Jan Oberg

August 21, 2023

For Danish/Nordic readers, there is a Danish-language version here.

The unity is as uncompromising as it is dangerous in its consequences. No Danish politician, diplomat, researcher or journalist dares to take on the role of the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. Not even to get a debate going. About Denmark’s Ukraine/Russia/NATO policy.

The government, parliamentary parties and media suffer from extreme groupthink – a well-known social psychological concept. Groupthink rejects any alternative expertise, information and interpretation, and gradually convinces decision-makers that they are on the only possible right course – and that everyone else is uninformed, stupid or – in this case – “Putinists.”

Over time, groupthink leads to overconfident and catastrophic decisions because reality has been kept outside the group’s walls of infallibility, moral superiority and we-know-it-all for far too long.

There is only one narrative here: Everything is Russia/Putin’s fault, and we NATO countries have never done even the slightest thing wrong that could help explain why we are in the most dangerous situation for the world since 1945 – even despite the defensive, peacemaking NATO alliance’s brilliant efforts ever since 1949.

This also applies to all other US/NATO wars. They were morally and legally right, and if they weren’t, they are not talked about or compared with Ukraine. For kakistocrats who despise complex knowledge, nothing can be found or argued about. Russia’s limited war against Ukraine is hard to compare with NATO’s – the USA’s and also Denmark’s – barbarism in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc.

Her Majesty and the military-uniformed monarchy that never said the word “peace” did not have lunch with representatives of the victims of any of these devastated countries and predictably failed American wars – not one won, not one place better than before the war.

On Denmark’s public buildings and businesses, no flags were raised or facades illuminated in solidarity with the victims of those the US/NATO has mass murdered – 4-5 million in the Middle East since 9/11, according to US university research.

The show is only for those who are victims of Russia’s invasion. And to say that is, of course, “whataboutism” and Putinism, and then you are thankfully freed from thinking any further.

That is the intellectual and – worse – moral low point.

And it’s also a lie because nothing is that simple in international (security) politics, and there is no conflict in which all the bad guys are on one side and all the good guys are on the other.

It takes at least two to conflict. But here, NATO is the innocent homeowner who is constantly subjected to unpleasantness and threats from the Russian street urchin outside the gate. Self-examination is therefore not needed.

What could be parts of a larger explanation in time – the last 30 years since the Wall fell – and space – the declining power of the USA, NATO’s promise-breaking expansion, the permanent Cold War against Russia and now especially China, military responses to everything, including threats that do not have military responses, nuclear weapons and much more – is irrelevant to Denmark’s power managers, who do not manage the complexity – or perhaps do but must hide it to preserve US recognition (oh A4 sheet! ) and the existence of NATO – the provocative NATO that should have been dismantled when its raison d’etre collapsed and disappeared – namely the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.

All key leaders in the West promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch.” Although the evidence for these promises is in archives, in old media and in at least one 550-page research report, it is claimed – falsely – on both NATO and EU websites that such promises were never made.

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So there they are, Denmark’s formal top leaders, standing on the runway welcoming President Zelensky at Denmark’s Skrydstrup Air Base – like extras in USA/NATO and actor Zelensky’s khaki-clad play – absurd theatre (see top photo).

You don’t meet your friend and colleague (with the elegant tabloid press photo-op first lady by his side) at a civilian but at a military airfield, because that is part of the militarism that today is the foundation of Danish politics and which prevents even the slightest doubt about your own interpretation and excellent innocence and, furthermore, considers any thought of proper analysis, mediation, peacemaking, negotiations and other aspects of civil conflict resolution to be of no relevance whatsoever.

Any idiot can start a fight in a pub, but it takes knowledge, human experience and courage to stop it and help the conflicting parties to reconcile.

The group thinkers have no sense of the consequences of their actions in just 6-12 months’ time. It’s the present that counts because that’s what the media cameras record and, for example, the Danish public service broadcasting’s commentators focus on: How amazing and big is this donation, and with it, the fortunes of war will turn around…

Volodymyr Zelenskyj and Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (Social Democrat) in a Danish F16 fighter aircraft
(Foto: © Mads Claus Rasmussen, Ritzau Scanpix)

It’s a populist media show with infantile elements à la Volodymyr and Mette as enchanted, laughing children up there in the F16 fighter plane on display for the occasion. It’s a political sport as opium for a people who have been deprived of the right to a more complex narrative thanks to a mysteriously orchestrated media campaign – His Master’s Voice from Washington.

In a nutshell: War, armament and F16s are peace.

And that’s a lie too.

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The Prime Minister even has the nerve to claim that she knows that the entire Danish people are behind her and Ukraine. This is a lie in the precise sense that there are some Danes – admittedly numerically few, so far – who have clearly distanced themselves from both Russia’s invasion and NATO/EU’s ill-informed, ill-conceived and self-destructive response to that invasion.

We are some – and not entirely devoid of knowledge and experience – who for years have argued that it would go horribly wrong if you insisted on also getting Ukraine – precisely Ukraine – into NATO. We are together with a host of international Russia and other experts, but the media is silent within its self-censoring walls.

