In Conversation | Jaap de Hoop Scheffer
Former NATO Sec Gen shares an inside look into the alliance
The following conversation has been edited for clarity.
Rick Landgraf: With me today is Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. Jaap welcome to the show.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer: Thank you for the invitation.
RL: Jaap, I’d first like to ask you how you became interested in politics, foreign policy, and international security.
JdHS: Rick that started already during the days I was a student at Leiden University in the Netherlands where I met a professor who was lecturing on transatlantic affairs. By the way, the theme then was also like now: who pays what and are the United States of America not paying too much? I'm talking about the ‘60s and ‘70s of the previous century now. So he inspired me to become a diplomat. I finished my thesis on the American military presence in Europe in the middle of the Cold War and then I became a diplomat in the Dutch foreign service. I made a detour in politics by being a member of parliament and party leader for a long time, and then I was asked to become the Dutch foreign minister, followed by the Secretary General of NATO. So there's a certain consistency in my career.
RL: You have been at the very top of national politics as the Foreign Minister of the Netherlands in 2002 and 2003, but also the Secretary General of NATO from 2004 to 2009. In your approach, what have been the main differences in how you have approached these roles and dealt with your duties as a leader?
JdHS: Well, there is of course a difference. If you are a foreign minister in a democracy you answer to parliament. So you are constantly arguing and discussing your proposed policies. There's no responsibility to keep the flock together, which is of course one of the main responsibilities of a NATO Secretary General. You don't have a parliament but you have a number of allies, 32 at the moment. Your prime responsibility is to keep the flock together: 32 nations, 32 allies all with their different interests, different priorities. The Secretary General does not have that not much formal authority, the formal powers to push things through, as NATO operates by consensus. But you need to build moral authority by getting to know people, by knowing who they are, by knowing what their interests are. You do this by traveling around the alliance, forging personal bonds. So there are two different responsibilities, each with its own rule book.
RL: NATO is an organization which makes these major decisions based on consensus of the allies, unanimous agreement of all allies. Why is that important for an organization like NATO?
JdHS: It is important because the consensus principle gives any NATO ally, big or small, the same say. NATO of course is special in the sense that we have one superpower, the United States of America, which has of course by far the most influence in the alliance. But also the US has to deal with Estonia or the Netherlands when there is a discussion going on. And the Estonians or the Dutch say for example that “We do not agree.” And then we have to go on negotiating and go on talking until final consensus is reached. NATO has operated now almost 75 years in that mode and it has functioned very well. Many people, also my students at university, say this is a burden, this is not an easy process. No, it's not an easy process from time to time, but it is a very important principle to keep the alliance alive and kicking as it has been and as it is.
RL: And how has the role of the United States in NATO changed over the years and also the US role within European security more generally?
JdHS: What has not changed Rick is the perennial discussion trying to answer the question who pays what. Even now in 2024 there is a huge imbalance between what the European allies pay, how they participate financially, and the responsibility of the US. Now the US is by far the biggest so we should not be surprised that the brunt goes to the US, but I should immediately add that when the Berlin wall fell in 1989 and the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, we Europeans thought, “Now we can have our cake and eat it.” We have subcontracted our security to the US and our energy needs to Russia, with North Stream One and North Stream Two. We have a huge market in China, which is developing into a superpower, for our Renaults, Peugeots, Audis, and BMW cars, and we can import from China all kinds of products that we cannot make in Europe at a competitive price. You will remember the famous essay by Francis Fukuyama, The End of History. So we thought collectively, “this is the end of history.”
If I fast forward to now, June 2024, we are living in a period which I would qualify as the end of the end of history because the world has now so fundamentally changed. Not one superpower but two: enter China. That has changed the role of the US in the sense that during the Cold War and briefly thereafter, you might remember the US was considered not even as a superpower, but as a hyperpower. We thought this is it and the US will call the shots. The US has to get used to that second challenging superpower. As a consequence the US—which is affecting NATO as well—their first priority is the Indo-pacific. Yes, of course NATO is alive and kicking. There's a war in Ukraine going on, so I'll be the last one to say that the US administration under President Biden and his predecessors have neglected Europe, on the contrary. The Americans are going to choose their own President on November 5th, and even under a second Biden administration, I'm convinced that more will be asked of the US from its European allies.
Let me add to this that the US should also realize, and they are rightfully complaining about the lack of funding, although things are looking up at the moment. Putin’s invasion into Ukraine was of course a game changer and many NATO allies are now approaching the 2 percent GDP they are supposed to spend, but still we are not doing enough. But, on the other hand, the Americans should realize their European allies are the best allies they have. NATO is after all also a value-based organization and if I were an American I could not think of better allies than my European partners. In that respect NATO is, if you look back into history, a unique alliance where a superpower guarantees the ultimate security of a number of nations thousands of miles overseas.
RL: The issue of burden sharing has become a hot topic in the United States especially within the presidential election: burden sharing within NATO, also burden sharing with respect to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Which NATO allies are doing a good job of stepping up as far as burden sharing goes, and which ones could do a bit more both with respect to NATO and defense investment pledges and the war in Ukraine?
