[Trailer for 'Nederwiet', a documentary on the Dutch soft drugs scene of coffeeshops, illegal growers, and the police, that was shown on Dutch television on Monday 25 April 2011]

With the ‘weed-pass’ coming to the southern Dutch provinces on 1 May, another notorious case in the decline of Dutch soft drug tolerance resurfaced last thursday. The long-running saga surrounding the closed coffeshop Checkpoint in Terneuzen took another twist. In a surprising decision considering the current conservative turn in the Netherlands, a court in The Hague has decided that the former owner of Checkpoint, Meddie Willemsen, should be free from prosecution.

The Bureau covered the crazy story of the rise and demise of Checkpoint back in March 2010 (Exit Checkpoint -Exit Dutch Soft Drug Policy?), following the judgement by the Middelburg court that even though the coffeeshop represented a ‘criminal organisation’ neither the owner nor sixteen of his employees should go to jail. Why not? Simply because the booming marijuana business had been fully supported by the local council and police force – it was literally a huge tourist-puller and cash-cow (+/-2500 customers a day) for the otherwise rather dismal town of Terneuzen lying under the shadow of Dow Chemical’s biggest European plant.

The state prosecutor’s office wasn’t satisfied with the outcome and began to plot a case against Willemsen and his employees, despite the obvious message from Middelburg that while this was technically possible it would in reality open a huge can of worms. It looked like Checkpoint was being set up as a scapegoat to send a message to all other coffeshops – If you transgress the law on holding more than 500 grams of marijuana we’ll come down on you hard (Checkpoint had in total 160 kilos when it was raided). And a message to the local councils – don’t get too supportive of the local drugs business. Another nail in the coffin for Dutch soft drug tolerance.

Only they’ve picked the wrong case – as the judges in The Hague have said, this one literally doesn’t stand up in court. The level of cooperation that Willemsen had received from the authorities before the bust had strongly suggested that he was beyond the long arm of the law. The fact that this relationship was reversed without warning has fundamentally undermined the prosecution’s argument.

While the Checkpoint case continues in the background, a much bigger issue that will fundamentally transform the soft drug landscape is fast approaching – the weed-pass or wietpas. The most interesting thing about the pass, which will restrict each coffeeshop to 2000 registered customers living in the immediate area, is that it is being introduced against strong opposition from the municipal authorities in those same southern provinces. A superb review of the coming the law in De Groene Amsterdammer last November made clear that just as there was serious movement for an experimental legalisation of marijuana cultivation in Brabant, Minister of Justice Ivo Opstelten torpedoed it with his plan for a more severe clamp-down. Support for legalisation had come from among others Eindhoven mayor Rob van Gijzel, who saw a rise in violent criminal activity surrounding the illegal drugs business. In these circumstances the idea of weakening the law to deal with criminality was not on Opstelten’s mind. Conservative Netherlands was on the rise.

The stupid thing is, the wietpas is not going to deal with the very problem that the southern provinces want to deal with – the free-wheeling drugs gangs. Coffeeshops are no longer seen as a problem for most of the local authorities across Brabant and Limburg, and they literally fear that the introduction of the wietpas will make criminality increase as much of the trade switches to the streets. Belgians, French and Germans, excluded from the coffeeshops due to the residency restrictions for the pass, will be forced to look elsewhere for their supply. The end result is therefore a law that discriminates against foreigners, will produce more crime, and force any well-meaning Dutch dope-smoker to be registered with the state – becoming a semi-criminal in the process.

Understandably the level of criticism has been high, but the sources of much of the criticism has been very interesting. Next to Rob van Gijzel came Thom de Graaf, former leader of D 66 and now mayor of Nijmegen, who pointed out last December that it is up to the mayors themselves how they interpret the law on coffeeshop tolerance. The Hague can’t tell the mayors what to do, whatever Opstelten thinks. Then there was Hans van Duijn, former chairman of the Netherlandse Politiebond (police union), who argued around the same time that the best way to deal with the drugs-crime link was exactly to open more coffeeshops to squeeze the street trade.

