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If you live outside Western Europe, you probably only hear about medium-sized European countries like Portugal, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, and the Netherlands if they’re doing well in the World Cup. In the case of the Netherlands, non-Europeans might also have read the occasional references to abortion, euthanasia, sex work, and gay marriage (all legal) and soft drugs (semi-legal). To all this the Netherlands owes its aura of degeneracy or progressiveness, depending on one’s perspective. What you don’t often read about is the position of the Netherlands in the international financial system. It is — together with Ireland and Luxembourg — a vital European tax heaven. Much more so than even Germany, the Netherlands was the forerunner in a beggar-thy-neighbor race to the bottom and remains the closest American NATO ally in mainland Western Europe. It’s no surprise, then, that the domestic policies of states like the Netherlands are important to those organizing in other countries — and we should all be hoping for a left-wing breakthrough there. Here are three reasons why.

1. The Netherlands is a tax haven for international capitalists. In 2009, President Obama called Ireland and the Netherlands tax havens, setting off a panic within the Dutch elite. The mainstream media, economists, and politicians in the country lined up to call this a misunderstanding and scrambled to get the Netherlands off the list. But it was far from a misunderstanding. Many corporations (including Google and Starbucks) and celebrities (like Bono and Mick Jagger) dodge taxes through the Netherlands. Last year, 48 percent of Fortune 500 companies had a shell company in the Netherlands. Royalties, in particular, are not taxed. Corporations pay fabricated royalty costs to mailbox companies in the Netherlands, artificially lowering their profits. The royalties are untouched in the Netherlands and, after returning to the mother company, are untaxed in the home country because they were already taxed before (albeit at a zero percent rate). So while the supposed social democrat Jeroen Dijsselbloem — Dutch minister of finance and head of the Eurogroup — routinely denounces Greece’s “unwillingness” to reform its tax system, the Canadian mining company Gold Eldorado uses the Netherlands to avoid paying taxes in Greece. In 2013 and 2014, Ukrainian oligarchs were invited to the Dutch embassy by private Dutch law firms for a seminar about how to avoid taxes using the Netherlands. The Dutch Ministry of Finance and multinationals make so-called fiscal deals, the contents of which aren’t even disclosed to members of parliament. The panic of Dutch elites in 2009 shows just how sensitive they are about their international reputation. Spearheaded politically by the Greens and the Socialist Party, domestic pressure over the tax dodging is growing, and the mainstream media is reporting more and more frankly on the issue. The extreme center is fiercely resisting this pressure. Take, for instance, the unusual bill passed in 2013 with Labour Party backing that stated that the Netherlands is not a tax haven and asked the government to discourage use of the term.

2. The Netherlands is an unwavering military ally of the US. Since its liberation in 1945, the Netherlands has been a self-proclaimed “loyal ally” of the United States. However, the country’s long history of neutrality still dominates much of the public discourse, meaning that this elite-level support often has to manifest itself in secret. Nuclear weapons were placed covertly in the country in the 1980s, after the largest demonstrations in Dutch history made public placement impossible. It’s also in this manner that the country contributed to Russian scaremongering in the 1980s and again today, and why Dutch involvement in Afghanistan was labelled a “police” rather than a “military” action. The Netherlands plays the role it does because it needs American to protect its multinational interests, from its shipbuilding companies to the oil giant Shell. Although the Netherlands has its own sizable navy — for historical and geographical reasons, as well as to “protect” its overseas Caribbean dominions — it acts mainly as a diplomatic and infrastructural asset for the US. Edward Snowden, after leaking files showing the mass surveillance programs of the National Security Administration, pointed out that the Dutch secret service, unlike those of Germany and France, provides the CIA unlimited access to all their data. Unsurprisingly, the Dutch were among the first to pledge troops to Afghanistan. If the United States needs diplomatic support from Europe for military action virtually anywhere, the Netherlands is always willing to supply it, with an eye toward postwar contracts for its multinationals.