JdHS: Well to start on the positive side, I think many allies are stepping up to the plate as we speak. It depends a bit also of course on geography. I'm sitting here comfortably in the Hague in the Netherlands speaking to you, but if I go to the Baltic states, to Poland, to Central and Eastern European countries—let's take the Baltic states as a good example—the pressure, the threat is palpable. More specifically, if I talk to people in their student age, 19, 20, 21, 22, they're all very much aware why they are NATO members and how huge the risk can be that they will also lose their freedom again. The Baltic nations first had the Russian revolution, the Russians, then the Nazis, then the Russians again. I mean, imagine their history.
Geography met us here. By the way, Finland and Sweden, if you had asked me a year, even two years ago before Putin started his invasion, “Will Sweden and Finland join NATO?” I would have answered no, I don't think they will. If I look at their history, definitely not. Now they are number 31 and number 32 in NATO. Also realizing that they're close to that border and to that bear on the other side of that border. They have done what we have not done: they have gone on, the Swedes and the Finns, investing in their defense and they have state-of-the-art armed forces. While, let me take my own home country as an example, the Dutch have underspent dramatically over decades and it will now take the Dutch fifteen to twenty years, and I'm not exaggerating, to have armed forces that are fully prepared and strong for any kind of circumstance including major war. So we are now trying to make up for it, but it is very complicated. I think most of the allies are stepping up to the plate. I'll give you one example, both Greece and Turkey have huge modern armed forces. We all know why these armed forces are so huge and why they are there: That is because they have a conflict.
And I'm not going to take sides on the Aegean Sea and in that conflict, but my message to Athens and Ankara would be: Listen guys. We have to reinvent NATO in the sense that we have to compensate for decades of negligence of the fence. We have to support Ukraine because we cannot allow Vladimir Putin to win in Ukraine. You have to step up to the plate, and you have to participate. In the background of all this, Rick, we shouldn't forget that if you speak about challenges for NATO or challenges for the European Union, to get full consensus on what NATO-Russia policy should be is very complicated and difficult. Very complicated and difficult. Germany, given its history, has a special relationship with Moscow. You have the Central and Eastern Europeans, you have the Baltic states, you have Poland, you have Hungary Prime Minister Orban, who is very close to Vladimir, even during my time as Secretary General (2004-2009).
I started in a relatively good-natured Russia-mood. But it went wrong in 2007 when Putin addressed the Munich Security Conference, and it went even more wrong in 2008 after the Bucharest Summit and the invasion of Russia into Georgia. It has changed over time. Most of the allies do what they should do and everybody now realizes that there's a war going on. But if we bring it down to the core, the successor of Jen Stoltenberg will also have as his main priority to see that he can get the allies on the same hymnbook vis-a-vis Russia and that is not easy. That is definitely not easy.
RL: How have relations between NATO and Russia, which are in a downward spiral and arguably the lowest that they've been since the end of the Cold War and since your time as Secretary General, gotten so far off track?
JdHS: Well I mentioned 2007, going back a bit, I was foreign minister in 2002-2003, and the Dutch had the chairmanship in office of the OSCE: the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In that capacity, because I was that chair, I met Vladimir Putin. In the beginning—that's to be found on the website of the Kremlin—Putin did not like NATO expansion and NATO enlargement but he said in an official resume of our meeting “every nation should finally be free to choose its own destiny.” But then comes 2007, the Munich conference where he uses very strong language vis-a-vis NATO enlargement, vis-a-vis the West in general. Then comes 2008 where NATO struggles, because NATO could basically not agree on Ukraine's future in NATO, and a big political fight erupted between President George W. Bush on the one hand, and the German Chancellor on the other hand. Bush wanted to push Ukraine into NATO and Merkel absolutely refused.
The text in the communique was that Ukraine would become a member of NATO, which was a bit of a false promise in my opinion, because NATO knew then in 2008, I knew at least and the allies knew, that NATO could not deliver. As a consequence of that decision, I think, Putin invaded Georgia in 2008, then annexed Crimea in 2014, and the rest is history.
So things started very well in my active days, but they went for the worse over the years and my analysis is that it was a deliberate change of tone by Putin in 2007, and has nothing to do with NATO enlargement. The Russians have never liked NATO enlargement, I repeat, but you and I should imagine if NATO would have followed Russia's advice not to enlarge? What would Europe have looked like now? What would be the position of the Baltic states and Poland and Central European nations? The Baltic states are on Putin's menu. Moldova is on Putin's menu. Georgia is on Putin's menu; there he does it from the inside. And he should not be allowed to do it from the outside against the other allies.
RL: You served as the NATO Secretary General from January 2004 to August 2009. During this time, NATO was involved in many different missions and operations and activities, from the Afghanistan war to the disagreements over the US war in Iraq. You mentioned NATO enlargement: of course, seven countries, the so-called big bang enlargement, was in 2004 bringing in the Baltic states, and then also Russia's invasion of Georgia in August 2008. What did you do to prepare yourself to tackle these sorts of challenges while in office as the head of NATO?