So far, all to no avail. On 15 December Opstelten announced that an immediate introduction of the wietpas was not wise, and Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg now have until 1 May to prepare. The rest of the country will follow on 1 January 2013. No doubt there will be more twists to the story in the months to come.

[Thanks to Tangent Reality]

Knowing where political parties obtain their money is a fairly essential aspect of democracy. Transparency for financial transactions prevents parties from becoming trojan horses for hidden interests able to pay for political influence.

On Wednesday and Thursday this week the parliament discussed a proposal for a new law that would require parties to declare any donation of above 1000 Euro in their annual report, and any donation above 4500 Euro must be listed with the name of the donator. Failure to do so would mean a fine of 25,000 Euro. The consequences for Wilders’ PVV would be considerable if this went through, because the party has from day one wanted to avoid any insight into its financial affairs.

To receive state funding like the other political parties, the Freedom party would need party members, and it only has two: Wilders himself, and the Friends of the PVV foundation. In this way Wilders sticks by his aim to avoid any connection with the Dutch state. He also avoids any annual financial reports. And he maintains complete control over everything. But to do so, he needs to haul his money from somewhere else. And as everyone knows, much of it comes from abroad – right-wingers in the US, and probably Israel. There have been plenty of reports on this, some of which were compiled here on the Bureau in June 2010.

“The proposal for a law on the financial support for political parties has a long history, too long in the opinion of my party.” So spoke Tofik Dibi of GreenLeft in the debate yesterday, and his view coincided with the PvdA, who also want to ban all donations that come from abroad (nice twist too - the Communist party was villified for getting money from Moscow, so whats the difference with a party getting money from the crazy US Right?). But the show was stolen by the Freedom Party’s Hero Brinkman, who held forth against this ‘anti-PVV law’ and against a wave of critique from all the other parties for around an hour. Brinkman, who is known as the ‘democrat’ within the PVV for various efforts to develop a more open party structure, used a string of interesting arguments in response:

1) The proposed law originated as a move by former Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst to demand transparency from Pim Fortuyn’s LPF back in 2002. Once the LPF declined in numbers and was less of a threat, the law was shelved. Now that the PVV has become one of the top three parties, the law has been revived. In other words – whenever a threatening political movement rises in power to challenge the established order, this law gets pulled out.

2) The law would require all PVV donators to be made public, and this could bring them in danger – Not for nothing does Wilders wander around with heavy protection every day. The law would therefore actually be undemocratic because it would scare away Dutch individuals who would otherwise support the PVV.

3) According to Brinkman, only nine democracies provide state money for political parties, so the Netherlands already belongs to a minority of states. (needless to say, he didn’t name the other eight, and one wonders if he knows what he is talking about here).

4) The fact that the Freedom party might obtain its money from the US is nobody else’s business.

5) Final point – the new law is so full of holes that it will be possible to find the gaps in it anyway. For instance, money coming in to local branches of a political party will not have to be declared, offering a large and obvious loophole.

Obviously, for any normal politician it would have take around ten minutes to outline these points. For Brinkman, however, this was a useful stage for a tirade against all things leftist and CDA-ish, stringing out his defence of the wonderful contribution that the PVV makes to Dutch democracy so much that the questioners had to repeat their enquiries more than once in order to get an answer out of him. Dibi’s protests that the law reflects the anti-corruption stance of Dutch foreign policy – which the PVV supports – went nowhere against Brinkman’s determination to avoid real debate on the issue. For anyone who wants a taste, the debate can be found here.

Looks like a solid majority in parliament want to pass the law. Is it anti-PVV? It is an important move to standardise Dutch politics by getting everyone to play by the same rules - and there is only one loser, as the Dutch press have made clear. Private financial arrangements are the life and soul of the whole Wilders operation. He has to be able to declare a distance between himself and ‘the state’ (i.e. established politics), otherwise his whole carefully constructed image collapses.

Brinkman’s Pyrotechnics included the announcement that the PVV would find ways around the law if necessary, a sign of the way ahead. But the law could just add extra weight to the apparent decline in Wilders’ fortunes shown by recent opinion polls. When it comes to the effects of economic crisis, will the voter after all choose the Socialists over the PVV? Maybe….

