Again the orator did his homework. In the House of Commons, Ukrainian President Zelensky introduced Churchill’s language and in the French Assembly the memory of Verdun. Last week in the House of Representatives, he compared the horrors in Mariupol with the bombing of Rotterdam in 1940. The wonderful surprise was the Eighty Years’ War: “Tomorrow the Netherlands will celebrate the 450th year of the armed uprising against tyranny.” Acute confusion among the audience. What happened then again? A Willem-of-Oranje episode? The Placard of Abandonment? Reporters saw a lesson in history for the House of Representatives, given by a foreign head of state.
Yet the Water Beggars near Den Briel were not Zelensky’s real historical lesson. His point is more substantial: history is now. Not generations ago, but today. Therefore, he said in a neglected subordinate clause“I speak of it only as an event in the present tense.” Den Briel is now, Rotterdam is now. Through the link of the frequently mentioned Europe – history, place, Union – he draws us into his story. And then Mariupol is here too.
In Germany, on day four of the Russian invasion, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said to his parliament and public: we are entering a new era, a “Zeitenwende† To emphasize the seriousness, the Bundestag met on Sunday for the first time since 1949.
It is certainly possible to argue with this turn. Germany’s gas dependence and export model are not simply finished and converted. In the coming days and weeks – like now after ‘Butsha’ – pressure will increase on Scholz to agree to a gas boycott, the last major sanction. But at least the chancellor set out a beacon that his own press and foreign partners will remind him of if necessary. A new time.
In The Hague, this impact of History has not yet been accompanied in big words. Parliamentary debates, sure, but no big TV speech from the Prime Minister, no dramatic decisions that show that we are serious too. Like Zelensky’s concrete request: close your ports (Rotterdam!) to Russian ships.
These major events are also cushioned in The Hague and absorbed step by step, almost poldering. Coincidentally, the three main coalition leaders told a story about the Netherlands and the world after the invasion almost simultaneously: Prime Minister Rutte (VVD) and the Deputy Prime Ministers Kaag (D66) and Hoekstra (CDA). All three about ten days after Scholz’s Berlin performance.
Sigrid Kaag spoke on March 8 in Maastricht, the city of the EU Treaty (1992). “Europe’s vacation from history is over,” she said clearly. After the Russian invasion, the geopolitical capacity of Europe is the number one priority for this finance minister; only after that comes the financial stability of the currency. A small Zeitenwende in the proportions of The Hague.
In this way, Kaag places the European debate on the Stability Pact in a broader picture. Certainly: just like her predecessors in Finance, Kaag is not blind to EU financing of new projects or to leaving investments in defense or climate out of debt. However, it did offer openings for reforming the untouchable rules of the fiscal pact in The Hague – enough for its Maastricht host Mathieu Segers to NRCpodcast to speak of a ‘historic speech in thirty years of Dutch European politics’.
Also on March 8, Foreign Minister Hoekstra . sent a strong policy letter to the House of Representatives† Another genre. But he too reads the invasion as a ‘key geopolitical moment’, which calls for the ‘maturing of the EU as a geopolitical player’, in an increasingly insecure environment. The language towards Russia (“limitation, deterrence and increasing resilience”) was harsher there than in Berlin.
Prime Minister Rutte was shorter in substance, the next morning for a Paris student audience† He sought affiliation with Scholz (“the Netherlands will also look at defense spending”) and Macron (“a leader in military cooperation”) – with whom he was a guest at the Elysée with the core of Rutte IV afterwards. Nevertheless, Rutte took the novelty of the moment less fully than his two ministers.
All good: a speech in Maastricht, for many who is far away, a letter for the inner world in The Hague and a prime minister who, after performances in Berlin, Zurich and Strasbourg, gave his Europe story, this time near the Eiffel Tower. But can the political leadership soon bring all these bits and pieces of historical repositioning together into one penetrating story about the new age for us? Den Briel is now.
Luke of Middelaar is a political philosopher and historian.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of April 6, 2022