There he stands, in army green shirt on the street, ready to defend his children, family, city and country. “Glory to Ukraine,” Zelensky says into a cell phone camera. It is almost unbearable, his courage of despair. While 18-year-old boys, archeology student next to plumber, with helmets and shotguns dig a pit for shelter, 40 miles of tanks in column rumble at them.
Those tanks were paid for with dollars from the West. With the gas we bought from Putin for decades. Arnout Brouwers described in this newspaper on February 25 how the Netherlands has been Putin’s ass crawler for 20 years. Trade delegations led by prime ministers and the king and his wife, no resource was spared.
The photo was already painful in 2014, the still fresh King Willem-Alexander and Máxima who toasted with Putin at the Olympic Games in Sochi. He had already reduced Grozny to ashes, waged war in Georgia, banished oligarchs and political opponents to penal camps, and campaigned against gays. Three days after the Winter Games, he invaded Crimea. In the photo a broadly smiling king. The Queen puts her beer in the air – the Heineken logo straight into the lens.
And that’s what matters. About Heineken. For our pharmaceuticals. For fuel. Blinded by the contract that allowed the Netherlands to participate in the Russian-German Nord Stream, perhaps also blinded by the tinsel of the Tsar’s palace, in any case a satisfied Prime Minister Balkenende said in 2007 that an important step had been taken in increasing mutual dependence. from the EU and Russia. The other party will have grimly deleted the word ‘mutual’. The Netherlands surrendered to Russia. It took a downed plane full of Dutchmen to temper the affection.
It is indicative of the value orientation that has driven the Netherlands for thirty years: economic prosperity as the highest goal. In the adoration of the golden calf, the captains of industry were the high priests – they sent the Torentje by text message. Guardians of the public interest, such as the Council of State, the Ombudsman, the Court of Auditors became a hindrance.
The mafia clique around Putin was allowed to launder his money in Amsterdam. When the young Prime Minister Rutte heard from one Aleksey Navalny in 2011, how the Netherlands facilitated Russian corruption, he replied that there was ‘no indication at all’. Interesting to know whether Rutte has asked his department for an investigation back in the Netherlands.
Dutch wealth has tripled in the past 50 years, Statistics Netherlands figures show. The raison d’état, the state interest, has been neglected in this regard. Despite the deceptive illusion of neoliberalism, we pay for it with freedom. In Europe, the realization is now dawning that individual freedom of choice works nice for the business elite, but that true freedom is something else.
As the president knows with his gun in the street: free from an occupier. As European countries feel: free from dependence – from people who prefer to see Europe bleed, crawl, beg. Freedom requires independence from Chinese auto parts, from Saudi oil and from Russian gas. Peter R de Vries wrote it with ink in his skin: On bended knee is no way to be free.
But driven by the lust for deals, fuel and cheap junk, principles were thrown out. In addition, Francis Fukuyama provided another excuse for Western Europe’s complacency: the misconception that the fall of the Soviet Union had marked the end of history. Capitalism would also turn China and Russia into liberal market democracy. Little was yet understood of state capitalism in the East.
Meanwhile, Zelensky sees hundreds of tanks coming toward him. The inhabitants of Kiev have made Molotov cocktails themselves. Their zivilcourage can strengthen us. We learn from them the expensive lesson: freedom comes at a price.