We forget, but Jan Peter Balkenende is still the Minister President of the Netherlands. He has now been ‘demissionair’ leader for a longer period of time than his first period as Minister President lasted (87 days). While The Hague doesn’t burn but stumbles from one coalition impasse to another, JP is telling dirty jokes at car racing conventions. With the Belgian coalition talks also fumbling to a halt, Low Countries politics are at present just that, and little more.

It was a remarkable turn of events last week that ended with Geert Wilders declaring that his trust in the CDA had evaporated. The scale of the irony here is beyond comparison. Maxime Verhagen had aimed all along to strike a deal that would put constitutional shackles on the PVV and prevent Wilders from claiming populist right to run wild over Dutch law. But many in his party baulked at the very need to demand such shackles – if that is the situation, then you are shaking a dirty hand, and the whole idea of cooperation stinks. After crisis management Verhagen thought he had his party back in line, but instead the dissenters had given Wilders yet another perfect club with which to bash the CDA for being unreliable and back off from further talks. Yet the PVV wasn’t even going to be a part of the coalition! 

The NRC lead article on Saturday quite rightly questions Wilders’ decision. Why continue to provoke the CDA during exactly the period when the party is trying to assemble unity to work with him? Why not simply wait for Verhagen to sort it out and go ahead with the VVD-CDA coalition? But its looking increasingly worthless to search for a PVV ‘plan’ in this scenario. Opportunism is the mantra here. If short-term gain can be seized, then its worth it, and onwards to the next short-term coup, ad infinitum, in doing so constantly mocking the established order.

Over in Hollands Diep, US-Dutch wünderkind and all-round good bloke James Kennedy casts an insightful eye over the Dutch political landscape. Since the 1990s Dutch voters have become more footloose. Party membership is very low. Voters are moved by charisma and media impact as much as (if not more) than by ideological conviction. PVV voters come from every walk of life. Kennedy sees a period opening up where “opportunism is the only way to survive”, and where Wilders’ success is forcing all other parties to adopt a more populist attitude, aiming for immediate results to solve citizen concerns.

I like the way he seems to divide opportunism (the PVV) from pragmatism (adapting to the PVV), but maybe I’m seeing a difference he didn’t intend. The problem, however, is that there can only be one anti-elitist movement, and Wilders has cornered the market. Perhaps the really interesting struggle in the coming years will be between the PVV and the Socialists, once the impending public spending cuts really bite. Will the SP under Emile Roemer be able to get some traction for a social justice programme that prevents the (Dutch) muslim from becoming the PVV scapegoat?  

Could it have been otherwise? A biography of Wilders’ political career by Amsterdam prof. Meindert Fennema offers a suggestion for us to dream on. In 2003 (Balkenende II) the position of state secretary for social affairs came free – Mark Rutte, at the time holding that position, moved to the Ministry of Education, leaving the slot to be filled by the VVD. Wilders was VVD spokesperson for social security in parliament, and so a front runner for the vacancy. But Gerrit Zalm, irritated by Wilders’ lack of party discipline and criticism of parliamentary leader Hans Dijkstal, passed him over in favour of the less prominent Henk van Hoof. Even though many in the VVD agreed that GW was the best candidate, no-one fought the decision in his favour. A year later Wilders quit the VVD.

A parable for our times? State secretary is only one step away from being Minister, and then Wilders would have been set for a VVD career, a career within established politics. Instead Zalm played it by the book, and GW, with social affairs now secondary, turned to ‘Islamisation’ in the Netherlands as the vehicle around which to build his own one-man movement. The shift from VVD to PVV is remarkable. Here he is two weeks after 9/11 stating (in opposition to Pim Fortuyn) that Islam is not the problem, only the extremist minority:

The Zalm decision is a nice neat ‘what if?’, but no more than that. Concern for the changing nature of Dutch society through immigration had been slowly on the boil through the 1990s, beginning with VVD’er Fritz Bolkestein breaking ranks with Tolerant Netherlands as early as 1991 with an article, ‘The Integration of Minorities’, in the Volkskrant (and being more or less condemned as a racist for doing so). Bolkestein was definitely Wilders’ political godfather, but it wasn’t just the right that banged this drum as others got in on the act (albeit with a different beat). Paul Scheffer’s ‘Het Multiculturele Drama’ (2000), which spoke of an “ethnic underclass” and the need for a new national ‘we-feeling’ beyond multiculturalism, rocked the boat more precisely because it came from someone embedded within the Dutch left-liberal salon. The stage was set for someone to run with it as a political programme. Since then we’ve had Fortuyn, Balkenende’s ‘Norms and Values’, Hirsi Ali, Verdonk’s TON, and so far Wilders is the only one who has been able to make it pay off.

