Last Sunday and Monday Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal visited Tripoli, making some positive noises about releasing $2bn of frozen Libyan funds (earlier declarations of releasing $3.5bn have so far produced nothing). Dutch involvement in Operation Unified Protector was limited to enforcing the no-fly zone, leaving the serious stuff to others. But last week the most intriguing event in the whole Libyan escapade – the failed Sirte evacuation mission of Sunday 27 February – once more saw the light of day.

A short recap. A representative (who we know as ‘NN’) of infrastructure/engineering giant Royal Haskoning needed to be evacuated. The frigate Hr.Ms.Tromp, stationed just off the coast, sent a helicopter to rescue him. The location chosen was, remarkably, Sirte - home town of Gaddafi himself. The helicopter, which entered Libyan airspace without authorisation, and its three crew were held by pro-Gaddafi forces soon after landing. After plenty of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the crew were released after a week and a half.

On 1 November the Advisory Committee for the Intelligence and Security Services (CTIVD) made public its report on the role of the MIVD and AIVD in the evacuation mission. The results were not very startling. Coordination between the two intelligence services was lacking. The MIVD only informed the AIVD of the situation on 3 March. The AIVD then approached foreign intelligence services without informing the Foreign Ministry. Back in March the big joke had been that Military Intelligence didn’t work on Sunday and so failed to respond to the Tromp’s request for information that afternoon – an accusation that drew a furious response from the MIVD’s supporters. The CTIVD now largely exonerates the MIVD from any failure to respond.

But the CTIVD’s mandate for this report was very narrow – only look at the intelligence services. The decision to go ahead with the mission came from the very top - the Ministerial Core Group for Special Operations (MKSO), consisting of the Minister-President (Mark Rutte), Vice Minister-President (Maxime Verhagen), Minister of Defence (Hans Hillen), and Minister of Foreign Affairs (Uri Rosenthal). Under the MKSO’s responsibility lay “the evacuation of citizens from life-threatening situations.” As former MIVD boss Joop van Reijn said, the service had been unable to respond properly at the time because it had been deliberately excluded from the planning of the operation.

For the whole month of March both media and opposition MPs went after Defence Minister Hans Hillen and the MIVD. 124 parliamentary questions were tabled. Hillen survived, but many remained unconvinced.

Inevitably, the more interesting rumours circulated for a while in the outer reaches of the Dutch blogcloud. The origin seems to have been Klokkenluider.nl, who posted a remarkable alternate version of events already on 5 March. Other sites picked it up, but the mainstream media, as far as I am aware, never went near it apart from one or two passing references. Which is a pity – and in itself also says a lot.

It goes something like this. The official story is that the helicopter was sent to pick up a Dutch engineer and a woman with a Swedish passport who had somehow heard about the evacuation. Even though this ’Swedish woman’ was actually interviewed by the Dutch media in late March, this was a put-up job. The woman in Libya was in fact Princess Mabel of Oranje Nassau, Mabel Wisse Smit, wife of Prince Friso, who was in Libya to arrange a mutually acceptable solution for Gaddafi’s economic interests in the Netherlands. Gaddafi held a substantial stake in Fortis-ABN and this needed to be taken care of. The helicopter was not on a rescue mission but a hostage mission – the crew were to remain in Libya until the transaction was secure and Wisse Smit was out of the country – official reports state that the two ‘evacuees’ left the country on 2 March. Why Wisse Smit? A long-time executive in George Soros’s Open Society Institute and closely involved in Balkans affairs, she knew prominent son Saif Gaddafi through the World Economic Forum’s Global Young Leaders network, and was well-connected with both financial and governmental leaders on both sides. The Gaddafi assets were apparently transferred to Ageas, a successor enterprise to Fortis. Gaddafi’s economic interests in the Netherlands went far beyond the $3.5bn of frozen financial assets. There was plenty of private equity interest in the substantial funds available from the Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund. Tamoil, the Libyan national oil company, has a base in Riddekerk from where it runs around 160 filling stations in the Netherlands. Verenex Energy, the Libyan oil and gas prospector, is based in the same location. From GeenNieuws came the nice extra detail: Wisse Smit’s Twitter timeline stopped on 24 February and restarted on 2 March, when she claimed to be in Ethiopia.