We even allow ourselves to believe that only a negotiated solution and not just only arming Ukraine as NATO’s proxy in the fight against Russia (whose military costs are 8% of NATO’s) can save the parties from something far, far worse, namely a major war in Europe, possibly with the use of nuclear weapons.

We believe – that’s how far out we are – that when you live together in a little piece of land called Europe, it’s common sense to take others into account and also how they view what we do. It’s called common security and is a 40-year-old concept.

Denmark’s politicians have never heard of it. They can only say “deterrence” and none of them could talk about the actual definition of this concept, its possible good and problematic aspects, for two continuous minutes. They only know that this is the term used by the USA/NATO – btw just as carelessly.

Every time Denmark and other blind NATO countries take us all a small step closer to the abyss, the state-paid priesthood of researchers at state-funded institutions such as the Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS, and the Danish Defence Academy will tell us that the Russians will, of course, complain about this and call it red lines, but this step in itself does not increase the risk of a major war in the future – a little like the guy who throws himself off the 67th floor and thinks, “God, this is going well…” when he passes the 5th).

These are the same researchers who have been telling us for decades that Russia was Denmark/NATO’s biggest threat that we had to guard against. They fail to recognise how Russia’s legitimate interests have been ignored by NATO for three decades – the Russia that was on its knees and in which every president from Gorbachev onwards has wanted to join NATO or create a common security order in Europe.

The extremely provocative NATO has no right to exist if it cannot postulate that it has enemies – real, self-created or imagined.

Despite this threat, Denmark can suddenly “donate” 19 F16 aircraft. Some believe that’s all the ones that can fly today; others believe about 30 of them can. In practice, Denmark does not have an air force anymore.

So it has been a lie all along that Denmark was threatened and had to rearm to this and that foolishly anti-intellectual percentage of GDP (the military should not be regulated according to the development of the economy but according to a serious threat analysis). How else can you decide to give away 19 aircraft while there is a war in Europe and the Danes are forced to swallow the propaganda every day that Russia is threatening them – that after Ukraine, Putin will take this and that country? What would Denmark defend itself with when the Russians/Putin fly in to occupy their country?

And how was the decision to donate 19 of them made?

Apparently, not in the Danish Parliament; this kind of thing is handled democratically and directly with the USA. To be at the front of the cockpit when it comes to showing Denmark’s foolhardy courage with its hand on the hotplate of militarism.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter: All the parties in the Danish Parliament believe the same thing, from right to left, as the Prime Minister emphasises. Peace, they all believe, must be created through war – years or decades of war and a total, permanent division of Europe for generations to come.

Militarism has never bothered to use democracy for anything!

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And the self-deception in all this?

Well, the outwardly steadfast and morally convenient belief that if we in NATO/EU just stand together a little more, we and Ukraine will win over “the bad guys”. While playing the game of Russia as the great threat, the NATO statists hope and believe that there will be no price to be paid in the future.

The West has given Ukraine well over $100 billion worth of arms and ammunition. NATO’s armouries are depleted, the arms industry runs 24/7. Yet Ukraine’s counter-offensive has been an exemplary – quite predictable – military failure. The country’s corruption-ravaged economy is at rock bottom – it was even before the war. Millions have fled to a Europe that in 2015 could not cope with 1.5 million Muslims fleeing the US/NATO wars. Over 20% of Ukraine’s territory is controlled by Russia. The number of civilian and military deaths since the invasion varies between tens and hundreds of thousands. In addition, there are the mentally and physically wounded, displaced and suicide victims.

Young Ukrainian men are picked up around the community and sent to the front. A generation will be lost.

It’s only 18 months since the war began. The F16 should be usable in 12-15 months at best. And that’s when the military and militant civilian experts (the only ones the main Danish media use) say that the F16s will prove to be insanely big and important … and will probably turn the tide of war.

We’ve just seen several drones strike Moscow from Ukraine – just wait until Zelensky (if he’s alive and at the helm by then) or the people behind him decide to use the Danish-Ukrainian F16s over Russia. How could Denmark or the US prevent that from happening in a far more desperate situation?

Moscow will remember where they came from. And that’s no small thing. Here are publically known Danish weapons donated to Ukraine:

The F16 donation also comes at a time when NATO is further reinforcing itself and Poland is becoming a bigger player on “our” side and Belarus on “their” side. The risk of proliferation is growing. Finland wants to build US bases close to the border with Russia…a new Ukraine in the making?

Whatever happens, the Danish NATO statists couldn’t care less about such things. We just need to win, stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes and de facto fight Russia, which we have cheated with NATO’s headless Ukraine policy, to the last Ukrainian.

This is a NATO-Russia conflict that actors since Clinton have caused, including the US-led and funded regime change in Kiev in 2014, which led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and gave full support to the civil war that cost the lives of 15,000 mainly Russian-speaking Ukrainians. In contrast, the war is Russia’s responsibility.

