Working Worldwide for the Security of the Netherlands The people of the Netherlands are more concerned about their security than a few years ago. For a country like ours, with its open economy and open society, developments and events like attacks in our neighbouring countries and countries around Europe and the Kingdom naturally have a direct impact. Especially in the countries around and on the edges of Europe, the security situation has taken a radical turn for the worse in recent years. Technological developments in the digital domain give this situation an added dimension, while major regional powers and traditional Dutch partners are now behaving less predictably than they have for many years. A relatively small country like the Netherlands is highly dependent on the multilateral system, and all these developments are putting the system under pressure. 1. Introduction Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, its destabilising intervention in Ukraine (leading to the MH17 disaster), the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the terrorist attacks in and around Europe, and cyberattacks have had direct and indirect consequences for our physical and economic security. The sudden and uncontrolled arrival of large numbers of refugees and irregular migrants in Europe – including the Netherlands – can be largely attributed to insecurity and instability in their countries of origin. Developments in Venezuela are not only intensifying migrationary pressure on Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao in the Caribbean, but can also have major repercussions for their economies. Migration in itself can pose threats, because (potential) terrorists can enter – and have entered – Europe through regular migration routes. The fact remains that irregular migration often has socio-economic causes and therefore cannot and should not be addressed purely from a perspective of instability and insecurity. In this situation, the government considers it important, as it begins its term of office, to set out its perspective on international security policy. As announced in the coalition agreement, the Integrated International Security Strategy (IISS) is the successor to the previous International Security Strategy.2 It offers strategic frameworks for the Netherlands’ international security approach,3 and it links that approach to specific policy choices. Its starting point is that threats to the Netherlands and the Kingdom are almost always related to developments in the international arena. The goal of the IISS is to safeguard the interests of the Kingdom and of the Netherlands. This security strategy is explicitly linked to adjoining policy areas that affect the Kingdom’s security: not only the wider range of activities carried out through our network of overseas diplomatic missions, but also the investments we make through development cooperation, measures to address the root causes of instability and the 2. Coalition agreement ‘Confidence in the Future’, page 48: ‘The government will draw up a security strategy for dealing with domestic and foreign threats, including terrorism, to replace the current International Security Strategy.’ 3. The IISS focuses on ‘why’ and ‘what’. The ‘how’ is outlined in policy and implementation documents. |9|