Elite / Conspiracy nonsense? Or simply a cover-up for a business transaction that almost cost the Defence Minister his job? Nothing more has come out on this that I know of. But the bottom line is that its just about believable. And its a great story.

[Thanks to HongarijeVandaag]

The Nabucco gas pipeline: a vital future supplier of energy resources for Europe. And, along with the Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, one of the central planks for a diversified energy policy outside of Russian control. Or so those concerned about Gazprom would like. But competition to supply oil and gas to the major European market has produced other options – the Russian-German-Dutch Nordstream [as described by Max Smeets in the previous post], SouthStream, Gazprom’s direct competitor to Nabucco, and BlueStream, Moscow’s attempt to ease Turkey away from its key role in non-Russian pipeline projects. In these circumstances, one might expect Nabucco to be promoted with some real sense of mission.

Instead the Nabucco plan has gone very quiet. And this is all the more interesting considering – as with Nordstream – the Dutch involvement in the project. The story began in 2002 with an initial cooperation agreement between Austrian energy concern OMV and Turkish BOTAS. The joint venture between Austrian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Turkish firms was agreed in 2005, and the German RWE became a shareholder in 2008. The five-nation intergovernmental agreement followed in 2009. By March 2010 all five had officially ratified it. The plan was to begin construction in 2013 and have it operational by 2017.

The Dutch stake came in the form of former Foreign Minister (1998-2002) and, since March 2008, Mayor of The Hague Jozias van Aartsen (in itself a position of international significance, as The Hague Agenda on City Diplomacy from 2008 demonstrates). Van Aartsen was named as coordinator of the project by the European Commission in 2007, the idea being to have an experienced diplomat to monitor a project ’facing technical, political, or financial difficulties.’ Van Aartsen’s official title was the NG3 Coordinator, referring to the Natural Gas 3 routes from the Caspian and Middle East (the Southern Corridor) that the EU wants to develop through a variety of channels: Whitestream, TAP, ITGI, and  Nabucco. This is all part of the EU’s TEN-E (Trans-European Networks) plan to get European energy supply sorted by 2020. Nabucco alone is expected to deliver only around 5% of the EU’s total natural gas consumption by that date (but will of course provide proportionally more for the EU nations directly involved).

Van Aartsen’s first report in 2009  gave a down-to-earth view on the problems faced. There could be up to nine supplier countries serving up to ten EU consumer countries. Several transit countries are needed to make the plan work, including Syria and Georgia. As usual, EU member states have been working against each other and playing one pipeline against another to leverage extra advantages, which ultimately only serves to cause mistrust among potential suppliers who are looking for a fixed long-term strategy for the European market as a whole.

Van Aartsen’s appointment, for four years, expired in 2011 and has not been renewed. As he himself admitted earlier this year, the task of pulling all the diverse and conflicting parts together was beyond the capabilities of someone like himself with a full-time portfolio in The Hague. He had been chosen exactly because his links with Central and Eastern Europe are good – as Minister of Foreign Affairs he promoted the expansion of the EU in that direction, and supported Dutch peace-keeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo. But van Aartsen is a full believer in the free market, and is not someone to cramp a possible deal with political complications. It was interesting in this respect that earlier this year he was appointed chair of the Netherlands-Russia 2013 advisory committee. This celebration of bilateral contacts, on invitation from Moscow, will be a high-profile diplomatic-cultural event. Significantly, van Aartsen seems to have taken up the 2013 project just as he left the NG3 Coordinator position.

