Retreat from Uruzgan means Dutch lose face

The Netherlands’ international standing is declining. The current political crisis doesn’t help in this respect.

Since the Second World War, not a single Dutch cabinet has fallen over a domestic dispute regarding foreign policy. Until now. The national political crisis raises the question of what this means for the country’s geopolitical standing.

In the absence of some sort of parliamentary miracle, the chances that the Netherlands will remain active in the Afghan province of Uruzgan are close to nil. With the mission’s headquarters there abandoned, the Dutch presence in Afghanistan will be effectively reduced to nothing. This presence has brought the Netherlands substantial international prestige over the last four years.

In 2009, for instance, the Dutch government was asked to host the Afghanistan conference in The Hague. Ever since the credit crisis broke out, the Netherlands has been invited to meetings of the G20, the forum for cooperation between the old and new economic powers.

But for image-building purposes, prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s access to US president Obama ranked highest. As recently as last July, Balkenende visited the White House to discuss the Dutch role in the new American exit strategy, the cornerstone of Obama’s Afghanistan policy.

The Netherlands has now placed itself on the margins of the international arena. This shift has been a long time in the making. The Dutch secretary general of Nato, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, left his post in August last year. Balkenende failed in his quest to become the new European ‘president’. The Dutch European commissioner, Neelie Kroes, was granted only a lightweight post in the new European Commission. And last week, Yvo De Boer announced his resignation as chief of the UN climate bureau. Former Dutch Labour leader, Ad Melkert, is bucking the trend, and still occupies a prominent UN position in Iraq.

But the loss of face should not be exaggerated. Eyebrows were first raised in the US government when the Dutch refused to grant asylum to detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, the prison camp Obama was urged to close by other countries, including the Netherlands.

Moreover, the decision to leave Uruzgan should not come as a surprise to Dutch allies, nor to the Dutch military. Defence minister Eimert van Middelkoop has long said the Dutch armed forces are stretched to the hilt and have no capacity left for large scale operations. Also, political support for the mission was fragile from the start.

In 2006, the government narrowly decided in favour of the deployment to Afghanistan. Support to extend it in 2008 was only given on the condition the mission would end in 2010. This compromise was then supported by the entire opposition, but now only one opposition party is willing to consider a limited presence in Uruzgan after this year.

This is why the cabinet, when it still spoke with one voice, never tried to extend the mission. This option was only raised by prime minister Balkenende and foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen, both CDA members, in an attempt to test Labour leader and deputy prime minister Wouter Bos.

Still, the Dutch political crisis cannot easily be ignored by the international community. The inability of the Dutch government to contribute to Uruzgan is a setback to the entire Western world. Other countries could now follow the Dutch lead. The Netherlands would then be teaching by bad example.