By Jonnie Zwartjes
Lt. Col. Cor van den Bergh, Netherlands Military representation to NATO is responsible for resources The Netherlands deploy in NATO missions. His main responsibility is making sure the right adjustments are made to the material to make them better suited to the location of deployment. He mentioned that, contrary to what many think, the military representation do not receive their orders from the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs, but from the Dutch chief of the armed forces. This is done to prevent mistakes due to communication errors. During the questions and answers session he told us that the only military assets NATO has are the AWACS planes stationed at Geilenkirchen Germany. All troops and material used in NATO missions is owned by member states and submitted on a purely voluntary basis. At this moment the state that submitted material or troops to a mission also pays for all the costs that come with it. The costs lie where they fall. There is a discussion going on about changing this to a ‘shared burden’ approach. The things he sees changing in the future in that on NATO’s advice member states will more and more change their armies from armies with a large amount of troops to rapidly deployable, highly specialized units that can be deployed against biological, chemical and nuclear attacks. After the questions and answers session with Hugo Klijn from the Netherlands delegation to NATO and Lt. Col. Cor van den Bergh we all had a lot more insight in the inner workings of the NATO and were looking forward to the lunch that was offered to us by the public diplomacy division to let all the new information sink in.
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