Lawyer Inez Weski: The Davids Report II? 

Not much to say on the coalition talks.

After the end of the first round, the signals are that Job Cohen is trying to block a right-leaning cabinet by refusing to share power with the Christian Democrats, as a result forcing the VVD to either go for broke with Wilders and the PVV or take a centre-left coalition seriously. The CDA almost unconsciously seems to go along with this by insisting that their heavy defeat at the polls means they can’t take a leading role in any discussions. “Ons past bescheidenheid” – we need to be humble – is their new, attractive party slogan.

Cohen has also suggested that another attempt should be made to form a right-wing dream cabinet VVD-CDA-PVV. While this might be awfully decent of him in terms of democratic principle, one wonders if he’s not playing games with CDA and VVD supporters and their willingness to support such a move. Cohen is after all pretty good with some sharp moves – just take a look at this.

But with the regular media already searching for something new to say on the negotiations, there is little point in this blog doing the same. So lets switch topic and go back to one of the more interesting curiosity items of news in 2009, the Telegraaf-AIVD case [An Intelligence Affair, 31 January 2010, and subsequent reports]. The reason that the case has re-appeared on the media radar screen is that the court case against AIVD officer Heleen S. and her partner, for allegedly leaking an internal report and other information to Telegraaf reporter Jolande van der Graaf, begins in Haarlem next Monday. Van de Graaf, who made good capital out of being bugged and harrassed by the Dutch state last year, has since fallen totally from any position of respect thanks to her highly inappropriate move to gain an interview with the 9 year old survivor of the Tripoli plane crash last month. But the case has since moved way beyond the ethics (or not) of journalism.

In an interview with Vrij Nederland, S.’s lawyer Inez Weski has stated that she intends to call Jan Peter Balkenende as a witness for the defence. The reason is that she suspects the leaked information – which was critical of the AIVD’s role in assessing intelligence on the Iraqi threat in 2003 – came not from the AIVD itself but from the Ministry of General Affairs, the administrative apparatus behind the Minister President. Why? As the Davids report showed, Balkenende, via the Secretary General of the Ministry R.K. Visser, in late 2002 received two British intelligence reports which were not to be circulated elsewhere. The usual channel for this exchange of information would be via the AIVD itself to allow the Dutch service to assess the material. Both the AIVD and MIVD leadership were offended at being bypassed in this way. In the interview Weski referred to Balkenende running a “private secret service”.

The relevance of this is that the coming court case could take an interesting turn. The Telegraaf article exactly claimed that the AIVD had failed to correctly assess Iraqi possession of WMD. Weski is suggesting that the Ministry of General Affairs is the source of the article because it was exactly the Ministry that swallowed the faulty British intelligence whole, not the Dutch intelligence services. Weski: “That Telegraaf article therefore looks like it served as a lightning rod to attract attention away from the failure of the private secret service of Balkenende.”

This is no small matter. In an article on the Davids report back in April, intelligence expert Bob de Graaff pointed out that up till now the Ministry for General Affairs had largely been ignored in the whole Iraq story, with most attention going to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and Foreign Affairs. The for-your-eyes-only documents were not the only ones that passed from London via Visser to Balkenende, and all these items – which were not disclosed to the Davids committee – were of crucial importance for setting out Dutch policy. De Graaff’s conclusion is that “a small club of civil servants without legal justification played intelligence analysts under the protection of the Minister President.” Not good.

The possibility now is that even if Balkenende doesn’t testify, the case will break open this aspect of the Iraq story a little more. Weski’s move could bring some late justice for the misused and abused intelligence services. But what looks certain is that Balkenende began his first premiership back in 2002 with the Iraq storm-clouds looming, and he’s going to end his last premiership with those same clouds still chasing him.

[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.