[Thanks to Boomerang]

Tough week for the AIVD. Every service has to endure the fact that while its successes are hardly ever disclosed to protect the sources, its failures often reach the outside world quite easily. So it was this time. After several reports in the press concerning blunders and questionable work practices at the service, Andre Elissen and Marcial Hernandez of the PVV tabled seven questions to Rutte and Minister of the Interior Ivo Opstelten yesterday. 

The bad news began on Friday 13th (of course), with the news that an AIVD officer had been expelled from their post in Ankara by the Turkish government in 2011. A case of ‘forward defence’ gone wrong. The reasons behind this are unclear and there is an information black-out on the incident from both The Hague and Ankara, but not enough to prevent it from eventually reaching the press. The officer had fulfilled a liaison function with the Turkish service and was tracking muslin extremist groups, among others Hizbollah, which is meant to possess networks in the Netherlands and Germany. They have now been transferred to another embassy in the Middle Eastern. Apparently only around twelve embassies around the world have such an official AIVD liaison position to work with the local services, which indicates how important the position in Turkey was.

Dutch-Turkish relations are not at there best these days. According to Ankara the Netherlands is too easy-going on the PKK, and Dutch financial support for a human rights organisation operating in South-East Turkey was seen as support for the Kurdish cause (as well as the charge that the finance could have found its way to the militants). Another thorn in the bilateral side is the PVV itself. Geert Wilders has not hidden his feelings about the Turkish government of Recep Erdogan and his AK [Justice and Development] party. On 23 December PVV’ers Wilders, Hernandez, and Wim Kortenoeven questioned whether Turkish membership of NATO should be reconsidered due to the unilateral ending of military cooperation with Israel and France earlier in the year, stating that the Turkish government was now “an untrustworthy islamic ally.” Then there is the issue of 380,000 Dutch inhabitants of Turkish origin, a not insignificant fact of Dutch social life. Interesting times for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 400 years of Dutch-Turkish diplomatic relations, 1612-2012.

But back to the AIVD. The next report was from Bart Olmer in De Telegraaf  last Saturday and concerned the case of Outman ben Amar, hired by the service to act as an Arabic translator but who in 2007 received four years in prison for leaking information to the ‘Hofstadgroep’ cell. The story painfully illustrates what can happen if a lack of knowledge in a specific sector is too hastily filled. Ben Amar’s application procedure is meant to have included enough suspicious signs – unexplained gaps in his CV, unclear motivation for the job – for the selection committee to give a negative advice to the AIVD. Remarkably these concerns were overruled due to the rapid need for Arabic-speaking personnel. The article was accompanied by another in the Telegraaf that covered the tragic suicide of an AIVD officer five years after the death of Theo van Gogh. This event has apparently caused others in the service to release information to the press about AIVD blunders, among others the den Amar case.

The result of the Telegraaf article(s) was the list of PVV questions, which focused on the trivialities of AIVD routine work (is it true that the staff operating the safes for secret information knock off at 4pm?) and whether the service possessed a sufficient ‘whistle-blower’ mechanism to deal with discontent lower down the ranks.  The PVV to the rescue of a disillusioned service? More like a classic move by the Wilders’ gang – blame the elites for being lax and undermining national security as a result.

A lot of Dutch people say they feel ‘at home’ in New York, a reference both to the all-encompassing nature of this remarkable multicultural city and, I presume, the sense of adventure in escaping the rather narrow confines of Dutch politics and society. I don’t have that feeling at all. New York is an alien place for me. In fact, I have enough trouble even getting to New York in the first place, not being the most willing of transatlantic travellers. But some things will make me get on that plane. The prospect of an interview with Henry Kissinger, for instance. 

The location was Kissinger Associates, his international consultancy based at 350 Park Avenue, a relatively sober skyscraper as New York skyscrapers go. A discreet entrance hall, no name plates or lists of corporations visible anywhere, only a desk manned by a couple of guys you don’t want to mess with. The planned time for the meeting was 11am, which first got bumped back to 12 noon, and then to 4pm, by which time the doubts were creeping in that this was going to go badly wrong – but HK came through. Up to the 26th floor and a small nondescript lobby with a Jackson Pollock print and a couple of chairs before going through the air-lock into the rarefied atmosphere of the East Coast elite.

