But still doesn’t think it could be him, not his coalition partners who are to blame. The split that caused his fourth cabinet to finish pre-maturely was the War on Afghanistan. Balkenende and his party, the christian democratic CDA, as well as the junior partner the ChristenUnie wanted to extend the mission for a second time, while the social democratic PvdA wanted to leave Afghanistan this year, as agreed when the mission was extended for the first time. While the PvdA was always conflicted about Afghanistan, it had allowed itself to be won over for extention back in 2007 because of this promise that this would be the last time and the argument that not doing so would lose the Netherlands face in NATO, that Dutch troops were doing good work in the country and it would be a shame to stop this.
With the end of the current mission in sight — August 2010 is the deadline — the same approach was tried again by the CDA but for once Wouter Bos showed he could learn and didn’t fall for Lucy yanking that ol’ footbal back for the second time. Not that there’s much evidence of principles being at stake here, rather than more mundane party political reasons for refusal — local elections are imminent and the PvdA is not doing well. But if this means Dutch troops will finally leave a country they never should have entered in the first place — and fuck NATO.
The talking heads on the television have been having a field day with this. Much of the commentary has been bemoaning the fact that this silly argument is endangering tackling the very real problems facing the country. Why couldn’t the two parties have put aside their differences for the sake of the country as a whole? Which is the sort of recieved wisdom that always makes me want to hurl a shoe at the television. Afghanistan isn’t a trivial issue and neither should the differences between the various parties be. We used to understand that, but thirty years of pretending that political differences are only possible within a narrow neoliberal consensus has left both our politicians and commentators unable to do so. But even to them it must be clear that the “solutions” Balkenende IV offered for the economic crisis –spending cuts on all sorts of social programmes, more freedom for businesses to do what they want — goes directly to the heart of what the social democrats still stand for. Had it not been Afghanistan, something else would probably have shattered this coalition, which never was that strong to begin with.
Sadly, for socialists the outlook is bleak. The 2006 elections delivered the most leftwing parliament in decades, but still only gave us a rightleaning centrist government. With the rise of Wilders, the slow collapse of the PvdA and the Socialist Party, chances are the next parliament and government will once again govern from the right. On the other hand, having a strong, undivided leftwing opposition may be useful too, as we saw between 2002 and 2006, forcing the government on the defensive.