In Conversation with Former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer

The following conversation has been edited for clarity. You can listen to the conversation here. 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. 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.