Five minutes later and its HK’s corner office, panoramic views of south-east Manhattan and wall-to-wall photos covering a who’s who of international politics over the past fifty years.  And a couple of large sofas. HK reclines and orders tea.

How had this come about? Henry Kissinger was great friends with the late Ernst van der Beugel, the influential Dutch diplomat, Leiden professor, frequenter of corporate boardrooms and, for twenty years, the honorary secretary general for Europe at the Bilderberg meetings, the annual, informal, off-the-record invitation-only gatherings of the transatlantic movers and shakers, for many the epitome of elite politics. The Dutch connection offered an opportunity to talk more broadly about transatlantic relations. You don’t go into such a meeting expecting major revelations on controversial topics - its more the hope that you come away with a taste for how things work. And its not often you get a chance to ask someone like Henry Kissinger about Bilderberg.

Kissinger first met van der Beugel in The Hague in 1957, soon after the publication of his Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. The reasons for the meeting remain unclear – someone had recommended that the two get together, since van der Beugel was deputy foreign minister at the time. Kissinger recalled that van der Beugel’s first words to him were more than direct: “Are you one of these diplomats who is composing his dispatch while you are talking to me, or can we have a normal conversation?” This openness – one might say bluntness – laid the grounds for a friendship of more than 45 years. 

Kissinger attended his first Bilderberg meeting in 1957, in the wake of the Suez crisis, as a guest of David Rockefeller. Van der Beugel didn’t attend until 1959, but by then he was already a trusted associate of Prince Bernhard and his appointment as honorary secretary the following year was met with general acclaim. The American contingent regarded van der Beugel as something of a safer pair of hands in this role than his predecessor, the Pole Jozef Retinger, who was reputed to have close links with MI6. As Kissinger put it, “you can’t impose people on that group, and in fact you have to avoid controversy, you don’t want that a significant part of the group or even one or two senior people object. But Ernst enjoyed the good-will of the entire group.”

Van der Beugel was someone who believed to his bones in the meaning of the Atlantic Community – an inseparable relationship between (Western) Europe and the United States, joined by common values (history, culture) and interests (economics, security). Through the 1950s and 1960s Bilderberg represented this belief more than any other forum. HK: “He was very important for the Bilderberg meetings because its one thing to bring important people together, its another to create an atmosphere which then grew to be the spirit of Bilderberg, that they talked to each other…but they were also part of a bigger enterprise….I considered him for many years sort of the glue that held the group together.”

And how important was Bilderberg for HK himself? “First of all I never had a deliberate strategy for networking, but as it developed it was an important part in sort of unintentional networking….[W]hen I became a high official what Bilderberg helped me [with] was that I could identify problems with people…so I can’t say it contributed to a specific policy, but it contributed the ease with which I could conduct it…that is a value in itself.”

It is striking that none of the biographers of Kissinger have really spent much time on the significance of Bilderberg,  focusing instead on the formal aspects of his diplomatic career. Yet the formal and informal are closely intertwined, and it is the informal meetings such as these that ease policy-making paths in discreet, difficult to trace ways. HK: “Bilderberg is still the best Atlantic group that I know, and I know them all…” He is unimpressed by his biographers in general. “If you look at the historic facts, there were two administrations that put troops in Vietnam, and regularly increased the commitment. There was another administration that took them all out. But if you read the public discussions the villains of the Vietnam war are the people who took the troops out and the people who put them in are never mentioned. [So] the Cambodian bombing, when you look at [the] Pakistan bombing today, the problem was very similar when you have sanctuaries, but I don’t want to get into this stuff.”

Before this could be explored further, our valuable time was up. A brief handshake and out of the air-lock into the cold New York evening. But it had been good while it lasted.

The Bureau wishes all its visitors a merry christmas. We will pick up the sordid thread of international affairs once more after the hangover has subsided.

