their sexuality—just like so many pop stars have done before her. Above all, the Man's Best Friend cover art did reveal a deep truth in our insecure American consciousness: The inability to engage in healthy sexual behaviors, which is exacerbated by the influx of conservative content on social media, makes women who are confident in their sexual wants and desires the subject of unfair criticism and attack. It's scary to them just because of how free it looks.
Time Magazine
an hour ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Man Who Wants to Save NATO
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte keeps a variety of mementos in his office. There is a sprawling photograph of the North Sea from the vantage point of his hometown in the Netherlands, a kanji gift from Japan's Minister of Defense, and a framed floral embroidery that reads 'In Unity is Strength' in Cyrillic with the stitched flags of NATO, Ukraine, and the E.U. But the room's largest ornamental feature is the blue-and-white map of the world that looms above his conference desk. 'In the past, I was responsible for this,' the former Dutch Prime Minister says, pointing to his tiny home country in the northwestern corner of Europe. He extends his arms out to encircle the entire Western defense alliance that is home to 1 billion people. 'And now ...' he says, with a wry laugh. It's a glimpse of the storms roiling beneath the optimism of the preternaturally cheerful Rutte. We are in the steel and glass NATO HQ on the outskirts of Brussels, completed eight years ago at a cost of $1.3 billion, its interlocking buildings meant to evoke fingers clasped together in unity. But on this balmy May afternoon, five weeks before a critical summit with the mercurial U.S. President Donald Trump and dozens of other leaders, the question of unity hangs over the alliance. 'It is really a pivotal moment,' Rutte says, after we sit down in his office, some six short months after he became Secretary-General in October. 'Pivotal' may be an understatement. Trump has repeatedly said, most recently in March, that he's 'not going to defend' NATO allies that don't spend enough on their militaries, a threat to the mutual defense commitment at the heart of the alliance. Europeans, awakened to the danger of American inconstancy, are scrambling to spend trillions more on defense in coming years. All the while, Russia's assault on Ukraine grows deadlier by the month, and intelligence from the Baltic states, Denmark, and Germany suggests Moscow could rebuild its armed forces and attack NATO members Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania within a few years. Rutte, 58, brings an idiosyncratic mix of experience and personality to the job of saving the alliance. An amateur concert pianist and part-time high school social-studies teacher, the center-right politician was the longest-serving Dutch Prime Minister in history. In that role, he developed a talent for working with people from across the political spectrum in the Netherlands, Europe, and the U.S. He even gained a reputation as something of a Trump whisperer. Rutte has used those skills while shuttling between European capitals and Washington, D.C., to push for a new defense-spending target of 5% of GDP for NATO members. The goal, set by the Trump Administration, is a stretch: about a quarter of the allies last year failed to reach the current target of 2%. Lurking behind the numbers are hard questions about what European and Canadian allies are capable of on the battlefield. For decades, NATO has depended on the U.S. for mobile land forces, air defense, long-range weapons systems, and the biggest security shield of all—the nuclear 'umbrella' over the continent. '[NATO] doesn't work without the nuclear umbrella and all the strategic leadership and strategic force capabilities that the U.S. brings,' says General Gordon B. Davis Jr. (ret.), a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and former top NATO official. The position of Secretary-General is mainly a diplomatic one, with no direct military authority. But Rutte, a workaholic bachelor with no photos of loved ones in his office, seems to be marshaling member states to meet the moment. His most immediate task is ensuring allies rally around the spending push during the June 24–25 NATO summit in his hometown of the Hague, and in that he is optimistic. 'I'm really pretty confident that it will be a splash,' Rutte says. 'I see Europeans stepping up.' And after that? In its first half century, NATO preserved democracy in postwar Europe, helped defeat the Soviet Union, and served as a synonym for 'the West.' Once Rutte finishes sorting out the books, there awaits the challenge of making sure the alliance remains united and durable for the years to come. Rutte has trained his eyes on the spending target ever since Trump first floated it in January. He is keeping up the push in the weeks before the summit. Two days after his TIME interview, Rutte strolls up to a black Mercedes, arm extended, to greet Czech President Petr Pavel as he steps out of the vehicle, brown leather bag in hand. 'Welcome back,' Rutte smiles, guiding the stoic Pavel, a retired army general and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, toward the headquarters building. The two men sit down for a closed-door meeting, and afterward, Pavel is direct about his nation's spending commitment. 'If the discussion in the Hague leads us to a general agreement that we need to spend up to 5%, Czech Republic is ready to support it,' he says at the closing press conference. Others are less forthcoming. A couple of hours after Pavel's positive comments, Rutte greets a beaming Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof elsewhere in the building with a hug and launches into talks. At the press conference that caps his visit, Schoof is evasive when asked if the Dutch will agree to the 5% goal. 