Background
Born on August 28, 1911, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns grew up in a family with six children and a father who was a painter, teacher, author of art books, and finally a museum director.
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Born on August 28, 1911, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns grew up in a family with six children and a father who was a painter, teacher, author of art books, and finally a museum director.
Luns moved to Amsterdam at a young age and was educated in a Roman Catholic high school, St. Ignatius College in Amsterdam, as well as in the Institut St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium. He read law at the University of Leyden and the University of Amsterdam, taking his degree at the latter school in 1937. He subsequently took courses at the London School of Economics (in political economy) and at the "Deutsche Institute fur Auslander" at the University of Berlin. The only interruption in his education came in a year's service with the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1931, when he was drafted into the military to be a signalman.
He had honorary degrees from Harvard University, Oxford University, and other universities.
In 1938 Luns entered the Dutch foreign service. He rose through the customary grades, his last being that of counselor of embassy (1950). His early career was rudely interrupted by the German invasion and occupation of The Netherlands in 1940, at which time Luns joined the government-in-exile, based in Britain, and he spent the war years fulfilling assignments for that resistance effort. He was posted to Berne (1940-1941), Lisbon (1941-1943), and London, where he served out the remainder of the war and later at the reconstituted embassy until 1949. His final position with the foreign service was as a member of the Dutch delegation to the United Nations from 1949 until 1952.
Luns's remarkable career as leader of Dutch foreign policy blossomed in 1952, with the creation of a coalition government in the wake of elections that year. The sharing of power between the Labor Party and the Catholic People's Party (to which Luns belonged) not only created a broad-based cabinet, but also the sharing of certain posts among more than one person. In the case of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Luns shared the position with J. W. Beyen until 1956. Subsequently, Luns was appointed to the position in his own right after successive elections in 1959, 1963, 1967, and 1971. In each case, Luns stood for election to a parliamentary seat and, according to Dutch law specifying that a person may not be both a member of Parliament and a minister for more than three months, resigned his parliamentary seat within months of being elected. In the process Luns served under seven different prime ministers and lent a remarkable degree of continuity to Dutch foreign policy during the period of construction of the European Community and of transition through decolonization for European countries.
Having been a signatory of the Treaty of Rome, Luns was one of the initiators of the scheme to allow African countries that were not former colonies of member states to establish relations with the European Economic Community. His attention to the problems of Africa, Asia, and Latin America was only one theme he carried over from his Dutch responsibilities to his broader European and alliance responsibilities. Luns also argued strongly for expansion of the European Community to include Britain and other European countries. His efforts in this direction were constantly frustrated by the position of President Charles de Gaulle of France, especially in the consideration of expansion in the early 1960s. Luns left the foreign ministry when the European Community was expanded in 1973.
It was a natural transition for Luns to move to the work of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization when he was invited to take up the position of secretary-general by vote of the NATO foreign ministers on June 4, 1971. His view of the importance of Western unity made NATO a natural pulpit from which he could preach the necessity for joint planning and action. Luns had, of course, an extensive background in NATO affairs from his Dutch service: he had represented The Netherlands on the NATO Council for many years and, indeed, had presided over the celebration of the tenth anniversary of NATO in 1959 in Washington and Norfolk.
Luns's views as secretary-general were only occasionally controversial. He was solidly pro-American, even during the period of the Vietnam War, and entered into public disagreement with the United States only over issues of diplomatic style. He faced major internal problems in NATO during his tenure, including the sometimes violent disagreements between Greece and Turkey, the challenges of increasing defense spending levels, and the dissension caused by disarmament and arms control talks with the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. He supported modernization of NATO weapons and deployments to meet Soviet military growth, particularly in the debates over Pershing II missiles, enhanced radiation warheads, and cruise missiles. Over time his political conservatism cost him some popularity, but that did not deter him from saying what he considered right.
In October of 1983 Luns announced his retirement as secretary-general of NATO. One of his last accomplishments before turning over the reigns to Lord Peter Carrington of England was a general agreement to update technology for conventional weapons so NATO would be less reliant on nuclear arms.
Luns retired as Secretary-General in 1984, staying in office for a full 13 years. Because of the changes the 1960s and 1970s had brought to Dutch society and culture, the strongly conservative Luns decided not to return to his home country but instead settled in Brussels to spend his remaining years in retirement. Luns died at 90.
Luns was one of the most popular Dutch politicians of the time, famous for his dry wit and ready puns. He played an essential role among European foreign policy figures in creating and maintaining the alliance and community structures of the post-World War II era. His most visible position was as secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 1971 until 1984.
Luns was awarded many high-ranking awards during his lifetime, among them the Grand Cross of the Légion d'Honneur in 1954, Member of Order of the Companions of Honour by Queen Elizabeth II in 1971 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then President Ronald Reagan in 1984. In his home country, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, the highest civil decoration of the Netherlands, in 1953.
Luns remained a practising Catholic throughout his life and was generally sympathetic to the traditionalist Catholic position but never affiliated himself with dissident groups. Luns visited the Tridentine Mass held by the Assumptionist priest Winand Kotte, who opposed the modernising policies of the Second Vatican Council, in the Saint Wilibrord Church of Utrecht in August 1971. This seems to have been something of a misunderstanding on Luns' part however, who had never heard of Kotte's anti-Council movement and did not wish to be affiliated with it.
He survived a total of eight cabinets and stayed in office nineteen years continuously, becoming the longest-serving Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2 September 1952 until 6 July 1971. He retired from Dutch politics and became the 5th (and also longest-serving) Secretary General of NATO for 13 years from 1 October 1971 until 25 June 1984.
Luns was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the London School of Economics.
His favourite reading material included classical literature, history books (Luns was an expert on the history of the Napoleonic era) and detective novels, while his interests in international navies made the latest edition of Jane's Fighting Ships always be within reach in his office.
Luns was an avid stamp collector.
He was married to Baroness Elisabeth van Heemstra and had one son and one daughter.
