Fighting the War at Home: Strategic Narratives, Elite Responsiveness, and the Dutch Mission in Afghanistan, 2006-2010

Abstract

This paper analyzes the Dutch deployment in Uruzgan between 2006 and 2010 with an eye to the challenge of garnering public support for protracted military missions abroad. The hypothesis is that public support can be shaped and sustained by strategic narratives regarding the use of force. Ringsmose and Børgesen's model on strategic narratives is discussed and tested, and expanded in two ways. First, by including the role of "counternarratives," that is, of narratives presented by factions that oppose deployment decisions. Our data suggest that narrative dominance (the combination of narratives and counternarratives) accounts for the waxing and waning of public support for a given mission. Second, the nexus between negative narrative dominance and the ensuing drop of public consent will be teased out. Using the notion of "elite responsiveness," we demonstrate when and how weak strategic narratives trigger a political fallout. From 2006 to 2010, the Netherlands was the lead nation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. During that period, the Netherlands made a significant contribution to the NATO mission with 2,000 military and scores of civilian personnel per rotation, the largest Dutch deployment since the Korean War. Over the course of the mission, the Dutch forces suffered 25 fatalities (Official Parliamentary Reports, no. 330). During the Dutch deployment, opposition to the mission steadily increased. On February 20, 2010, the Dutch coalition government headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende collapsed after a conflict over a second extension of the Dutch mission in Afghanistan. Balkenende's center-right Christian Democrats (CDA) wanted to discuss a NATO request to extend the Dutch presence in Afghanistan, whereas the Labor Party (PvdA) bitterly opposed an extension. Labor Party leader 1 The authors express their thanks to the FPA editors and reviewers for their assistance and advice. The article also profited from the comments provided by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Jens Ringsmose, and John Kok. A shorter introduction to the political decision-making process regarding the TFU in the Netherlands will be printed as chapter in the volume edited by George Dimitriu,

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“…When it became known in the Netherlands that fighting took place quite frequently, it not only engendered admiration but also fueled existing criticism in parliament and among the public. Decreasing public support for the mission, moreover, became a reason why the mission in Uruzgan was not extended in 2010 (Dimitriu & de Graaf, ; Dimitriu & de Graaf, ; Ringsmose & Børgesen, , pp. 520–521).…”