Research by military scientist Huib Zijderveld shows that the domestic deployment of the armed forces during COVID-19 closely followed the course of the crisis. In the first phase, Defence was cautious: civilian organizations were still able to cope with the situation, and the principle that the military should only be used as a “last resort” was strictly applied. From the spring of 2020 onwards, this changed. As pressure on the healthcare system increased, Defence became ever more closely involved. To organize this, new organizations and networks were quickly created.
These initiatives often did not arise from existing plans, but from practical necessity. Crisis managers saw that the regular system was falling short and took the initiative to bring people and resources together. Over the course of 2020, these temporary solutions were formalized to make cooperation more efficient and stable. In 2021, the role of Defence as a last resort was explicitly laid down in operational plans.
Something had to be done
The contribution of military personnel mainly provided temporary relief and was not a structural solution to the problems in healthcare. Notably, it was not so much the number of deployed soldiers that was decisive, but their expertise in crisis coordination and logistics. In addition, Zijderveld shows that motivation at the operational level played a major role. Military personnel felt a moral co-responsibility for the suffering in healthcare institutions and often fully integrated into civilian teams. Cooperation therefore arose not only from political choices or from the availability of resources within Defence, but also from a broadly shared feeling: something had to be done.
At the same time, Zijderveld points to the tensions that this deployment entails. The armed forces are primarily an organization oriented toward the use of force and territorial defense. An overly large or too self-evident domestic role can lead to the militarization and politicization of civilian domains. However, he also shows that this risk does not automatically increase. Civil–military networks often prove to be temporary in nature: they grow during a crisis and disappear again when the necessity fades.
Societal implications
New threats, such as climate change and preparation for (hybrid) conflicts, call for rapid and effective cooperation between civilian and military organizations. At the same time, Zijderveld warns that the rapid acceptance of Defence during crises may, in the long term, contribute to a creeping normalization of military deployment.
The core message is therefore that civilian control is not a given, but requires continuous maintenance. During the coronavirus crisis, the combination of formal rules and informal control through trust and daily cooperation worked relatively well in the Netherlands. Liaison officers and military personnel on the ground in particular played a key role by enabling cooperation while simultaneously safeguarding boundaries.
According to Zijderveld’s research, it is crucial in future crises to explicitly define the goals, expectations, and limits of military support, and to review these regularly. In addition, civilian control can be strengthened by giving this structural attention in the training of crisis managers, civil servants, and officers. In this way, the armed forces remain deployable when truly necessary, without the line between military and civilian quietly becoming blurred.