JdHS: Well my first challenge—and that was what I clearly picked up when I was making the rounds before being appointed when I visited Washington D.C. and of course Paris and London and Berlin—instructions from the Prime Minister's chancellor: “Yield the rift.” There was a huge rift in NATO based on Bush and Iraq in ‘03. I knew that dossier quite well because I had been foreign minister and the Dutch had taken a special position in that invasion by giving political support to the US, but not military support, so we were sort of in the middle. That might have been one of the reasons that they finally went for me as NATO Secretary General. So that was the first challenge and an excellent preparation for the NATO job. But then came something new and that something new was what I qualify as the period not only of NATO enlargement as you mentioned, but also the period of what I qualify as an expeditionary NATO. NATO was expeditionary. NATO was subcontracted by the United Nations Security Council for the huge military operation in Afghanistan.
And don't forget Rick that it was 100,000-plus soldiers, boots on the ground in Afghanistan, a faraway country. That was, I think, one of my big challenges. We had a combination of 55 NATO allies, NATO partners from Japan to the United Arab Emirates; from New Zealand to Australia. It was a huge conglomerate coalition of nations active in Afghanistan. The political control, political leadership, and political consistency was a big challenge. The military did very well. The military was successful. I'm not talking about our humiliating retreat a few years ago. But then back to back to those years, the military did very well. My respect for the military only grew when I saw them operate in Afghanistan. The political oversight was difficult because every nation, and that was relevant for NATO allies and no-NATO allies alike, every single NATO ally was looking at Afghanistan through a straw.
Again, as an example, the British were responsible for the province of Helmand in the south of Afghanistan. They looked through that straw to Helmand and what happened in Helmand was dominant for their decision-making. The Dutch were in Uruzgan also in the south. The Italians in the west, the Germans in the north, and the combination of looking through those straws made it very complicated. I think we succeeded more or less at the end to fully agree on what's our mandate there? What are we doing there, in provinces where there was a huge poppy culture and a drug culture as a consequence? The allies responsible said yes but for heaven's sake we cannot deny that there's a huge problem and that the Taliban are gaining enormous sums of money through that poppy culture and people in other provinces said “No listen, this is not a priority.” So it was a complex and complicated operation and apart from Afghanistan, we were in Kosovo, we were in the Mediterranean.
We were training the African Union forces; I went to Addis Ababa, the headquarters of the African Union. We even embarked upon a humanitarian operation in Kashmir after an earthquake. I suddenly was between Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers to show that NATO was as neutral as possible, because Kashmir is a highly contested area. So an expeditionary NATO did relatively well in that role, but is unimaginable under present circumstances. I mean NATO is now the NATO I experienced in the 1980s, when I was a young second secretary in the Dutch NATO mission. The Cold War strengthened the Eastern flank to fill that gap in Germany, Dutch forces in Germany, a huge American military presence in Europe, tactical nuclear weapons, the Pershing cruise missile debates in the early ‘80s. We are back in NATO in the sense that we are now doing everything we can to convince Vladimir Putin that he should never ever try to put a toll on NATO territory. So we are back to the core responsibility of NATO.
RL: Yes, it seems that NATO has found its original purpose in collective defense, while at the same time taking care of these other responsibilities whether it be crisis management or humanitarian assistance over the years. A last question for you: What advice would you offer to the next NATO Secretary General on how best to tackle this tough role?
JdHS: Well, as we discussed, his prime responsibility will be to keep the allies together and that's a huge challenge I can tell you. Because if I listened carefully to Prime Minister Orban in Hungary, who basically said that he wants to reassess Hungary's position inside NATO, it gives me the shivers because this kind of discussion we've never had. And you know from Budapest a lot of spanners are flying into the works of the EU and of NATO for that matter. So I mean the political challenge is of primordial importance for me. NATO is, we should never forget, a political military alliance in that order and not the other way around—it needs political solidarity. You need political cohesion to make NATO function militarily as the most powerful military alliance in the world. But you need that political consensus as a precondition. That will be his main challenge apart from the fact that when I look into the future I think there's still some very important work to do for NATO even at short notice/
What will be the Washington Summit language, communique language, on Ukraine and NATO? At the 2023 Vilnius Summit they had a text, I say this in my own words, “Ukraine can become a member of NATO when circumstances allow, when conditions are met,” which means as long as there's a war going on, Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO. Although if we go back to 2008, we promised them NATO membership. So what will be the Washington language when NATO celebrates its 75th birthday? It should be a bit more than Vilnius because you can't use the same phrase twice in my opinion. So the Ukraine dossier will be prominently on the new Secretary General’s desk. Let's also not forget there are other nations knocking on NATO’s door as well, thinking about the western Balkans. That will of course not happen overnight. Finally, we discussed it as well, he will have to travel around intensively to see that the financial burden is more equally distributed and he will also wait with great interest to see what the American people are going to do on November 5 and what consequences that choice might have for the alliance.
But I repeat again. We European allies will have to establish a relationship with whatever President the United States people are going to choose. There might be big differences between the two, but I do hope—and that should be and is on the list of Jen Stoltenberg’s successor—that NATO stays very much alive and kicking as it has now been for 75 years.
RL: Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much.
JdHS: Thank you Rick, it was a pleasure and thanks again for the invitation.