Europe must stop relying on the United States for its defence and take more responsibility for its own security, prime minister Rob Jetten said in his first major foreign-policy address since taking office in February.
Opening the inaugural Next Gen Security Conference in The Hague on Wednesday, the D66 prime minister said the Netherlands and Europe had “clung to the naïve notion that we can shelter under the US security umbrella forever, at little cost.” That assumption, he said, is over.
Jetten announced that the Netherlands would write the new NATO target of 3.5% of GDP for “hard” defence spending into law – a step beyond the policy commitment made by the previous Schoof cabinet ahead of the Hague NATO summit last June.
The 3.5% comes along with a 1.5% commitment on broader security spending such as cyber and infrastructure, taking the total to 5% of GDP. He framed the shift as “not to distance ourselves from the US, but to make the alliance more equal. And, as a result, stronger.”
Building new partnerships
Jetten said that a wake-up call to the need for a new security regime should have come long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when MH17 was shot down in 2014.
Jetten set out three principles he said would guide Dutch foreign and defence policy: defending the international legal order, renewing the transatlantic security architecture, and building new partnerships.
The third, he said, included deeper cooperation with countries in the Global South, and a new Dutch-Indian partnership in which ASML is set to play a major role as India targets 10% of the global semiconductor value chain.
Jetten also flagged Dutch strategic dialogue with France on European nuclear deterrence within NATO as part of building up Europe’s part of the alliance.
On Ukraine, he said the country was “on an irreversible path” to EU membership and would offer a “capable and battle-hardened partner on the eastern flank of the Union.”
“Awkward” position on Iran
Jetten also restated the Netherlands’ view that the US-Israeli strikes on Iran are illegal.
“The Dutch government has been very clear that the attack on Iran was a violation of international law,” he said. “At the same time, the Iranian regime poses a nuclear hazard to the world … and has been extremely brutal and oppressive to its own people.”
“Is that an awkward position? Perhaps it is. But it’s also the reality we face. So we must be realistic.”
The conference, which the Netherlands hopes to establish as an annual fixture, continues until Thursday with speakers including US ambassador Joe Popolo and former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö. The full speech is published on the Dutch government website.