Politicians who cannot or will not understand how wars grow out of conflicts are a danger to their country and to peace in general. Because the underlying conflict is always the key to resolution, never the escalation of violence.

By the way, I wonder why those who loved to talk about ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslavia days have not once mentioned the words ‘ethnic cleansing’ in connection with Ukraine?

Well, because, of course, a combined lie and self-deception is that Ukraine is fighting for our values – the freedom of Ukrainians is our freedom, Ukraine’s democracy is our democracy – and similar populist nonsense.

Controlling the narrative media manipulation or directing the conversation as censorship or political persuasion to control the story as a symbol of a powerful puppet master in a 3D illustration style.

In short, however, this is the state of democracy and human rights in Ukraine today:

Until the invasion, not a single opinion poll in Ukraine showed that Ukrainians wanted NATO membership. At most, 15% were in favour. Far more wanted an agreement with Russia, and 60-70% wanted the issue to be decided in a referendum. But they never got it because the regime change gave the new pro-Western leader, the chocolate king Poroshenko, full support to build up the Ukrainian military and to declare in parliament that it should simply be written into the country’s constitution that Ukraine should become a NATO member.

This dictatorial policy, provoked by the West, met its Waterloo partly when everyone in NATO/EU ignored everything about the Minsk agreements to cheat Russia – and partly in Vilnius, where NATO just a few weeks ago, with Biden at the helm, proclaimed to an exhausted Zelensky’s open regret that he could forget about NATO membership. NATO has promised Ukraine membership since 2008.

But – said Biden and therefore also PM Frederiksen – we will support your military struggle against Russia, our common enemy, and let you and your people bleed to death in your noble fight for our common values and your impressive democracy’s fight against the dictatorial aggressor…

And the self-deception in that?

That Ukraine is a de facto presidential regime that has shut down all opposition media and opposition parties. That pacifists are persecuted. That no European country has a more important element of neo-Nazism. As I just mentioned, the people did not want NATO membership until the invasion. That people like myself are on the Ukrainian Security Council’s list of experts to be tried by a military tribunal – in my case for having taken a crystal clear stand against Russia’s invasion but argued against the rearmament of Ukraine and in favour of a negotiated solution.

Furthermore, Ukraine has abolished Russian as an official language, removed everything such as statues that remind people of Russia and changed street names to honour old Nazis and people like Stepan Bandera.

Of course, these facts are just plain Putinism, of no importance to the NATO extras standing on Skrydstrup’s runway stage. They probably pray every night that Volodymyr will be safe in the saddle for decades to come – something those who lose defence wars don’t often do.

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Today, Denmark is led by a Social Democratic prime minister who is even more irresponsible than Fogh Rasmussen himself. At least his illegal co-occupation of Iraq 2003-2007 did not risk a major war with Russia or a Western economic crisis, nor did it contribute to the West’s global self-isolation and ever-deepening economic crisis. And his friends in Washington didn’t blew up something like Nordstream, either.

And the Danish F16s to Ukraine has only one effect: to make the end of this tragic war even much more difficult. The government doesn’t realise it, but those planes are handed over to a bleeding loser nation and their absence makes Denmark itself more insecure – according to their own way of thinking, not mine (I argued against Denmark’s purchase of the F16 in 1975).

It’s all done to appease the destructive policies of the US empire and NATO during the decline and coming fall of both. Denmark is now safely placed in the minority of max 15% of humanity that the rest will eventually turn their backs on.

The West has become so dangerous to itself and the Rest because of the combination of systematic intellectual and moral disarmament and blind militaristic rearmament as the answer to all problems.

This will come at a high price in the near future. For example, neither our children nor our grandchildren will live in a peaceful Europe of common understanding and cooperation. Russia has turned to the East and South. The Prime Minister, who has a degree in African studies, should be able to see where Africa and the BRICS countries are heading. And that it is not to the West.

In the special sense that I have used the words lie and self-deception here (see below again), any security and foreign policy that is based on them instead of on a complex understanding and independent thinking will sooner or later collapse. Namely, when reality smashes inexorably through the walls of groupthink and neither self-deception nor lies will function as a protective suit anymore.

With the donation of 19 F16 aircraft to Ukraine without a single policy for a civil-diplomatic conflict resolution, the government under Mette Frederiksen’s blunt leadership is leading Denmark deeper into militarism and the Western world’s consequent self-isolation.

In other words, it is not the Danes’ interests her government is looking after. It is the interests of the USA, NATO and the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAK).

There are words, even in peacetime, for policies that prioritise foreign interests over those of the nation. At least as long as something called nation-states and national security policy exist.

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Note

(a) The words lie and self-deception are not used here to characterise the personalities in this game. Lie is used as empirically untrue regardless of the motive of the person promoting or telling the lie. The word self-deception is about using lies and inadequate knowledge or fake or propaganda effects to solidify a world and situation perception that stands in the way of a reasonably adequate perception of reality, and that will surprise the persons who have deceived themselves when a reality check occurs one day.

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