Considering this pragmatic international posture – and the return of Shell to Russia’s energy scene this year – it is unlikely that van Aartsen would look to Nabucco as a means to shut out the Russians from the European gas market. What is more, Nabucco serves no purpose for the intended role of the Netherlands as a ‘gas hub’ for North-West Europe. Remarkably, given van Aartsen’s role, a Dutch energy advisor told the US Embassy back in January 2008 that “there was “no role” or economic interest for the Netherlands in the Nabucco project.”

Nabucco is looking increasingly shaky. Currently it is not expected to be operational before 2018. It will probably be later than this simply because the financing is yet to be set, and that won’t be set before it is clear who exactly is going to supply the gas.

Van Aartsen looked to Azerbaijan as a major supplier but had to admit in his report that future Azeri production remains uncertain and uncommitted (Shah Deniz Phase II). RWE has a major stake in Egyptian production, and Turmenistan, initially a possible partner, has been under subtle pressure over the past two years to switch its interests eastwards with a Caspian-China pipeline potentially undercutting the EU. All along the elephant in the room has been Iran, fast becoming a welcome energy supplier to South Asia and beyond. The US decision to back Nabucco as a way to reduce a structural European dependence on Russia has instead allowed Iran to move in as a significant regional energy operator. Van Aartsen didn’t refer once to Iran, the holder of the second-largest gas reserves, in his 2009 report. Yet Austrian OMV has long been in favour of Iranian participation, and told the Americans so in 2008, as a way to prevent Russia benefitting from deals with Iran while the West persists with its economic embargo.

What does this add up to? Firstly, that EU energy policy is about as uncoordinated and haphazard as its attempts to save the Euro. Secondly, that there are absolutely no certainties on the future energy matrix for Europe. And thirdly, that Dutch energy interests and the aim to be a ‘gas hub’ are evidently reliant on a solid relationship with Russia. During 2008-2009 then Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen and Minister for Economic Affairs Maria van der Hoeven embarked on a series of tours to drum up the Dutch hub idea in Algeria, Angola, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Yet Russia remains central. As the US Embassy reported in 2008, the Dutch view was that ”Russia had proven to be a reliable supplier in the past.”

The Netherlands – that oft-mentioned and much-loved but rarely analysed key player in international affairs – came in for quite some attention last Monday at an intriguing one-day seminar held at the Systems Planning Corporation, Washington DC, entitled ‘US-Dutch Relations: Shared history, Shared Future?’ Hosts were the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department, and the CIA’s Office of European Analysis. Boring? No.

Lots of people sat around a table describing themselves as ‘political analyst’. Two presentations on history, followed by two presentations on security, one on Dutch politics, and one on identity. The history goes way back – 1609 was the first physical contact between Dutch (still vassals in the Hapsburg empire) and North America (although the joke is that the captain of that voyage of the Halve Maen was an Englishman, Henry Hudson). The settlements never developed beyond a network of trading posts, and the Brits eventually took over in 1674. But the Dutch had their revenge, printing the Declaration of Independence and funding the rebels in the 1770s. Since then traces of Dutchness have remained, and there have been recent efforts to claim ‘tolerance’ as one of the virtues the Dutch passed to the Americans. After WW II, of course, relations became more dense as the Dutch actively engaged in all manner of political, intelligence, security, economic, and cultural networks spanning the Atlantic. “We don’t have a foreign policy,” one Dutch foreign ministry official is meant to have said in 1969, “we have only NATO.”

This stuff seemed to go down well with the CIA, who dig the longue durée perspective. The questions came in: What was the Dutch reaction to 9/11? How is the issue of climate change affecting bilateral relations? But the big issue was this: Is it holding together in the 21^st century? Are there not signs that this long-running unity of US-NL interests is starting to come apart (read: Afghanistan)? The security speakers were divided on this point. One, during an otherwise excellent overview of Dutch counter-terrorism policy, emphasised that the Guantanamo situation was shared by all – Europe should take on former Gitmo internees and bear the burden. Hmmmm. Not sure about that.