When Bos took over as leader of the Labour party in 2002, he inherited a party in disarray. Pim Fortuyn had wreaked havoc on the patrician presumptiousness of Ad Melkert, and Labour, which had been coasting under two Wim Kok-led cabinets from 1994-2002, suddenly collapsed into a heap of false assumptions about being the new centre of Dutch politics. (curious aside – Melkert exited the Netherlands and has forged a new career at the World Bank, UNDP, and since mid-2009 as UNDP Special Representative in Iraq. A recent interview suggests that he still hasn´t taken in what happened eight years ago, and his Iraq post has brought mixed reactions).

But back to Bos. Unlike Kok - former union leader – and Melkert – party apparatchik – Bos was a relative outsider, moving as he did from several years at Shell (Rotterdam, London, Hong Kong, Bucharest) to join the party in parliament  in 1998. His corporate experience showed – by 2000 he was already State Secretary for Finance, the number two at the Ministry. And he came out of a rock-solid Protestant – Labour family, his father being a diplomat and activist for the cause of international development. 

Bos came in as leader after the fall of Balkenende´s first cabinet in late 2002. Labour had fallen from 45 to 23 seats in the May 2002 elections, and it was a party lost to a wave of Fortuyn-inspired populism that rejected the arrogance of power apparently expressed by the established parties.  

The eletions in early 2003 produced a wonderful moment, albeit for the wrong reasons. Bos declared that he did not want to be premier himself should Labour win, and instead, just before the elections, he announced Job Cohen as candidate for future prime minister. It was a heavy gamble, and it missed its mark – just. Labour recovered to 42 seats, but couldn´t overcome the Christian Democrats who came away with 44. With the results coming in live on tv, the cameras at the Labour HQ caught Bos meeting an arriving Cohen surrounded by supporters. It was a poignant moment - so near and yet so far. It would also prove prophetic for what was to come. 

Bos´s main problem as Labour leader was his inability to get around the stubborn power of the Christian Democrats (CDA) at the centre of Dutch politics. In 2003, with the levers of power in the hands of Balkenende, it was inevitable that the CDA would not easily allow Labour back in to the ranks of power, and endless negotiations between the two ultimately led nowhere. Likewise personal relations between the two leaders were lousy from then on. Interestingly enough they both come from strong Protestant backgrounds (and both studied at the Free University in Amsterdam), but whereas Bos reflects the pragmatism of a can-do business approach, Balkenende is all high-blown principled moralism. And the two didn´t mix.

Bos´s pragmatism didn´t always work with party members or supporters either. Riding a wave of popular support in 2004-2005, which peaked with remarkable results in the local elections of 2006, it looked as if the tide was turning and Labour could once again claim the key middle ground of Dutch politics. But much of this support - beyond the usual rejection of the incumbent parties – was focused on Bos himself as charismatic leader. This was ok for a while, but it needed back-up with a coherent party programme. And when he entered that field in 2006, it was clear that he was prepared to take on some of the sacred cows in Dutch politics: linking pensions to income, reducing student travel concessions, and less tax relief for mortgage-holders among them. Criticism from within the party caused the pension plans in particular to be watered down. 

Out of that period came two things: the Labour party was effectively Bos himself, and Bos was prepared to think in public and change his mind. For the CDA this provided the opportunity, and all ammunition was focused on Bos as someone who could not be relied upon. The 2006 elections caused yet more bad blood between Bos and Balkenende as the CDA portrayed the Labour leader as, in American terms, someone who ‘flip-flopped’ and didn’t stick to his word. The accusations stuck, and Labour came out of the elections with 33 seats, trailing, once again, the CDA. 

Both Bos’s strengths and weaknesses had therefore been exposed during his time in opposition. From 2007-2010 he grapsed the poisened chalice of a Labour-CDA-Christian Union coalition and tried to get something out of it all as Minister of Finance. Should he have chosen to stay on the oppossition benches? The compromises were difficult: Labour gained money for inner cities and eduation, and a halt to liberalising rented housing,but had to give up on the mortgage tax relief and – a big issue – the demand for an inquiry into Dutch policy on the Iraq war. 

With his experience, it can’t be denied that Bos was the right person for the job when the credit crisis hit in late 2008. Following the fall of Lehman Brothers in September 2008, Bos rescued the Dutch operations of Fortis bank, including ABN AMRO, with 16.8 billion of state money in October. Several billions more followed for struggling ING bank. For his competence in adversity Bos was named politician of the year for 2008 by both politicians and media.

