THE HAGUE – Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten receive virtually no attention in the Netherlands’ new Strategic Monitor for Defense, despite the report being intended to identify developments and threats affecting the vital interests of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The monitor, prepared by the Clingendael Institute, focuses overwhelmingly on the Netherlands and the future capabilities of the Dutch armed forces. Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten are not separately addressed in the substantive security analysis, while Venezuela is not mentioned at all.
Dutch Defense Minister Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius submitted the Strategic Monitor on September 1 to both chambers of the Dutch Parliament as well as the parliaments of Curaçao, Aruba and Sint Maarten.
According to the minister, Dutch legislation on financial defense obligations requires an independent strategic monitor to be prepared at least once every four years examining trends and threats affecting the Kingdom’s vital interests.
Despite that Kingdom-wide framework, Clingendael’s central research question focuses on which developments through 2031 will affect Dutch military capabilities and what strategic choices these developments require from Defense.
Geographically, the report concentrates on Russia, Europe, the North Atlantic and Arctic regions, Europe’s southern periphery and the Indo-Pacific.
Curaçao appears only in the accompanying letter and administrative explanation noting that the report was sent to the parliaments of the three Caribbean countries of the Kingdom. Aruba appears in the same context.
The word “Caribbean” appears substantively only once near the end of the report, in a future scenario involving technological advances that could make it increasingly possible to predict and potentially influence extreme weather patterns in regions including the Pacific and Caribbean.
Venezuela, located just tens of kilometers from Curaçao and Aruba, does not appear in the monitor.
That omission is notable because other Dutch security assessments have explicitly identified developments in Venezuela as potentially relevant to the security of the Caribbean part of the Kingdom.
In its 2025 annual report, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) warned that developments in Venezuela and increasing tensions between Venezuela and the United States were creating concerns “in and about the Caribbean part of the Kingdom.”
The MIVD and the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) have also been jointly examining political and military developments in Venezuela and possible spillover effects for the Kingdom.
The Kingdom Security Strategy 2023–2029 similarly addresses the Caribbean region explicitly. It identifies migration from Venezuela, particularly toward Curaçao and Aruba, and points to the geopolitical interests of the United States, Russia and China in the region.
According to that strategy, competition among those powers could have consequences for the Caribbean countries and therefore for the Kingdom as a whole.
The Dutch Ministry of Defense itself has also referred this year to “unrest in the Caribbean region” as one of the security challenges facing the Netherlands. The Dutch naval station ship deployed in the Caribbean has, among its responsibilities, monitoring the security situation around the ABC islands.
The contrast raises questions about the geographical scope of the new Strategic Monitor. While the document was formally distributed throughout the Kingdom and is intended to contribute to assessments of the Kingdom’s vital interests, its substantive analysis largely leaves the Caribbean part of that same Kingdom outside the picture.