[Thanks to AirPowerAustralia]

At the end of November a devastating report entitled the “F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Concurrency Quick Look Review” was issued by the Pentagon. An up-t0-date assessment of the JSF’s current status, it identified 13 issues that required serious attention. The Penatagon being the Pentagon, these were split into three intricate groups:

1) Five involved this: ”major consequence issues have been identified, but root cause, corrective action or fix effectivity are still in development” (i.e. we don’t know what the problem really is);

2) Three involved this: “potentially major consequence discovery is likely pending outcomes of further discovery” (i.e. these small problems could turn out to be big problems);

3) Five involved this: “consequence or cost is moderate, but the number of moderate issues poses a cumulative concurrency risk” (i.e. see 2 above).

The report’s main conclusion was that the practice of ‘concurrency’ – procuring a weapons system before it has actually been developed and tested – has reached excessive proportions. While many Pentagon projects involve this business method, the sheer scale of the JSF – around $385bn for development and production alone, followed by a further $1tr to keep the thing in the air for a decade or two – has required an unusual amount of up-front government investment before the project is even proven to be fly-able. And the longer this goes on, the more the costs rise and the more costly it becomes to cut your losses and run. 

The extent of the Dutch commitment was once again exposed in the aftermath of the report going public, with Ben Knapen stating in parliament on 6 December that the purchase of two test aircraft will still go ahead in 2012-2013 as planned. He nonchalantly added: “It is logical, understandable, and advisable to follow the developments in the US closely, but there is nothing in particular to report.” Knapen defended the fact that the concurrency approach was known from the beginning and was necessary to allow all partners to contribute to the aircraft’s development. The final decision on yes or no for the JSF has, in classic Dutch style, been postponed for the next cabinet to decide. Meanwhile around 1.5bn Euro has already been pumped into the project despite no definitive decision. In January 2011 Hans Hillen announced that the price of each aircraft would be 59.7m Euro, instead of the 47.4m Euro that was pitched only in 2009 – and this is the basic price, with the necessary extras bringing it up to about 100m a piece. 

Naturally, the opposition is steadfastly opposed to this new version of transatlantic ‘burden-sharing’, with Groenlinks leading the leftist pack of PvdA, SP, and D66 in calling for the whole thing to be dropped. The PVV remains, inevitably, the wildcard, having abandoned the oppositional pack just over a year ago. The party went into the June 2010 elections rejecting any JSF test aircraft but abandoned that stance as part of the support agreement for the minority VVD-CDA cabinet. Whether the PVV will stick to this agreement is another matter. For the moment, with no electoral consequences attached to it, they do.

Meanwhile, positive news for the JSF’ers came in from a relatively unexpected quarter – Japan, which announced a week ago that it will probably join this elite club as part of its own defence upgrade. In May the message coming out of Japan was that the Lockheed Martin JSF could be dropped in favour of either the Eurofighter or Boeing’s F/A-18 Super Hornet.  The decision, committing between $6 to $8bn for around 40 aircraft to be delivered by 2016, is clearly a response to stay ahead of China’s ballooning defence budget and the introduction of its own stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-20. Even so, considering the recent misery from the Pentagon about project delays, the decision was something of a surprise.

But the Japanese decision also puts the Dutch position in stark contrast. Japan wants 40 aircraft in a region of the world facing a serious high-tech arms race escalation. The Dutch Ministry of Defence says it wants 85 for……..well, that is the question.

The revelation in a tv documentary on Monday night that Maxime Verhagen wanted to mobilise the AIVD to find out about Geert Wilders’ plans with Fitna has kicked up a major storm in parliament this week. The opposition has been busy peppering the cabinet with demands for an explanation. Yet somehow the words ‘storm’ and ‘teacup’ come to mind. And Wilders himself has remained pretty much out of sight.

