Governments of NATO member states implement classified ‘NATO Resilience Objectives’. Dutch Minister of Public Health Fleur Agema accidently spilled the beans. She tried to do some damage control by saying, “The objectives are public,” but NATO confirmed, “They are classified.” MP Ralf Dekker of the Forum for Democracy believes that this undermines the supervisory role of the House of Representatives and the sovereignty of the Netherlands.
At the NATO summit in Vilnius on 11 July 2023, heads of state and government agreed to “Alliance Resilience Objectives.” A communiqué issued by the participants reads:
“We build on the 2021 Strengthened Resilience Commitment. The Resilience Objectives will strengthen NATO and Allied preparedness against strategic shocks and disruptions. They will boost our national and collective ability to ensure continuity of government and of essential services to our populations and enable civil support to military operations in peace, crisis and conflict. Allies will use these objectives to guide the development of their national goals and implementation plans, consistent with their respective national risk profile. We will also work towards identifying and mitigating strategic vulnerabilities and dependencies, including with respect to our critical infrastructure, supply chains and health systems. Allies should also promote societal resilience.”
On 24 October 2024, during a debate in the Dutch Parliament about “pandemic preparedness,” Minister of Public Health Fleur Agema, said, “We must be prepared for any disaster that comes our way. Hybrid threats, military threats, natural disasters or a new pandemic. All these threats require strengthening the resilience of our healthcare.” She then revealed that all Dutch government policies that touched on “resilience” were bound by “NATO obligations” and that the implementation of these obligations was currently coordinated by the Dutch security service NCTV. She and her fellow cabinet members were briefed about the obligations in July 2024 by Defense and Foreign Affairs Ministry officials.
In September 2024, Dutch MPs pressed Agema to donate M-Pox vaccines to African countries suffering from a pox outbreak. Agema resisted, saying, “I want to be careful and not fall below the recommended safe stock of 100,000 smallpox vaccines. This number relates to preparedness when it comes to a reintroduction, as is now the case, but also to preparedness when it comes to the threat of spread by malicious persons.” She then mentioned the war in Ukraine and said that “the aggressor, Russia” was in possession of an M-Pox virus. Was it NATO that had recommended The Netherlands not to fall below 100,000 smallpox vaccines? Nobody in Parliament asked because, at that time, nobody realized that Agema dealt with NATO obligations.
In November 2024, MP Pepijn van Houwelingen of the opposition party Forum for Democracy asked Agema about the obligations and the briefing. This month, Agema answered that she was not allowed to share any information about the briefing. Although she had repeatedly discussed “NATO obligations” in Parliament, she now said that the resilience objectives were “not legally binding”. During an interview on Dutch national TV last week, Agema stated that, although the briefing was classified, there was nothing secretive about the NATO resilience objectives. “You can simply look them up on the internet…the objectives are public,” she told reporter Jonathan Krispijn of broadcaster Ongehoord Nederland. However, the Vilnius communiqué only discusses the resilience objectives in general terms. There is no document on the NATO website that makes it clear what the heads of state and government signed up for. When asked by yours truly, NATO’s press office stated that the resilience objectives are “classified”. They are secret. NATO cannot and may not say anything about them, and neither can the governments of the NATO member states.
Last week, MP Ralf Dekker of Forum for Democracy requested a debate on the Dutch NATO obligations. Not a single party in the House of Representatives supported the request. This week he made a new attempt. “The entire cabinet receives secret, mandatory instructions from NATO regarding the resilience aspects of their policy,” he said. “This means that both the supervisory role of the House of Representatives and the sovereignty of the Netherlands are being affected. I would like to have a debate on this with the Prime Minister and perhaps also with Minister Agema, who raised this issue in the House.” Again, there was no support from other parties in the House for a debate.
Salient detail: Mark Rutte is one of the signatories of the Vilnius 2023 resilience objectives. At that time, he was prime minister of The Netherlands. In 2024, he became Secretary General of NATO. The current Dutch Prime Minister is Dick Schoof. Before he accepted this position, he was head of the NCTV, which now coordinates the implementation of the NATO resilience objectives in The Netherlands.
(Featured Image: “Finland flag raising at NATO Headquarters 4 April 2023” by UK Government Picture by Rory Arnold / No 10 Downing Street is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)