The other speaker raised the intriguing point that recent energy deals with the Russians (read: Shell) seem to have had an impact on the public orientation of Dutch foreign policy. Putin expelled Shell from the big money Sakhalin-2 oil project in 2006, but then invited them back in to operate in the Yamal peninsular last June. This occurred just around the time of the opening of the Hermitage in Amsterdam (nice combination of cultural and carbon diplomacy). What is more, the Netherlands and its Gasunie will become a key distribution center for Gazprom’s NordStream gas pipeline across the Baltic. And to cap it all, the Dutch seem to have shifted away from their original position in supporting NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. This is quite a cocktail.

Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen, as Atlanticist as they come, has recently been avoiding outspoken pro-NATO statements in speeches, instead talking up the role of the EU. Now, with Lisbon about a month old, this kind of makes sense. But surely we are still in an era of Euro-US partnership, not substituting one for the other? Would there be a connection between Russian oil and gas, and a shift in the public outlook of the Dutch government? With Afghanistan still to be decided? To say the least, it’s a radical claim – not least, its something that might drive your average economic determinist into fits of euphoria.

If anything, though, the Dutch are good at playing both sides. They’ve done that for years with their double-sided orientation towards European integration and Atlantic cooperation. While Verhagen and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs talk up the EU, they remain died-in-the-wool fans of NATO, something that they share with their colleagues in the Ministry of Defence. There have been chinks in this armour. State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans has been saying consistently that while the Netherlands shares many important factors with the Americans (openness, entrepreneurship, democracy, and social-religious diversity), the days of a knee-jerk support for US foreign policy are over. Interests have to be weighed, and sober conclusions drawn. Yet Verhagen’s back-pedalling on NATO pronouncements is probably more closely related to the cabinet’s clamp-down on Afghanistan-related statements before they have reached an agreement on what to do with Uruzgan. After all, the Foreign Minister’s previous excessive proclamations pretty much triggered the parliamentary motion to end all further involvement in ISAF as of end 2010. Instead, word on the street has it that a deal is probably going to be struck which involves 1) Dutch forces active in another part of Afghanistan, and/or 2) a scaled-down presence continuing in Uruzgan itself.

The big question is whether the Labour party will cause the cabinet to fall on this point, when they are riding so low in the polls. As you can imagine, the hosts were keen to test this one out on their visitors. The consensus amongst the Dutch present was that the key player in the immediate future – certainly going into the next election – would be Democrats 66 (D 66), a rather non-ideological footloose party that voters often flock to if the standard options are in complete flux. D 66 leader Alex Pechtold recently picked up the ‘political leader of the year’ award from the nation’s youth (i.e. those who don’t bother to vote), and wider polls suggest his party will do well. What this means for policy, however, is totally unclear. In 2005 D 66 tried to block the original Uruzgan mission and failed. What will they do if they have a bigger number of MPs?

The seminar ended with State and the CIA  – and the Dutch – looking well pleased with the day’s deliberations. They do many of these kinds of fact-finding sessions, the hosts said, but rarely were they as high quality or as in-depth as this one on the Netherlands. Clearly, even a one-day seminar like this can go a long way to re-affirm the ‘special relationship’.

Welcome to our site. The Holland Bureau is a non-profit, non-ideological, at times non-sensical venture into the realms of commentary on international affairs. The central theme is the Netherlands, that small nation in the north-west of Europe which maintains a high presence in all things global: international economics, financial regulation, international law, managing climate change, oil and gas exploration, military operations, intelligence, development strategy, drug policies, the UN, the EU, NATO, you name it, the Dutch are there, and they are involved. With this as our starting point, we hope to broaden our scope over time to bring in other views from across Europe on the state of transatlantic relations and the emerging world order.

The Bureau is the initiative of Giles Scott-Smith and Jesse Coleman. Scott-Smith is an academic based in Leiden and Middelburg. He researches and teaches in the fields of Cold War History, Intelligence History, Public Diplomacy, Transatlantic Relations, and International Relations. Coleman is a graduate of Roosevelt Academy, is based in Amsterdam, and is active in the development/environmental sectors.