This week’s Nato summit in The Hague is the biggest security operation in the history of the Netherlands.

Some 27,000 police officers will be on duty for the two-day gathering, along with 10,000 military personnel. The border police have rostered in 9,000 extra shifts, in what is officially known as Operation Orange Shield.

Commuters in the Randstad, the densely populated coastal strip between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, have been urged to work from home if possible all week or expect long delays as a result of motorway closures.

Restrictions have been imposed on the skies and sea around The Hague and one runway of Schiphol airport has been reserved for the planes transporting government officials and dignitaries from 45 countries. Altogether 9,000 people are due to attend the summit, including 2,000 journalists.

The cost of the operation has swelled to €183 million, double the initial estimate when The Hague was announced as the venue for the summit a year ago, around the time former prime minister Mark Rutte was confirmed as the defence alliance’s new secretary-general.

Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, the national counter-terrorism co-ordinator, has conceded that the Dutch security apparatus has been stretched to its limit. “If we’d been given another 50 VIPs, we’d probably have been oversubscribed and had to look to international support,” he told Nieuwsuur in an interview.

Trump security

The biggest challenge is ensuring the safety of the 150 top government officials at the summit: heads of government, defence ministers and foreign ministers, including United States president Donald Trump.

The question of whether Trump will actually attend has dominated the build-up to the summit and raised its head again in the wake of the US air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities at the weekend.

But the Dutch have had to work on the assumption that he will be in The Hague on June 24 and 25, which has been the largest piece in an intricate security puzzle.

Trump is expected to keep his stay as brief as possible, flying in on Tuesday evening just before a dinner at Paleis ten Bosch hosted by king Willem-Alexander, where the guest list also includes Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

His armoured presidential limousine, known as “The Beast”, was photographed arriving at Schiphol airport on Saturday, the clearest sign yet that Trump will attend.

The identity of the president’s hotel is officially a secret, but it is widely understood that he will be staying at Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, 30 kilometres up the coast from The Hague.

Risk management

It is the hotel where President Barack Obama stayed when The Hague hosted the nuclear security summit in 2014. Metal fences have been erected around the building, the beach has been closed off and the 36 cabins on the Bella Vista ferris wheel have been taken down after it was deemed a security risk.

Aalbersberg admitted that it was impossible to eliminate all risks without shutting the Netherlands down completely for two days. “And then we wouldn’t have a nice country,” he said.

“So it’s a matter of risk management – being well prepared if things go badly, and training for it, is just as important as preventing things.”

The complexity of the task was illustrated at the weekend when it emerged that eight self-declared “sovereign citizens” had been arrested in the run-up to the summit on suspicion of plotting a violent attack.

The “sovereigns” are a loosely co-ordinated group who reject the authority of the Dutch state. They refuse to pay taxes or fines or register their addresses with the local council, as required by law.

The movement is generally regarded as non-violent, but police reportedly found weapons, drugs and explosives at the suspects’ homes last week.

Aalbersberg said there were no indications of a “substantial threat” to the summit, but it underlines the wide range of potential threats, from Russian cyberattacks and international terrorism to home-grown militias.

Road closures

“The unusual thing about this summit is that it was announced well in advance,” he said. “So people with bad intentions have had plenty of time to prepare. So just because we haven’t seen anything yet doesn’t mean things won’t be different tomorrow.”

Local restrictions include the closure of the A44 motorway between Wassenaar and Leiden, the N44 from The Hague to Wassenaar and a stretch of the A5 motorway past Schiphol airport. Two lanes of the A4 connecting Schiphol to the A44 have been reserved for summit traffic.

The Johan de Wittlaan, which runs past the World Forum and is one of the main roads connecting The Hague to Amsterdam, has been closed since April to make room for a temporary campus for the 9,000 delegates.

Trees have been uprooted and the famous parade of world flags outside the venue has been taken down. The road will remain closed for another six weeks after the summit until everything has been put back in place.

Air and sea

Naval ships are patrolling the coastline off Scheveningen and Noordwijk, which is closed to all vessels apart from fishing trawlers that need to use the harbour, while helicopters, F-35 fighter jets and land-based air defence installations are monitoring the skies.

People living in the zoned-off area around the World Forum have been advised to have their mail and deliveries redirected and collect their newspapers from a stand outside the fences, as only residents are allowed inside the cordon.

The organisers have also had to deal with threats that were not present at the nuclear summit 10 years ago. Dozens of drones have been confiscated in the last week because of a ban on airborne devices in a 16-kilometre (10-mile) circle around The Hague.

A secure computer network has been set up for the summit with 30,000 metres of cables. because local wifi networks are deemed too vulnerable to hackers.

Demonstrations expected

Security services are on the alert for disinformation following the experience of the 2023 summit in Lithuania, when Russian-linked groups issued fake press releases suggesting Nato was planning to send Ukrainian troops to France to put down local protests.

Protests are another potential headache for the organisers. Aalbersberg has insisted the right to protest will be respected, but in practice demonstrations will be tightly monitored and the official protest zone outside the venue only has space for around 100 people.

Around 5,000 people took part in a demonstration against the summit on Sunday, marching from Central Station to the Peace Palace. Around 15 other protests have been registered with the city council during the summit, including a blockade of the A12 motorway by environmental group Extinction Rebellion.