'We will discuss intensively in the Cabinet and the parliament probably as well on what we are going to do.' The Netherlands agreed to the target on June 13. Getting Europe to pay up may be the most important step in preventing the transactional Trump from undermining the alliance, but managing him requires its own skills. Rutte has repeatedly said that the Trump Administration is ' absolutely right ' in making more demands of the alliance, and that tone has played well in Washington. 'It's great to be with a friend of mine,' Trump said at their last meeting in the Oval Office in March. 'Every report I've gotten is 'What a great job he did,' and I'm not at all surprised.' Rutte's approach also seems to be yielding tangible results. Trump had reportedly threatened to skip the NATO summit, but the White House confirmed on June 3 that he will attend. The spending push is not just about addressing Trump's complaints that the allies aren't paying their fair share for defense. 'This is about practical stuff,' Rutte says. 'We know that on the Canadian and European side we lack air-defense systems, we lack long-range missiles, we lack logistics systems, maneuverable land formations.' Increased European capability would free America up to focus more on China. 'The [U.S.] defense budget is continually under pressure. We have real readiness issues after many years of deployment,' says Rachel Ellehuus, a former adviser to the U.S. NATO mission. 'The U.S. is facing its own pressures and really needs allies to step up.' No matter how quickly they do, few think America's NATO allies could stand up to a direct Russian threat without the U.S. Which means all of Rutte's efforts on the budget and capabilities fronts would be for naught if Trump simply decided not to come to the defense of alliance members, should the worst come to pass. There's reason to worry it might. Russian sabotage against U.S. and European targets tripled from 2023 to 2024, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies report. The head of Germany's intelligence has even warned that sabotage could trigger Article 5, NATO's mutual-defense clause. So could a Russian attempt to seize land in former Soviet republics where Russian-speaking minorities are numerous. All of which adds urgency to the cheery Netherlander holding the reins. War and tragedy have loomed over Rutte's life. His father Izaak, a trader who spent much of his life in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony, survived the Tjideng Japanese labor camp. His wife Petronella did not, and Izaak married her sister Mieke. They would live in the country until the 1950s. Rutte was born in the Hague in 1967, the youngest of seven children from his father's two marriages; some siblings are decades older. One brother died from AIDS in the 1980s, an event he once said 'drastically' changed his worldview. 'I realized that I will only live once. There is no dress rehearsal, there is only one performance,' Rutte said. 'That is where my enormous drive comes from.' Rutte showed an early interest in politics. He joined the youth branch of the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) at 16. Although his ambition was to be a concert pianist, he chose to pursue a degree in Dutch history at Leiden University instead. Rutte calls the piano his 'great hobby' but is careful not to play past 9 p.m. because of neighbors living on six sides. 'Then you get calls, 'Our children are trying to sleep. And by the way, it was not as good as you thought,'' he laughs. Rutte rose up the VVD's ranks, becoming national chairman of its youth branch while a student at Leiden. He graduated in 1992 and held a series of human-resources jobs at Unilever before taking office as a member of parliament in 2003. Rutte won the VVD leadership position in 2006, and in the 2010 elections led the party to become the largest in parliament for the first time ever. Soon after, he became Prime Minister, proving himself to be a master coalition builder. Rutte's first government was a coalition with the more right-leaning Christian Democrats (CDA) but was propped up by the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), led by the anti-Muslim firebrand Geert Wilders. His second, third, and final Cabinets included a mix of social democrats, centrists, and conservatives. He is 'a very capable politician who is able to bring people together even when they have very different views,' says Simon Otjes, a senior assistant professor at Leiden University. Rutte has also been dogged by scandal. His third Cabinet resigned in January 2021 following a parliamentary report that found that as many as 10,000 families were forced to repay thousands of euros after they had been wrongly accused of welfare fraud. Another parliamentary report in February 2023 found the Dutch government had for years ignored the risks of drilling gas in Groningen, which had caused man-made earthquakes that damaged homes and affected thousands of lives. Rutte apologized for both scandals. Throughout various controversies, Rutte had a habit of stating he had ' no active memory ' of thornier details. 'He had a more flexible relationship with the truth,' Otjes says. The end came in July 2023 when he resigned over a migration fight. But even as his political career waned, the next February he secured a critical endorsement from the U.S. for the top NATO job. The Biden Administration considered other candidates, including the more hawkish Kaja Kallas, then Prime Minister of Estonia. But 'President Biden had liked him,' recalls Sean Savett, the former White House National Security Council spokesperson, and Biden and his advisers concluded that Kallas was 'less likely to be able to win over support from some of the Western European allies.' Those who know Rutte well expected the job would be a big lifestyle shift for him. He had spent years going to the same hairdresser, visiting the same cafés, and eating the same meals at the same restaurants in the Hague. 