But the damage left by the credit crisis has been more than expected. The hole in state finances left by ABN AMRO has increased as the actual extent of its debts gradually emerged. Looking for sources of income tofill thee hole, Bos supported a plan to raise the pension age from 65 to 67. It was once again pragmatism over dogma, but it didn’t go down so well with Labour supporters seeing it as an unnecessary and unjust move. Bos spoke out earlier this year in his den Uyl Lecture against the way neoliberal market forces had been allowed to go solong unchecked. Social democracy is still on the back foot trying to judge what to fight for and what to give way on when it comes to market forces. Bos tried to find a way through, but discovered that being flexible could make him vulnerable tofriend and foe alike.  

It was foreign affairs that blew everything open in early 2010: The Davids report in January and Uruzgan in February. But the writing was on the wall already. Bos was an able politician, but he was unable to translate high levels of support between elections into actual election victory. 2003 was a great result in the circumstances, but 2006 was a major disappointment.

To his credit Bos analysed the outcome in public via The Wouter Tapes, a remarkably honest tv documentary following Labour leader and advisors through the election campaign of 2006 and its aftermath. Of all sources, this is probably the best for giving an insight into Bos’s character. It fits with his reaction to both the Davids report and the NATO-Uruzgan connection – he does not like backroom deals or decisions taken behind the scenes. It fits with his own sense that his leadership was heading in the right direction – at least for a while.

The entry of Job Cohen as Labour leader to replace Bos has certainly avoided an otherwise tired Bos-Balkenende battle this coming June. Even Wilder knows he may have met his match with the former mayor of Amsterdam. Will Dutch politics miss Bos, the leader who never was? Possibly. His experience highlights how difficult it has been to keep Labour on course in the 2000s, true to its values but able to bend when needed.

The draft version of the letter that the ruling Dutch cabinet will send to parliament shortly, outlining its official response to the Davids report, has been leaked to the Dutch media broadcaster KRO Reporter, which has duly placed it on its website:

http://reporter.kro.nl/dossiers/irak/irak_feb2010.aspx

The letter, which dates from 20-21 January and covers 26 pages, states that the Davids report offers ‘guidance’ (leidend) but that not all of its content is acceptable for the cabinet. It disagrees with the criticism that Balkenende didn’t give sufficient leadership on the issue and that he came to the dossier long after it had effectively already been decided.

The letter also makes an interesting comment on the role of the civil and military intelligence services, the AIVD and the MIVD. According to the cabinet, there was a ‘tension’ (spanning) between the determinations of the Foreign Minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, concerning the threat level from Iraq, and the positions taken by the two services. De Hoop Scheffer has denied that there was any difference of opinion on this crucial question. The letter therefore seems to distance the cabinet from his position.

However, it does back him up by disagreeing that he decided Dutch foreign policy on his own. The letter denies that Dutch foreign policy was effectively decided in a 45-minute meeting at the Foreign Ministry in August 2002, and that from that point on there was no intention of deviating from support for the US-UK line. The Davids report claimed that after the 45 minute meeting, de Hoop Scheffer sent a letter to parliament on 4 September 2002, without discussion with the rest of the ruling cabinet, outlining the Dutch position towards Iraq and WMD. The current draft letter states that due to parliament’s demand for an explanation and an imminent trip to Washington on the 6th, de Hoop Scheffer simply didn’t have enough time to do otherwise. In contrast to the question of the intelligence services, this is evidently a full defence of his position.

In an interview on the radio a week ago De Hoop Scheffer [see 'De Hoop Scheffer: NL must stay in Uruzgan,' The Holland Bureau, 26 January] stated that he would respond to Davids when he felt the time is right. If this letter is delivered to parliament in its current form, this may well be the moment for his response.

It questions the criticism of Davids that the cabinet in 2003 should have informed the parliament earlier about the Host Nation Support agreement, concerning the transport of US military hardware and personnel through Rotterdam and Schiphol airport [see 'Reflections on Davids: III,' The Holland Bureau, 18 January], or the US request for Dutch military assistance on 15 November 2002. Security issues prevented this. 

