Ernst van der Beugel

Ernst van der Beugel  link Alchetron Wikidata (Economist, academic, businessman, deep politician)
File:Ernst van der Beugel.jpg
Born	2 February 1918 Amsterdam, Netherlands
Died	29 September 2004
Nationality	Dutch
Alma mater	University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Parents	Theodor Max van der Beugel, Sophia van Praag
Interests	Marshall Plan
Dutch deep politician, 34 Bilderbergs, on both the Advisory & Steering committees

Dr Ernst van der Beugel was a Dutch deep politician. He was a member of both the Bilderberg/Advisory Committee and Bilderberg/Steering committee. He visited 34 Bilderberg meetings. His public persona was an academic and businessman.

Background and Career in government

Van der Beugel graduated in economics from the University of Amsterdam in 1941.From 1945 to 1952 he was directly involved in the planning and implementation of post-war economic recovery, particularly in coordination with the Marshall Plan. He then switched from the Ministry of Economics to Foreign Affairs, at first continuing his role in coordinating the US-sponsored economic and military assistance programme, before becoming the State Secretary for European Affairs during 1957-58. .

Van der Beugel belonged to a realist stream of Atlanticism that wanted US leadership, based in NATO and extending into other policy fields, to provide the focal point for Western unity. The US security guarantee was the corner-stone for continuing West European stability and integrity. European integration was a necessity but should not trigger false – and dangerous – illusions of grandeur. US policy support for European unity therefore placed van der Beugel and other Dutch Atlanticists in the position of "more American than the Americans"

After official career

On 1 July 1959 his official connection with the Dutch government ended, and the mapping of his influence becomes sketchier. Van der Beugel had at least forty-eight board memberships and advisory posts, spanning the 1950s to the 1980s and covering everything from business, academia, and health to cultural exchange, economic planning, and security think tanks.

From 1966 to 1983 he was very influential as Professor of Western Cooperation after World War II at the University of Leiden, a host of future members of the Dutch diplomatic corps passing through his classes, including Secretary General of NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, remarking that professor van der Beugel was a major influence on his political thinking as a student.

Kissinger

Henry Kissinger and van der Beugel first met in 1957, when Kissinger was Associate Professor at Harvard and recently appointed Associate Director of the think tank Center for International Affairs. He was touring Europe following the publication of his book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. At the time, van der Beugel was the Secretary of State for European Cooperation in the Dutch Foreign Ministry, and Kissinger was introduced to him thanks to a suggestion of the then US Ambassador to the Netherlands, H. Freeman Matthews. Kissinger was always active in meeting and tracking rising talents on the European scene, and as Director of the Harvard International Seminar he would invite many of them to the US.

Despite the increasing intensity of their professional lives, their contact developed considerably over the ensuing years. Yet in the recent major biographies of Kissinger, fueled by the opening of archival material from his time at the helm of US foreign policy, no mention is made of this friendship.

Bilderberg

In 1959 van der Beugel, who already knew Prince Bernhard through his government work, came into more regular contact with him through their common association with the Dutch airline KLM. The Prince invited to become the group’s chairman, succeeding Joseph Retinger, and he attended his first Bilderberg meeting in Turkey later that same year to assume this new role. Van der Beugel stated openly that it not only provided a second-to-none source for his research on transatlantic relations, but it also opened doors for the expansion of his own activities into the boardrooms of Xerox, Petrofina, and General Electric.

Deep Politics

In 1966 Ernst van der Beugel received a Ph.D. from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1966 on the dissertation From Marshall plan to Atlantic Partnership (with a foreword by Henry Kissinger). He spoke at the European Atlantic Group as Secretary-General of the Bilderberg group on "Atlantic Partnership" and became a member of the elite Bilderberg Advisory Committee. In all, he visited 34 Bilderberg meetings.

Ernst van der Beugel and Max Kohnstamm prepared a paper on Western Europe and America in the Seventies for the 1970 Bilderberg. Van der Beugel wrote on The State of the Atlantic Alliance for the 1974 Bilderberg