ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to draw together a number of conclusions on Dutch, Danish and Irish foreign policy in the period 1945-1970/73. It highlights areas of foreign policy similarity and dissimilarity. Trade and economic dependence was a key feature of all three states' relationships with their external environment. The nature of respective local security complexes had widely differing impacts upon the foreign policies of The Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland. For the Netherlands, the balance of Cold War overlay reconceptualised the local security complex so that Dutch policy makers remained wholly dedicated to NATO and subjugated other foreign policy goals. The geographic and demographic realities of these three states all defined them as 'minor' vis a vis their local security complex. The chapter concludes by drawing these (dis)similarities together in order to understand what each of these states brought to the table of European foreign and security policy.
