[Reuters/Jim Young]

The Nuclear Security Summit in Washington has been another occasion to keep the Obama anti-nuke bandwagon on the rails. It has also been delivered a boost with the Ukrainian government announcing it will give up its weapons-grade uranium stockpile. This kind of balances the not-so-useful comments by Sarkozy that he “cannot jeopardise the security and safety of my country” by following suit. Also the failure of the Israelis to turn up. And the fact that the Iranians and the North Koreans were not welcome.

But ok, the point here was to take another step to bolster the otherwise drifting non-proliferation regime, and this meant strengthening the resolve of the Believers and pressuring the Outsiders. Obama’s charm offensive on the Chinese and the Russians seems to be working in this respect, at least in front of the cameras. But we’ll have to wait for the NPT review conference next month to see where the US wants to take the details of this roadshow next.

The Netherlands didn’t make it into the BBC report on the summit, but premier Balkenende did everything he could to get on the media map. Following the debacle over Afghanistan in February, its been a no-holds-barred damage limitation excercise for the Dutch reputation. Thus the government reported gleefully in mid-March that Obama had telephoned Balkenende to invite him personally to the nuclear summit and “to discuss other subjects on the international agenda.”

With this as the entrance ticket, Balkenende could not waste the opportunity to further boost the importance of the Netherlands at this top setting. This he did with the classic Dutch move – if in doubt, establish a new court in The Hague. The proposed tribunal would cover those suspected of leaking  nuclear secrets or materials or who break the rules on nuclear proliferation. Balkenende claimed to have gained support for his suggestion to strengthen international law from the US, France, and Germany during a ‘working dinner’ (presumable somewhere between the dessert and the cheese / Port combo).

We’ve seen this manoeuvering before, notably for a tribunal to cover those arrested for piracy in the Indian Ocean, still something of a legal black hole. The Netherlands proposed an international tribunal for piracy under the umbrella of the UN back in May 2009 but has so far been unable to gather enough support, including from the UN itself. So Balkenende’s foray in DC yesterday opened up a new front in the constant move to establish The Hague as THE site for international law. It is after all “de juridische hoofdstad van de wereld,” as he told De Telegraaf.

This is all nice and good for the Dutch ‘brand’ in international affairs, but the first defendants in this proposed tribunal could be Dutch themselves. On 7 April news broke that four men had been arrested for fraud, forging export and customs documents, and being members of a ‘criminal organisation’ for doing business in ’dual-use’ materials with Iran. It may not have been nuclear-related, but it was certainly some seriously underhand military-related business that brought the heavy hand of the state in to stop it.