'He sometimes drives his closest friends crazy, because of all these habits,' says Sierk Nawijn, a special adviser to NATO who has worked with Rutte for a decade. Rutte has also kept the same modest apartment in the Hague that he bought with his best friend in his youth. He later shared it with that friend's mother for 20 years until she passed away in 2012 while Rutte was Prime Minister. Rutte still gets back to the Hague whenever work permits—perhaps in part because of the routines that help keep him grounded. Those include teaching a high school social-studies class on Fridays at the Johan de Witt group of schools. 'I love doing it,' Rutte says. 'It gives you so much energy.' The downing of MH17 over Ukraine's Donbas region, by Russian-backed forces in July 2014, may have provided the most formative experience to the future NATO Secretary-General. The attack claimed 298 lives, 196 of them Dutch. Rutte says that 'all illusions' he may have had about Vladimir Putin were 'gone' after it took six nights of calls for the Russian President to agree to help families retrieve the remains of loved ones. 'And then after that he never, ever, ever was able to accept that the Russians probably made a mistake,' a still visibly shaken Rutte says. 'It has to do with basic decency.' The tragedy of Ukraine has stayed with Rutte ever since. He became one of the most frequent wartime visitors to the country and made his first trip as Secretary-General there on Oct. 3, just two days after taking up the NATO post, meeting Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv. In April he visited Odesa, a city the Ukrainian President has avoided taking world leaders to since last March when a Russian ballistic missile struck within hundreds of meters of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. When asked why he was willing to take the risk of traveling there, he says it was 'just to make the point that it is not only Kyiv which is under threat.' Rutte now helps coordinate outside security assistance to Ukraine, a new responsibility given to NATO by the Biden Administration in an attempt to Trump-proof aid. European and Canadian NATO allies have so far this year given more than the estimated $20 billion the U.S. provided in 2024. A German military officer involved in providing support to Ukraine told Reuters that, if necessary, Europe can sustain Ukrainian resistance alone. But the war in Ukraine has also underscored the limits of Rutte's power. Almost a year ago, NATO members agreed to an 'irreversible path' for Ukraine to join the alliance. Rutte finds himself in the middle. On the one hand, he says the deal with Kyiv is 'still standing,' but he adds, to the disappointment of Ukrainian officials, that it 'doesn't mean that membership is part of a peace deal.' That's another delicate issue. Rutte has publicly backed the peace talks that grew out of Trump's view of himself as a dealmaker, and have at times raised alarm among others in NATO. The 'Trump Administration's approach has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia,' the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said in April before resigning. Rutte says that the U.S. President is 'doing exactly what he needs to do. I really commend him for that. Because he broke the deadlock and is constantly engaging with Ukraine and Russia.' Rutte brushed off current concerns that Trump is abandoning his cease-fire efforts at the press conference with Schoof. An agreement must ensure that Putin never again tries to 'capture one square kilometer, square mile of Ukraine. That is crucial.' But the conflict has only escalated, with Russia's launching some of its most extensive strikes in a war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of casualties, and Ukraine's carrying out the audacious Operation Spiderweb drone attack, which damaged or destroyed strategic aircraft inside Russia. The prospect of a cease-fire looks more elusive than ever. NATO, of course, was created to deter an attack by Russia, when it was doing business as the Soviet Union. And the U.S. was a key architect of the alliance, and the world order Trump is intent on dismantling. So there are easier jobs than the one Rutte holds. And even critics give Rutte high marks for handling Trump and rallying European allies to boost spending and military readiness. The abbreviated NATO summit— reportedly scaled back to keep Trump happy—should be a point of celebration for both men, assuming the funding boost is agreed to as hoped. But the next challenge will be executing those plans. 'He's got big, big work to do,' General Davis says, and 'there are surprises to come.' It helps that he's upbeat. Back at Rutte's office, as our interview begins to wind down, the Secretary-General repeats a familiar line about the alliance's ability to outpace Moscow—if it chooses to. 'The Russian economy is only 5% of the NATO economy. They are $2 trillion. NATO is $50 trillion. And they produce four times as much ammunition as the whole of NATO.' Three-quarters of a century after its founding, Rutte is confident that NATO can fend off any threat from Moscow. 'I am pretty much convinced that we are safe for now,' he says. But Russia is reconstituting its armed forces, and Rutte warns of the risk of being complacent. 'If we do not invest much more, plus get the defense industrial production going,' he says, 'the Russians might try something.'
