ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) burden-sharing by examining the role of the Netherlands as a junior partner in the military alliance and its participation in large-scale coalition warfare. By understanding coalitions as both arenas of crisis resilience and crisis triggers, the chapter focuses on challenges concerning both the resilience mechanisms of shared values and interests between NATO members and their division of labor arrangements. The analysis focuses on the post-9/11 period and the Dutch role in the occupation and stabilization of Iraq since 2003, the campaign in Afghanistan (2002–2014), the anti-piracy operation off the Somali coast since 2009, and the general issue of Dutch national defense and security policies. The election of Donald Trump has exacerbated but not fundamentally changed the Netherlands’ dilemma highlighted in the chapter.