On Tuesday the parliament demanded a response from Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner, but he adopted the classic ‘neither confirm nor deny’ approach, and gave the usual rejoinder that all matters discussed by the ministerial council and concerning the AIVD are secret and shall remain so. But any opportunity to undermine the cabinet is worth seizing, so we had the spectacle of Tofik Dibi (Groenlinks), Alex Pechtold (D66), and Jeroen Recourt (PvdA) falling over themselves to table questions and haul Donner back to parliament for further interrogation on Thursday.

Dibi wants the CITVD to investigate, because after all MPS should be allowed to express their views freely and if necessary should receive the protection of the security services to do so. Pechtold thought this was a cheap shot, instead demanding that Donner and Verhagen walk the plank while facing a barrage of criticism from the irate opposition. Recourt protested that this was evidence of an undermining of the democractic system – ‘Nixon-like practices’, for which Nixon (read: Verhagen) had to resign. All three of them then joined forces to submit a list of 11 questions for Donner and Verhagen, including the following: Can you provide an overview of the members of parliament who have been eavesdropped or surveilled by the intelligence services? If not, why not?

What is going on? Firstly this is not only an opportunity for more cabinet-bashing, but more specifically Maxime-bashing, the real entertainment for a large section of the parliament (including a large chunk of his own Christian Democrats). So far Donner has taken the flak, and on Thursday he responded true to form (plenty of outraged indignation etc). Secondly this seems to be yet another chance for taking the AIVD down a peg or two, it being a popular target for those afraid that the ‘secret state’ is forever undermining the democratic system. Others disagree – aivdwatch has pointed out that we need the AIVD to watch out for serious breaches of democratic protocol, as the case of Wilders’ PVV colleague Gidi Markuszower illustrated not so long ago. And Roelof Bouwman has reminded us that not so long ago members of the Communist party, the Pacifist Socialists, even the Farmers party were regular targets for security service surveillance as ‘threats to the state’.   

Wilders, of course, has been here before – back in 2007 the Telegraaf printed a story, leaked from the AIVD, about Wilders’ visits to the Israeli Embassy which triggered a list of questions from GW  himself for the then Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst. The Minister denied the allegations but refused to go any further than that. Vrij Nederland (among others) jumped in to question the right of the AIVD to leak judgements on a politician’s loyalty to the press.

So four years ago the Left backed Wilders against the security service, saying he should be allowed to visit the Israelis any time he wants. In 2011 the Left again backs Wilders on suggestions of surveillance of his Fitna project, even though the security service clearly rejected this task. GW as an unjust target of state power? Do Dibi, Pechtold and Recourt really know what they are doing?

Activities                    31%

Infrastructure              12%

AIVD Expenditure 2010: Annual Report

On 29 May 2002 the Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst and the Militaire Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst were both created out of their Cold War forerunners, the BVD and the MID. The AIVD’s task was expanded with the removal of the division between foreign intelligence and dometic security – from then on it would be doing both. The time was right for expansion. Al Qaeda were meant to be everywhere and Pim Fortuyn had been gunned down only 23 days before by someone from the Green radical underground.

From 2002 to 2005 the AIVD grew from around 850 to 1100 employees and its budget mushroomed from 68m to 112m Euro. By 2010 it had expanded further to a staff of around 1400 full time equivalent and a budget of 191m Euro. The early 2010 talk of cutting every government department by 20% obviously led the AIVD to remind everyone that cutting back on national security was a risky business. The Ministry of Defence can lose its tanks, but the Ministry of Home Affairs can’t lose its surveillance and listening gear. The activities of foreign intelligence – particularly for economic espionage – were increasingly a threat. The political capital to be gained from cutting the AIVD’s budget - outside of the consistent criticisms of AIVD phone tapping and dodgy relations with journalists from parliament’s leftist ranks – remained pretty much at nil. And the AIVD instead showed in its annual report for 2009 an ambition to introduce ‘forward defence’ – a greater presence in trouble spots around the world.  With few threats at home, they had to go out and look for them elsewhere.    

