[THS] Dutch government collapses over military deployment in Afghanistan

[Peter Webster]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/neth-f22.shtml

Dutch government collapses over military deployment in Afghanistan
By Stefan Steinberg
22 February 2010

The Dutch government collapsed on Saturday when one member of the ruling
coalition—the social democratic Dutch Labour Party (PvdA)—refused to support a
further extension of the country’s military deployment in Afghanistan.

The Labour Party, which has shared power with the Christian Democrats and the
Christian Union, argued in making its decision that the party’s credibility was at stake.

The Labour Party has lost considerable support in recent elections due in large
measure to its continued support for Dutch military involvement in Afghanistan.
Commenting on his party’s decision to oppose a new mandate, Labour Party leader
and Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos complained that the intervention was placing
“a very heavy burden on the Dutch armed forces.”

He continued: “When we extended [the mandate for the Dutch military deployment
in Afghanistan] two years ago, we made a promise to the Dutch population that this
was the last time. So it wouldn’t have been very credible if we had changed the date
again.”

The Netherlands currently has 1,400 troops stationed in the southern Afghan
province of Uruzgan. Its total troop numbers in Afghanistan are estimated at about
2,000.

Twenty-one Dutch soldiers have been killed since the government first sent troops to
back the NATO mission in 2006. Opinion polls have repeatedly made clear that a
majority of the population is opposed to the Afghan deployment and favours the
immediate withdrawal of Dutch troops. Against this background, the Dutch
government had set a deadline for the withdrawal of its troops by August of this year.

In the last few months, the US and Britain have increased their pressure on the
Dutch government in The Hague to renew its military commitment in Uruzgan. The
increased deployment of European troops is a cornerstone of the surge strategy
decided upon by the Obama administration, which has dispatched tens of thousands
of additional US troops to Afghanistan.

The US originally sought up to 10,000 additional troops from Europe. In response,
NATO pledged to provide around 7,000 troops, but this total includes some troops
already in the country, and many European governments have failed to make firm
commitments on the full contingents promised.

Public opposition to the military policy of the Dutch government and the involvement
of Dutch troops in Afghanistan increased at the start of the year following the release
of a report by a Dutch commission of inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war. The Davids
Commission rejected the central arguments used to justify the actions of the US and
British governments and concluded that the Iraq war was illegal under international
law. The report was also critical of the role played in the Iraq war by the Dutch
government led by the Christian Democratic prime minister, Peter Balkenende, who
heads the now-collapsed coalition.

At the start of this month, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen held
talks with Maxime Verhagen, the Christian Democratic foreign minister, and then
pleaded in a letter to Balkenende for an extension of the Dutch mission.

In response to the NATO secretary general’s request, the Dutch Labour Party
proffered an olive branch. Labour MP Martijn van Dam declared that his party would
be prepared to support a continued intervention involving the training of Afghan
engineers or medical personnel on a limited scale. Since Dutch troops would be
necessary to ensure the security of such a mission, van Dam’s proposal was a
backhanded way of permitting the Dutch deployment to continue.

However, after news broke last week of the NATO negotiations to extend the Dutch
deployment, public anger swelled. Bos claimed not to have known about the talks—a
highly dubious assertion that was discounted by the Christian Democrats, who
insisted Bos was fully informed, and widely disbelieved by the public.

This was the context in which the Labour Party broke ranks with its coalition partners.
At the end of a 16-hour cabinet meeting that lasted into the early hours of Saturday,
Balkenende declared the termination of his coalition with the Labour Party.

The Christian Democratic and Christian Union parties are expected to form a
caretaker government until a fresh general election takes place, probably in early
summer. Under conditions where all of the coalition parties have been discredited, it
is believed that the ultra-right anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Geert Wilders could
win or finish second in new legislative elections.

The collapse of the Dutch government represents a serious blow to the US
administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. While the number of Dutch troops in
Afghanistan pales in comparison to the US deployment—set to reach nearly 100,000
by the end of the year—political pundits and foreign policy specialists fear that the
Dutch decision could be the preamble to other countries deciding to quit.

The German parliament is due to decide on an extension of the mandate for its own
troops in Afghanistan on Friday. In common with the Netherlands, there is massive
public opposition to the involvement of German troops in the US-NATO mission.

According to Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at the Netherlands
Defense Academy in Breda: “If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that
could open the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can
go, too.’ The implications are that the US and the British are going to take on more of
the load.”

The collapse of the Dutch government and prospect of a withdrawal of Dutch troops
also comes at a point when the US-NATO alliance is confronting increasing resistance
in its operation against the Taliban in Helmand province, which neighbours the
province of Uruzgan.

The comments by Labour Party leader Wouter Bos following the withdrawal of his
party from the coalition government make clear that the social democrats have no
differences regarding the use of Dutch troops for military interventions in the pursuit
of Dutch interests. Bos represents a section of the ruling elite in the Netherlands
which is increasingly concerned over the course of the Afghan campaign, chafes at
the use of Dutch troops to pursue American interests in the region, and fears the
domestic social and political consequences of continued Dutch involvement in the
war.

Popular opposition to the war is linking up with social discontent over the impact of
the economic crisis and government austerity moves. Balkenende had announced
plans to raise the retirement age and impose sweeping cuts in social programs in
order to recoup the huge sums allocated by the government to rescue Dutch banks
at the height of the economic crisis.

As in the case of military policy, the social democrats have no fundamental
differences with such policies. Since the 1990s, the Labour Party has been regarded
as the party of wealth redistribution—from the working class to those at the top of
society.

In was during this time that the PvdA, under then-Prime Minister Wim Kok, undertook
a drastic program of cuts in welfare state programs, thereby paving the way for the
accession to power of the conservatives under Balkenende. Current Labour Party
leader Bos is a former top manager of Shell Oil and has close connections to the
Dutch business world.

Now, Bos and the leadership of the Labour Party have concluded that the measures
necessary to restore the credit worthiness of the Netherlands in the eyes of
international finance cannot be carried out by the discredited Balkenende coalition.
Instead, the Labour Party will seek to exploit its close links to the trade unions to
forge a new coalition pledged to implement the cuts demanded by the banks and
Dutch corporate interests.