ABSTRACT
From 2006 to 2010, the Netherlands was the lead nation in the Afghan province of Uruzgan. During that period, the Netherlands made a substantial contribution to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF ) with thousands of military and civilian personnel. Initially, a force of 1,200 was to be sent to southern Afghanistan, a figure that grew to almost 2,000 in 2008 (Official Parliamentary Reports, no. 330). The first period, which was due to expire in the year 2008, was extended to 2010. However, on February 20, 2010, the Dutch coalition government headed by Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende collapsed after a conflict over the extension of the Dutch mission in Afghanistan. Balkenende’s center-right Christian Democrats wanted to agree to a NATO request to extend the Dutch presence in Afghanistan, whereas the Labor Party bitterly opposed it (Official Parliamentary Reports, no. 328). In this chapter, we offer a contribution to the growing literature on strategic narratives in analyzing the importance of a unified “frame production.” We will illustrate how contradicting, fragmented, and politicized frames exert a disruptive force on both the creation and reception of official strategic narratives. The case of the Netherlands is particularly interesting because it provides a better understanding of how strategic narratives, media frames, and public understanding (and support) are intertwined. It will become clear that the failure to produce a coherent and compelling strategic narrative straightaway contributed to the fragmentation of media frames explaining the mission to the public. A plethora of conflicting and overlapping media frames greatly affected public understanding and was one of the key elements in undermining public support for the mission. This chapter is divided in two sections. First, we present a qualitative discussion of the aspects of the strategic narratives present in the Dutch political and public discourse, zooming in especially on the first key element, the formulation of a clear and compelling mission purpose. Second, we will tease out the presentation of the military mission in
simplified frameworks in the Dutch national media. We will flesh out the different frames, noting how they collided, reinforced each other, and fluctuated during the years of deployment. How does the lack of such a compelling narrative matter in the “battle of ideas” that a government is waging at the home front? Elsewhere, we argued that the lack of public support might well be tied to the absence of an effective strategic narrative, combined with the emergence of strong and compelling counternarratives (Dimitriu and De Graaf 2014); here, we will further elaborate on this line of reasoning and pay greater attention to the salience of framing the mission as cornerstone to a successful strategic narrative.