The KRO press release announcing the draft letter finishes with an interesting conclusion. The letter begins with a note about collective ministerial responsibility. The cabinet seems to be facing the repercussions of Davids and Iraq now as a collective unit, and not as an entity split by party divisions still fighting out the battles of 2002-2003. In terms of the longevity of the current cabinet, this speaks volumes. It has all the markings of a statement of intent to hit back at the opposition’s gloating over an apparently falling cabinet, and to keep going all the way to the end of its mandate in Spring 2011.

On 28 March 2009 the Telegraaf published an article that claimed the Dutch Intelligence Service (AIVD) had failed to correctly inform the ruling cabinet in 2002-2003 about the threat from Iraq. The article said that the Service had simply passed on intelligence it had received mainly from MI6 (which MI6 was simply passing on from the Americans)without checking it in any way. As a result, declared the Telegraaf, the WMD claim was fed unfiltered into the Dutch decision-making process. 

The article caused a lot of unrest at the AIVD itself, because it was clearly based on a leak. A secret self-assessment of the Service’s involvement in the Iraq affair had been passed to the journalist Jolande van der Graaf. An investigation followed (involving the phone-tapping of the paper’s editorial staff and the surveillance of the journalist), leading to the arrest of an employee and her ex-employee partner on 18 June and van der Graaf’s house being searched. The paper fought back, getting a court injunction against phone-tapping and against the Service using any of the material they had gathered through their surveillance. But as the case continued, the focus turned to Minister of the Interior Guus ter Horst, who was the one responsible for allowing the surveillance in the first place. And that could only be allowed if state security was at stake, which it wasn’t, because it was all about Iraq in 2003. So far, though, Telegraaf-Gate hasn’t forced her resignation.

There is plenty of smoke and mirrors in this case, as one would expect with an intelligence agency being involved. It remains unclear why a member of the AIVD would leak a report that would bring the Service into disrepute, as the Telegraaf article did. And as the (effectively illegal) surveillance of the journalist showed, she continued to stay in touch with her AIVD contacts, so they can’t have been upset by the way their information was used. The internal report that was leaked was prepared exactly for the upcoming Davids committee investigation that was just getting moving in March 2009. Was the idea to get the information into the public domain quickly, to influence the investigation? Or just to make sure it did get into the public domain? But then why, if it was so negative?   

The Davids report did after all deliver a somber judgement on the role of the Dutch civil and military intelligence services in 2002-2003. Lacking sources themselves, they had little choice but to work with the material comin gin from MI6. But Davids records clearly that this material was not accepted at face value by either AIVD or the military’s MIVD. There was in fact much scepticism of the claims being made about Iraqi WMD capabilities and supposed links with AlQaeda. In other words, the Dutch services could sense that there was some serious political spin going on in the UK and the US, and they were not falling into line behind it. But their advice was ignored by the political leadership.

On the one hand this might be understandable because the Dutch services were dependant on others for sources of information, But on the other hand it displayed a total unwillingness on the part of prime minister Balkenende or the Foreign Ministry to address the fact that their own services were pointing out the political manipulation of sensitive material. If they acknowledged that, they would have had to abandon their support for the US-UK offensive. And that was out of the question.

However, it went further than this. The British ambassador at the time was deliberately passing information directly to premier Balkenende, cutting the Dutch intelligence services out of the loop. There are strong signs that the Brits did this because they knew of the scepticism amongst the Dutch, so they simply ‘stovepiped’ the necessary messages straight into Balkenende’s office. And the Brits were not the only one doing this either. Which leads to the conclusion of one analyst in the wake of the Davids report – why bother having intelligence services at all if this is what the result is?

But it even goes further than that. Analyst Peter Wieringa has pointed out that some of the information in the infamous Telegraaf article comes not from the AIVD but from the military sister service, the MIVD. And the only place where information from both services is collected is the Ministry of General Affairs – literally, the Ministry that supports the prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende. Adding yet more smoke and an extra mirror to the affair, Wieringa is clearly speculating – and the emphasis here is definitely on speculating – that the Ministry was behind the leak in order to direct critical attention towards the intelligence services and away from the prime minister and his entourage. A remarkable claim, but Wieringa seems to know what he is talking about.

The Holland Bureau will be tracking any further revelations in this curious affair.