Time Magazine
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‘If Middle East Is Unstable, World Will Not Be at Peace': How China Views the Israel-Iran War
Iran's friends don't like the war decimating Tehran, but they're not ready to join the fight against Israel and potentially the U.S. Instead, Russia and now China have urged deescalation, emphasizing the dangerous consequences the escalating conflict could have on the whole world. 'If the Middle East is unstable, the world will not be at peace,' Chinese President Xi Jinping said Thursday. 'If the conflict escalates further, not only will the conflicting parties suffer greater losses, but regional countries will also suffer greatly.' 'The warring parties, especially Israel, should cease fire as soon as possible to prevent a cycle of escalation and resolutely avoid the spillover of the war,' Xi added. Xi's comments came in a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which both leaders called for a ceasefire, according to a readout by China's foreign ministry. Earlier this week, Russia warned that Israel's attacks have brought the world 'millimeters' from nuclear calamity, and Putin urged Trump against attacking Iran, as the President is mulling direct U.S. military engagement in the war that has already killed hundreds in Iran and dozens in Israel. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that Putin and Xi 'strongly condemn Israel's actions, which violate the U.N. Charter and other norms of international law.' Ushakov added that Xi expressed support for Putin's suggestion to mediate the conflict, an offer Trump said he has rejected. China, like Russia, has also positioned itself as a potential peacebroker, though experts say it's unlikely Israel would accept Beijing as a neutral conciliator, given its past criticisms of Israel and ties with Iran. Here's what to know about how China has responded so far to the conflict and what it may see is at stake. Rhetorical but not material support 'Iran doesn't need communiqués or declarations, but concrete help, like anti-aircraft systems or fighter jets,' Andrea Ghiselli, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Exeter, told France 24. But communiqués and declarations are all China is likely to offer, experts tell TIME. William Figueroa, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Groningen, tells TIME that China's lack of military support should not come as a surprise. China has historically followed a policy of non-interference, focusing more on domestic issues while aiming to avoid entanglement in protracted foreign conflicts. Earlier this year, China similarly called on both India and Pakistan, the latter being an ' ironclad friend ' of China, to show restraint. And while it has been accused of providing ' very substantial ' support to Russia in its war against Ukraine, China has maintained that it doesn't provide weapons or troops to its neighbor. (Reports suggest, however, that its material support has included lethal systems.) White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that the White House doesn't see 'any signs' of China providing military support to Iran 'at this moment in time.' Instead, China has offered words. Beijing has been 'harshly critical' of Israel, says Figueroa. In separate calls with his Iranian and Israeli counterparts over the past weekend, after Israel launched an attack on Friday against Iran, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed that China 'explicitly condemns Israel's violation of Iran's sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.' It has also publicly advised the U.S. against greater involvement in the conflict. 'The heating up of the Middle East region serves no one's interests,' Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday. 'To fan up the flames, use threats and exert pressure does not help deescalate the situation and will only aggravate tensions and enlarge the conflict.' 'The international community, especially influential major countries, should uphold a fair position and a responsible attitude to create the necessary conditions for promoting a ceasefire and returning to dialogue and negotiation so as to prevent the regional situation from sliding into the abyss and triggering a greater disaster,' a Chinese state-media editorial declared on Thursday. China's diplomatic response reflects its priority to 'lower the temperature,' says Figueroa, particularly in tensions with the U.S. Diplomatic limitations China has sought to deepen its investments and influence in the Middle East over the years, which has raised the expectations of its regional diplomacy to 'sky high' levels, says Figueroa. But while Beijing touted brokering a historic truce between Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023, the task before it now is much taller. Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, said China is 'ready to play a constructive role' in resolving the conflict, according to foreign ministry readouts of his calls with both Iran and Israel, but unlike with Saudi Arabia and Iran, Figueroa says, Israel has expressed no interest in negotiating a resolution. And even if Israel was interested in coming to the table, China is unlikely to be seen as a neutral arbiter given its ties with Iran, criticisms of Israel including over Gaza, and ongoing global power competition with the U.S., Israel's biggest ally. China has developed strong economic ties with Iran over the years, becoming Iran's largest trading partner and export market, especially for oil—a critical lifeline for Iran as the U.S. has placed severe economic sanctions on the country. Iran joined BRICS, the intergovernmental group China has viewed as an alternative collective of emerging powers to the Western-oriented G7, in 2024; joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Beijing-backed security group, in 