This could now be changing. There were rumblings within the CDA’s 2010 election manifesto to merge the AIVD and MIVD, although no reason was given other than the need to ‘harmonise’ the security apparatus. In the CITVD’s report on the February Sirte mission released on 1 November, the principal accusation was that the AIVD and MIVD failed to work together in any coherent way and that if the mission told anything is was that better coordination was needed. The need for better coordination has been a repetitive complaint for several years. Last week a new chief of the AIVD was appointed, and to everyone’s surprise it was a military man: Lieutenant-General Robert Bertholee, the former commandant of the army and someone with no particular experience in the world of intelligence. As former MIVD boss Pieter Cobelens stated to the NRC yesterday, Bertholee had even opposed making intelligence a separate professional unit within the army.

With incredulity from his military colleagues marking his appointment, it could be that Bertholee’s arrival is no more than a move to ensure smoother relations between the two services. But with extra government cuts of around 5bn Euro looming, it could genuinely be a move to keep options open on the AIVD-MIVD front after a decade of intelligence-and-security growth. And both Defence and Internal Affairs are in the hands of CDA ministers. 

How would the PVV react to any such move? Tomorrow night part two of the documentary series on ‘The Wilders Process’, tracking the story of how Wilders ended up in court, will make the claim that in 2007 Maxime Verhagen (then Minister of Foreign Affairs) wanted the AIVD to find out more about the content and release date of the film Fitna. Both his ministerial colleague Guusje ter Horst (Internal Affairs) and the National Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism chief Tjibbe Joustra confirm that they rejected this move. Wilders has so far not responded. One wonders if it will have any impact on his opposition to further spending cuts.

Mark Rutte had his first encounter with Barack Obama at the White House today, and economics was top of the agenda – specifically, Rutte and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs played along with Obama’s current No. 1 concern and emphasised the number of jobs Dutch business concerns provide in the United States. 625,000, to be precise, according to a report assembled by the Dutch Embassy in Washington DC, a total which combines jobs linked to US exports to the Netherlands and jobs secured through Dutch investments in the US.

The packaging of the Rutte visit in this economic context is of course choosing a topic that will get the President’s ear, but it is also a smart move to focus on the economics of the Dutch-US relationship. While the importance of the Netherlands has declined in American eyes, the stats on trade and investment remain remarkable.

The Netherlands still holds on to the No. 3 position in terms of foreign direct investment in the US with $217bn. Beyond this is the fact that the US invests more in the Netherlands than any other state – $521bn. As the Dutch Ambassador Renee Jones-Bos puts it, “It is the result of our shared entrepreneurial spirit,” which is nice, but kind of glosses over the impact that extremely favourable Dutch tax and company registration policies have in making the Netherlands such an attractive destination for US funds. Most of the 1500+ US companies registered in the Netherlands are after all holding companies – shells profiting from a foothold in the Single Market. I also like the way the Netherlands is promoted as “a reliable trade and investment partner to the U.S,” a semi-swipe at those other nations that are perhaps not so trustworthy with their holdings of billions of US government bonds…..

But ok, the figures to an extent certainly speak for themselves. Its also fun to see a country exploiting the fact that it runs a major trade deficit with the US as an item of pride, not concern – ‘Hey, we buy loads of your stuff, we’re on your side!’ Rutte has rammed this pitch home by floating the idea of a US-EU free trade zone to further boost jobs, trade, investment – and who better to do this than the Dutch, pushing the merits of free trade from within the centre of the European integration process since day one (unlike the Brits, who may talk free trade but don’t walk the EU). “Dutch business leaders look forward to an intensive dialogue with American authorities” on this issue, according to Rutte in a ‘leaked’ press release. And why not? The transatlantic economy may be fading slightly in terms of trade (the US now trades more with Asia as a whole), but in terms of investment it is way ahead of anything crossing the Pacific. As the American Chamber of Commerce in Rotterdam put it, “mutual investment in the North Atlantic space is very large, dwarfs trade, and has become essential to U.S. and European jobs and prosperity.” And the Dutch are pretty well integrated into American socio-economic life, down to the Little Amsterdam Coffeeshop in Saratoga, California, that sells a good ……. pea soup.

But perhaps the nicest part of the whole (brief) Rutte-Obama show is the Dutch Embassy’s report on the US-Dutch economic relationship. Having had a dig in the last post below at the downward direction of the Dutch brand, the interactive maps of the Economic Ties report are great. Just shows, even economic chauvinism can sometimes look really good.