Foto Roel Rozenburg/NRC

The letter arrived, the cabinet leaders appeared, parliament was temporarily mollified. The tensions that had been rising throughout 13 January were eventually defused during a late-night session of the Tweede Kamer, during which the coalition demonstrated its intent to continue.

The crucial factor in the letter, signed by Balkenende, was that the cabinet as a whole accepts that “for a similar action [as the 2003 invasion] a more adequate mandate in international law would have been required” [aanvaardt het kabinet dat voor een dergelijk optreden een adequater volkenrechtelijk mandaat nodig zou zijn geweest]. The delicacy of the language gives an indication of the stubbornness of the negotiations through the day. Balkenende denied that his initial reaction on Tuesday had referred to the Davids report’s views on international law as no more than ‘an opinion.’ He also insisted that his reaction had been tested on the other cabinet leaders beforehand. Everything came down to a misunderstanding over who Balkenende was speaking for on Tuesday – himself as premier in 2002-2003, or as representative of the current cabinet in 2010?

All in all, for the premier it seemed to be storms in teacups. The opposition spat fire at the podium, gathered their indignation, but came out with no more than a demand for a motion that would declare Balkenende’s initial reaction to the report null and void, but Labour, having got the climb-down from the Christian Democrats they wanted, refused to back it. It was enough for Balkenende to say that had we known what we now know, the decisions would have been different in 2002-2003. The whiff of a pyrrhic victory (somehow, for both sides) was floating around the Binnenhof last night.

The cabinet has agreed to produce a full response to the Davids report in early February. Ultimately the three coalition leaders agreed to disagree and carry on. Balkenende’s passing comment on entering the parliament for the late-night debate, that this was no time for a cabinet crisis, seems to have carried the day.

More reflections on this tumultuous couple of days will follow soon.

Foto: Reuters

With the cabinet in disarray following the presentation of the Davids report on Iraq and premier Balkenende’s lacklustre response yesterday, the Dutch parliament has called for an emergency debate this evening to assess the current state of play. D 66 leader Alexander Pechtold called for the debate because of the political chasm that is opening up at the centre of the ruling cabinet, between the Christian Democrats and Labour, or more precisely between premier Balkenende and Minister of Finance Bos. Pechtold duly received support from the whole of the chamber for this initiative.

A cabinet meeting this morning between Balkenende, Bos, and coalition partner Andre Rouvoet of the Christen Unie did not resolve anything. The question is whether the premier is going to answer Labour’s demand that he give more than a nod to the criticisms that Davids outlined with regard to Iraq: lack of leadership, insufficient informing of parliament, and no legal grounds for the invasion under international law. Balkenende is renowned as a principled politician who does not go in for nuance – things are either right or wrong, good or bad. It would be a very bitter pill for him to swallow, having claimed all along that there was no basis for assuming any wrongdoing on his part or on the part of the government in 2002-2003, if he now has to acknowledge that there was.

Labour know this and want to hear it loud and clear. There is a heavy dose of sangfroid at work here. Labour are at their lowest point for years and years in the opinion surveys, so any election in the short-term is hardly going to do them any favours. Yet one gets the impression that bringing an end to the successive Balkenende cabinets (he’s been in power consistently since 2002) would somehow bring a smile to the party’s parliamentary rank and file, even if it would mean suicide at the polls. Iraq does not seem to grip the Dutch public as much as it has, slowly but surely, got a grip on the Dutch parliament over the last two-three years, and it has been rumbling around the Dutch tv and print media since the events themselves. So it hardly would be a vote-getter – most punters favour easing the country out of recession and somehow coping with the impending massacre of public spending due to the hole in public finances left by major bank bail-outs.

But will Balkenende walk before Labour push him? Its a possibility. Although he denied it, he certainly seems to have wanted the EU Council Presidency that went to van Rompuy instead. And after eight years at the helm of what has been, to say the least, a rough time in Dutch politics and society (with rougher politics to come, one imagines), it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if he brought the curtain down himself.

So who will benefit most? Pechtold’s D 66, for leading the way in demanding parliamentary propriety? Or Geert Wilders’ PVV, by simply biding their time, recognising that there’s no real public outcry, and waiting for the collapse?

