Europe is in its greatest political crisis since 1945. Putin’s brutal war of annihilation in Ukraine is much more serious than the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Then no shot was fired, no sovereign country was attacked, and the solution was therefore limited to losing face. That’s different now.
Unfortunately, the West is also in much worse shape now than it was then. Certainly: Russia itself is technically much further ahead than at the time. But worldwide the economic and thus political dominance of the West has declined enormously since then, with the rise of China and India, which, along with many other countries, pay little attention to our boycotts.
Internal concrete rot
Then there is internal concrete rot. Trump has not only made clear with his Capitol storming how shaky American democracy is now. Also, related to this, three decades of neoliberalism has produced a blatant selfishness of a billionaire upper class—our own oligarchs are no better than the Russians in that regard—that was held in check by a certain fear of revolution until the demise of communism. Together with the increasing inequality, this has undermined the confidence in democratic governance and system among large population groups, symbolized here by the benefits scandal.
The selfishness of the elite, in combination with a technocratic view of politics (embodied in the Netherlands mainly by the VVD) – by denying any potential alternative to the existing course – has produced leaders without vision, and therefore without much persuasiveness. In that respect, too, the West makes a much weaker ideological impression than in 1962 or 1945.
Pseudo-Churchills
A Churchill is missing. Unfortunately Biden is not Roosevelt or Eisenhower, Scholz is not Brandt or Adenauer, Macron is not Schuman or De Gaulle. But two countries really stand out as particularly miserable in that regard, both led by figures without any moral authority, the Churchill biographer Boris Johnson and the Churchill biographer Mark Rutte. The government of these two pseudo-Churchills is (coincidentally?) also involved in a corona scandal.
On the eve of the Second World War, the British ambassador, with a glance at the wimpy De Geer cabinet, let slip that a people who elect such leaders deserves nothing more than to be enslaved. His judgment would be unanimous about Rutte, who for eleven years never dared to stick out his neck, but who always let the ship turn.
The utter incompetence of his current cabinet when it comes to truly energetic leadership is now apparent in the minimal results achieved in the confiscation of Russian assets. The indolence and the evident lack of any sense of urgency is shocking.
It is an embarrassment for a country that has always been at the forefront to criticize ‘southern’ countries such as Belgium and Italy about a lack of fiscal and financial decisiveness. Belgium and Italy have already seized significantly more Russian loot than the Netherlands, which mainly consults and meets and appoints committees that again set up steering groups (or vice versa) so that any strong decision that might provoke some resistance is postponed and the responsibility thus spread. becomes that if things go wrong no one is responsible and therefore every failing minister can stick to his own plush.
Zuidas
Significant difference: years ago the Italian tax authorities set up a huge device to track down scammers. With all its rulings, the Dutch tax authorities have spent years mainly working on helping scammers find the right letterbox in the Zuidas, under the motto of a good business climate. People are therefore not prepared for the enormous change that is now required.
In his previous career at Finance, Wopke Hoekstra did nothing about the problem of the Zuidas, where the sanctions imposed in 2014 because of Crimea could be undermined with impunity. The deepest reason: Hoekstra is the Zuidas: in his thinking and doing. A McKinsey consultant without vision or moral standard, for whom, just like for Rutte, the old Dutch adage applies that good is what earns well, and the well-earned should not be bothered too much with the question of where their money comes from or who builds superyachts here.
Nothing has happened for eight years, and now nothing again for a month. Is that because there are too many Zuidas lawyers in the CDA and VVD electorate? Was that the background to his shocking twists and turns? That Hoekstra was able to make it to minister in the first place and that he was not immediately sent home after this certificate of inability is a major scandal.
Stef Blok
The promised new political culture has now given birth to Stef Blok. mind youStef Blok! If someone exhales the musty smell of unwashed old political culture, then Stef Blok. The man who demolished social housing and abolished spatial planning. Like Ellen Deckwitz in her NRC-column noted: to restore public confidence in the government, include in the constitution that Stef Blok may never do anything for the government again.
That in crisis situations a prime minister himself is the first designated coordinator: apparently no one in this enormous team of ministers comes to that. Once again, Rutte has proven his unsuitability as a crisis leader by placing someone else between him and a problem, so that he can again shift the blame in the event of failure. And he gets away with it again.
There is one small consolation: that the Netherlands is only an insignificant country, and in view of the incorrigibility of The Hague, you can pray that it will remain that way for a long time to come.
Thomas von der Dunk is a cultural historian and guest researcher at European Studies at the University of Amsterdam.