There is a growing academic research and consultancy industry on the issue of nation-branding, specifically: how a nation-state can improve its impact in the world by building a credible, recognisable brand-name for itself. Classic examples are Spain leaving Franco behind and re-creating itself as an idyllic, culturally-rich Mediterranean hotspot, and Norway earning a reputation as a quiet but effective behind-the-scenes conflict-resolver (otherwise known as ‘niche diplomacy’). But brands, as with anything in the marketplace, are not permanent and need to be constantly nurtured, otherwise the credibility soon dissolves. Spain has run into trouble as its hotspot image hits the financial buffers, but Barcelona remains ultra-cool. Norway has entered a period of major soul-searching now that Anton Breivik has shattered the domestic peace, but it remains an effective diplomatic force.

While there are plenty of recorded success stories, it is more interesting to watch the complete fragmentation of a national brand up close, in real time. Welcome to the Netherlands in late 2011.

When Uri Rosenthal became Foreign Minister just over a year ago, there was a sense that his reputation as a heavy-weight domestic political fixer and trusted advisor to Mark Rutte would carry some momentum into foreign affairs. Together with State Secretary Ben Knapen (‘The Nonconformist’), it was a noticeable change of tack for the Ministry. But the writing was already on the wall in the Governing Agreement between VVD and CDA that identified Israel as the only land that the Dutch minority government would strengthen relations with.

Overall, the Agreement declared that the Netherlands would “pursue international stability and security, the supply of energy and raw materials, the promotion of international law, and the trade and economic interests of the Netherlands and Dutch companies.” One year down the line and it is clear that Israel and economic interests – very narrowly defined – dominate everything coming out of The Hague. The long tradition of the Netherlands being on the side of a just, balanced international system, with development aid and peace-keeping as central parts of this, is being left behind for a petty nationalism lacking any vision except for immediate selfish gain. The Dutch brand is in free-fall.

Rosenthal has been repeatedly criticised for his ham-fisted determination to push national interests abroad. A discreet survey by the NRC, published yesterday, of Dutch diplomats and civil servants has produced a highly negative insight into the diplomatic apparatus. The pro-Israeli standpoint had led to the isolation of the Netherlands in the EU and the loss of one of the central planks of the Dutch brand, the support of human rights. The minimal Dutch contribution to NATO’s Operation Unified Protector – compared even to Denmark, or Belgium, which still doesn’t even have a government – and the hardly-worth-bothering-about ‘police training mission’ in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz has reduced The Hague from a worthwhile trustworthy ally of Washington to a small insignificant inward-looking country that the Americans don’t care about any more. G20 participation is long, long gone. The blinkered focus on economic interests has reduced the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to little more than an appendage to the Ministry of Economic Affairs under Maxime Verhagen.

In short, the current leadership of foreign policy is dismantling the Dutch brand, piece by piece, norm by norm, value by value. This is not totally down to Geert Wilders either – Rosenthal has long been an Israel supporter and does not need heat from the PVV to follow that line. This is simply his style. Typical is his reaction to the NRC‘s expose on Binnenhof today, disliking the fact that civil servants had spoken to the paper anonymously and dismissing them as the no-hopers most afraid of their jobs with the coming 75m Euro cuts at the Ministry. Not a response that suggests much self-reflection, or a willingness to accept criticism. He reacted equally negatively at the end of October after interviews with various ambassadors in the NRC sketched the Netherlands as an increasingly provincial land where small issues dominate the political scene.

As Juurd Eijsvoogel reminded everyone a week ago, the Dutch ‘Alleingang’ is a costly business. The promotion of economic interests relies on maintaining positive relations with your partners. Demanding results for oneself while ignoring the standpoints of others is a rapid way to de-friend yourself. As the Belgian ambassador put it – the Dutch could start by listening to others more (listening is not a Dutch strong point). Having spent the past decade nurturing a brand of international repute, the Dutch Foreign Ministry is now reducing everything to simplistic chauvinism.