On Monday, Staff Writers Charlie Bonkowsky and Izagani Aquino attended “The Protection of Civilians in Armed Combat,” a talk by the Dutch Minister of Defense Kajsa Ollongren.

As Minister of Defense for the Netherlands, Kajsa Ollongren is always focused on the next war—on what future military operations will look like, and how to keep civilians safe during such engagements. 

Under the UN charter, any use of force is a last resort…but right now, we’re seeing “innocent civilians…increasingly paying the price for authoritarian aggressors” in Ukraine and the Sahel in Africa. To those aggressors, the consequences of violence and the rules of warfare don’t matter—but, she said, “they matter to us.”

That is, perhaps, easier to say than to accomplish. Operation Inherent Resolve, the fight against terrorism in Iraq and Syria in which both the Netherlands and the US participated, was one example. Where intelligence wasn’t always complete, where civilians were used as shields, service members had to make split-second decisions—and, in those cases, she said, “we will never be able to reduce the risk of [civilian] harm to 0.”

This was a tension throughout the talk. She emphasized the international and national laws that are in place surrounding warfare: the type of accountability and transparency necessary in war to prevent civilian harm. But Ollongren also noted that “our men and women do not benefit from more rules on the ground,” and that a nation had to be prepared to fully stand behind its military members. Reforms, then, should be focused on the conditions in which the military works, rather than on strict rules of engagement.

Ollongren pointed to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) released by the US Department of Defense as an example of what those conditions might look like, especially useful since the Netherlands and the US work together often as coalition partners. Military intelligence, she said, should focus not just on the adversary, but on the civilians who need protection—on locations of schools, for example. After all, preventing civilian casualties serves a strategic goal as well by preventing further or perceived hostility in the region or at home. “A well-executed attack,” Ollongren remarked, “does not win a war…but a bad attack can mean losing one.”

It’s not just about intelligence before a military operation—Ollongren also spoke about the importance of transparency after an operation is carried out to ensure that people can be held accountable. The Netherlands is the only country in the coalition that has conducted operations against ISIS to release its flight data.

Given the difficulty in totally preventing harm, governments will have to continually think about how best to prevent civilian harm, especially with the proliferation of new technologies. The militarization of space, the use of AI, or dual-use satellite systems are all new risks that will require new agreements, but also new opportunities that could be used to reduce harm.

During the Q&A session, Ollongren opened the floor to questions from the attendees, ranging from NATO spending to the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa.

Of NATO, she explained that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been a “wake-up call” in terms of defense spending for two reasons. First, she affirmed, “Our security is threatened once again by Russia, as it was during the Cold War.”Second, the Netherlands and other European countries are thinking about the fact that the American security umbrella might not always be present. Thus, the Netherlands is on track to hit the 2%-of-GDP target set for members by the end of 2024. While there are internal disagreements within NATO—such as with Turkey and Hungary on the accession of Sweden, for instance, Ollongren believes that the alliance is united on its core purpose as a defensive alliance.

Another participant asked about the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa, especially in the Sahel region, and what the Netherlands or other coalition partners might do to address it. As Ollongren spoke about it, it seemed more like a question of diplomacy: the Wagner Group wields influence because it’s willing to sell weapons or ammunition where governments like the Dutch cannot; however, the solution isn’t cutting off countries with Wagner ties or where there’s been a coup d’etat because that “means we’re talking to less people.”

As the event came to an end, someone asked about the Dutch response to a 2015 airstrike on Hawija in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, during which explosions killed around 70 civilians. Ollongren defended the operation itself, saying that it was carried out according to the rules—attacking at night, for example, when civilians shouldn’t have been present. Her conclusion was that it was a failure of intelligence that didn’t predict the secondary explosions from a factory bombing. The Dutch government made a $5 million “voluntary contribution” to UN and IOM projects to benefit Hawija, but reporting has indicated that few Hawijan residents have benefited or seen the money’s effects—and the money itself was given as a “voluntary contribution” to avoid the accountability that would come with paying reparations. Ollongren acknowledged the long time it had taken for the Dutch government to admit to its role, and said “I do feel as a minister, even if you don’t have a legal responsibility, you do have a moral responsibility, and that’s why this file is still not closed.”

Kajsa Ollongren at CLS via Charlie Bonkowsky