2023; and the two countries signed a 25-year cooperative agreement in 2021. While China has also maintained an economic relationship with Israel—China is Israel's second-biggest trading partner and the two countries have had an 'innovative comprehensive partnership' since 2017—Figueroa says it's 'not close enough to have a serious influence over Israel's actions.' When asked about the possibility of China acting as a mediator, Israel's Ambassador to Beijing Eli Belotserkovsky told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, 'at this stage, we are concentrating on the military campaign. This is our main concern at the moment, and we need to see how things will develop.' Still, he added that Israel would 'continue talking to China as [part of] an ongoing process.' Failure to help bring peace to the Middle East could seriously dampen China's recent efforts to portray itself as an effective global peacebroker, especially after Ukraine already rejected a peace plan Beijing had proposed in 2023. And if Iran's regime falls, Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway, told France 24, the China-mediated truce with Saudi Arabia would also risk 'going up in smoke.' 'It is hard to predict how the conflict itself might impact [China's diplomatic] efforts,' Figueroa says. 'A wider conflict would undoubtedly complicate Chinese diplomatic efforts, which largely rest on their ability to provide economic development.' Economic concerns While the Iran-China trade balance is largely skewed in China's favor— around a third of Iranian trade is with China, but less than 1% of Chinese trade is with Iran —China is heavily dependent on the Middle East's oil. 'China is by far the largest importer of Iranian oil,' according to a statement in March by the U.S. State Department, which added: 'The Iranian regime uses the revenue it generates from these sales to finance attacks on U.S. allies, support terrorism around the world, and pursue other destabilizing actions.' Sara Haghdoosti, executive director of public education and advocacy coalition Win Without War, tells TIME that China 'has a vested interest in seeing the conflict end before Israel strikes more of Iran's oil infrastructure.' But China is less dependent on Iran itself than on access to the region's reserves. 'The Islamic Republic is a replaceable energy partner,' according to a Bloomberg analysis. For global oil markets too, changes to Iran's supply alone are unlikely to cause significant price disruptions. 'Even in the unlikely event that all Iranian exports are lost, they could be replaced by spare capacity from OPEC+ producers,' assessed credit agency Fitch Ratings earlier this week. Around 20% of the world's oil trade, however, passes through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has threatened to close in retaliation if the U.S. joins the war. 'If the United States officially and operationally enters the war in support of the Zionists, it is the legitimate right of Iran in view of pressuring the U.S. and Western countries to disrupt their oil trade's ease of transit,' said Iranian lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah on Thursday, according to state-sponsored Iranian news agency Mehr News. Doing so would also impact China, for which more than 40% of crude oil imports come from the Middle East. The conflict's 'greatest impact on China could be on energy imports and supply chain security,' Sun Degang, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Fudan University, told the South China Morning Post. 'While Beijing will continue to condemn the conflict, it will also seek to balance ties with Israel and the Gulf states and promote stable energy flows,' according to Bloomberg's analysts, especially as surging commodity prices would exacerbate domestic economic growth challenges already hampered by the trade war with the U.S. and an ongoing real estate crisis. In response to a question about the potential interruption of Iranian oil supplies to China, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun reiterated on Tuesday the need to 'ease tensions as soon as possible' in order to 'prevent the region from spiraling into greater turmoil.' A contained conflict could be good for China 'If a wider conflict breaks out,' Figueroa says, 'the impact on China's economic projects and investments in the region would be significant.' Foreign policy analyst Wesley Alexander Hill noted in a Forbes op-ed that an escalated conflict could force China into a bind between taking 'decisive action' to defend Iran, which might alienate Saudi Arabia, or doing nothing militarily and letting Israeli and potentially U.S. attacks 'continue to degrade Iranian export capacity,' which would leave other regional partners with a 'dim view [of] what Chinese commitment under pressure looks like.' Still, some analysts have suggested that China—as well as Russia—may be content for now to sit back and let things play out, with their higher priorities clearly elsewhere. According to Bloomberg Economics analyst Alex Kokcharov, a contained conflict in the Middle East could 'distract Washington from strategic competition with China.' Added Bloomberg's bureau chief in China, Allen Wan, in a newsletter Friday: 'Should the U.S. once again get tangled up in a war in the Middle East, that'd probably suit China just fine. Beijing and the [People's Liberation Army] would appreciate the chance to squeeze Taiwan tighter.' 'At very least, both powers [Russia and China] are content to watch the U.S. further squander goodwill with gulf Arab partners by backing another destabilizing conflict in the region,' Haghdoosti, the Win Without War executive director, tells TIME. And they, she adds, are likely 'shedding no tears that the U.S. military is currently burning through stocks of difficult-to-replenish missile defense interceptors to shield Israel.'