Commissie Davids (ANP)

The Davids Commission delivered its report today on the involvement of the Netherlands in the build-up to and actual invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The reactions so far have been revealing for their focus on premier Jan Peter Balkenende, who has never shown any interest or inclination to dig into the Iraq past. The report partly explained why.

Three principal conclusions have been drawn out from the forty-nine listed at the end:

1) There was disagreement among civil servants within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the legality of the Iraq invasion without a specific UN mandate.

This has been known for sure since the NRC Handelsblad published  in January 2009 Memorandum DJZ/IR/2003/158 from 29 April 2003, in which clear as day was stated that there were serious doubts within the Foreign Ministry’s legal division over the political (never mind military) support given by The Hague for the invasion. The top civil servant who sent this critical legal advice to the archive instead of to the Minister, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, was Frank Majoor - now Dutch representative to NATO. You have to appreciate the significance here of Dutch legal advisors saying that ‘if the Netherlands ended up in a procedure at the International Court of Justice, it would lose’. In The Hague, the ‘capital of international law’, these were not idle words. The Davids report is clear: ‘The Security Council resolutions from the 1990s [1441 in particular] did not provide a mandate for the American-British invasion in 2003.’ And for the Americans, the difference between political and military support wasn’t that clear anyway.

2) Premier Balkenende was absent (as was Minister of Defence Korthals) from the deliberations within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that led to confirming Dutch support for the invasion. Balkenende only came on the scene in early 2003, but by the then the cast had been set. This means that Foreign Minister de Hoop Scheffer (and his ministerial advisors) effectively set out the government’s policy between August and December 2002. 

Balkenende tried to brush this away in his post-report press conference this afternoon. Ah, he had been fully occupied with the following year’s budget, and oh yes, he’d been away at the major sustainable development conference in South Africa. So he was doing a spot of maths and some tree-hugging while the most serious crisis to hit the post-Cold War era was playing out across the globe? This is beyond parody.

3) The Dutch military and civilian intelligence services were cautious in their assessments of Iraq and its possession of weapons of mass destruction, but were unable to make this information have an impact within the government. 

Once again, here is the proof that intelligence lost out to politics. Useful tit-bits have been taken out of context, manipulated, and served up to parliament and public as justification for war. What is more – although the Dutch services were cautious, they were still completely reliant on Anglo-American intelligence as their main source of information. In these circumstances there was nowhere to go.

As expected, the report caused plenty of knee-jerk reactions from the opposition parties as they lined up to take a dig at Balkenende, still in power seven years (and counting) since these events took place. Above all, the premier’s assumption that he can simply respect the report but disagree with its main conclusions - and then walk away regardless – has gone down badly, none more so than with his erstwhile cabinet colleagues in the Labour party. Labour has been itching to regain a grip on the Balkenende/Hoop Scheffer/Iraq issue since it was forced to drop it in 2006 as the price for joining the current cabinet. Unless Balkenende turns up tomorrow wearing sackloth and ashes, the Labourites are not going to be satisfied.

What next? The Davids report flatly denies that Dutch military forces participated in either the preparations for or the actual invasion of Iraq, despite hard rumours and some unforgettable anomalies – such as Jan Bot standing amongst the Coalition of the Willing at a Tommy Franks press conference on 22 March 2003.

Jan Blom, far right, behind Franks. Coalition of the Willing?

Its highly likely that these suspicions won’t go away, and more revelations may come. It also looks quite likely at the moment, considering the mood amongst all the parties except the Christian Democrats, that a parliamentary enquiry will be established, which would have a more stringent mandate than Davids – something Balkenende would not be able to walk away from. 

But perhaps the most important reflection on the path the Dutch took in wandering into the Iraq fiasco come in conclusion points 14 and 16. The decision to support the invasion was based on international political considerations, and ‘in the first place these were scarcely explicitly mentioned [but ever-present] considerations for Atlantic solidarity.’ These came at a cost – this ‘Atlantic reflex’ prevaled over a more European outlook that may have enabled The Hague to play a negotiating role between Washington and London on the one hand and Paris and Berlin on the other.

Is this Atlantic reflex still in place in 2010? For some such as Minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen with his human rights agenda – absolutely. For others – notably State Secretary for Europe Frans Timmermans –  it should be abandoned for a more flexible, rational foreign policy that recognises the common ground but that allows room for manoeuvre. Surely if Davids shows anything, its that Timmermans is right?