BREAKING: “Later this week, Denmark and the US will sign a defence cooperation agreement”

Jan Oberg

December 19, 2023

It’s a damn good thing we have Washington to inform the Danes about what’s coming, right before Christmas when people are thinking about everything else.

The procedure is completely obscene: An agreement is first signed (as with Norway, Finland and Sweden), and then it must (possibly) be approved by the Danish parliament: How on earth would it be possible for Denmark to withdraw and say that “thanks to our democracy, we unfortunately have to cancel the agreement again”?

It’s not going to happen. Public debate until later this week?? The Danish historically uniquely authoritarian government wants no debate – can’t tolerate it intellectually or morally.

Two to four decades ago, this fundamental Danish security policy issue would have been the subject of a public, broad-based commission report that would have analysed the pros and cons of various imagined conflict and war scenarios.

And then there would have been a reasonable public debate.

Now, the Frederiksen government is fixing Denmark’s American future during the Christmas holidays. It’s completely irresponsible, but they don’t realise that; to them, everything is so damn simple.

It can only go wrong one day. Even the failure of NATO’s expansion and the rearmament of Ukraine or other blind loyalty policies in favour of the US apparently doesn’t make anyone responsible stop and think.

Danmarks Radio – DR public ‘service’ – of course only interviews one military person dressed in military uniform inside and outside. It doesn’t strike them that this man from the Danish Defence Academy is a clear party to the case, obviously positive, and certainly not an impartial expert.

He has the nerve to say that American weapons should now be pre-stocked in Denmark because it would “take far too long to get things transported here from the US, says Anders Puck Nielsen.”

Oh – and you find this out just like that now after Denmark’s 74-year NATO membership where the cornerstones have always been: No foreign bases, no foreign troops, no pre-storage, no nuclear weapons on Danish soil and no cooperation with the NATO nuclear planning group?

All this will be cancelled over Christmas. Just so you know. As a trifle, an expedition case

The journalists don’t ask questions but hold a megaphone; they don’t ask what this means: that the US can conduct “military operations in our neighbourhood, thereby improving our own security!” (my italics)

Which operations? And how exactly do pre-stocking and these military operations in Denmark’s neighbourhood contribute to improving “our own security”? It’s clear-cut propaganda without the slightest analysis or relation to the real world. An empty claim.

Whatever the US and the Frederiksen government do over people’s heads – in worse than Putin-style – is simply and by definition good for “our security”.

In no time at all, I would be able to provide solid arguments that all of this increases Denmark’s insecurity, that it is much more complex and deserve analysis before any decision is made:

That it shortens the warning and possible negotiation time in a crisis; that this is a further provocation that Russia will view negatively; that this agreement in its consequences will force Denmark into war earlier than otherwise and reduce the Danish government’s first duty: To enforce Denmark’s legal and political sovereignty and decision-making rights over its own future, etc. (The most important question for any government is: Should we or should we not participate in war?)

Furthermore, that any US base – now 30-40 in the Nordic region? – will be an immediate target for Russian rockets in the first hours of a war, and death and destruction for miles around is guaranteed. That the US already has 600+ bases around the world and is a sick militaristic system that has lost all its wars and can never get enough weapons and bases.

And that Denmark will be even less allowed to promote mediation, the UN, international disarmament, confidence-building measures, international law, etc. because it is, in practice, the extended arm of the US and not (in this area) a sovereign state.

At DR, they have no idea how important this issue is. Or maybe someone is pulling the strings from above and doing it this way, precisely because they know that this is the biggest break with Danish foreign and security policy since 1949 and that critical questions about the US will not be raised with impunity.

This agreement will be made with the most belligerent and mass-murdering country since 1945. At a time when that country is fully behind – actively supporting – what is indisputably the largest genocide in the West since the war.

If you sleep in a democracy, you risk waking up in a dictatorship – as a wise man is said to have said.

This is – I repeat – indecent and highly security-reducing. With 45 years of scientific experience in theory and practice in these areas, I know a little about these things. I must sound the alarm – even though I know that no Danish media, also not DR, would seek my and others’ critical analyses and perspectives.

This is militarism. This is how the cancer-like MIMAC works – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – which has never had such a tailwind in the West, in Denmark, as it has today.

Danish policy promotes the risk of World War III at a time when anything else would be both conceivable and possible. Denmark is on the wrong side of history; the world wants a different path than that of the US. And Denmark.

Now, every honest, peaceful Dane (regardless of their opinion on the matter as such) must simply take to the streets and protest against the government’s ever-increasing abuse of power and ever-increasing blind loyalty to the US as it continues to recklessly jeopardise Denmark’s future well-being.

PhD, Peace & future researcher + ‌Art Photographer, Professor Emeritus and media commentator

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Below are TFF-related media mentions, comments, videos and social media posts published elsewhere but not on this homepage. We happen to catch and list only a fraction. Regarding video comments and debates, we recommend that you go to the TFF Video Channel on Substack where many of them are reproduced. Jan Oberg is a contributor to China Daily – 52 million daily clicks – and Global Times, CGTN and CCTV (the national television), China Investment, Xinhua News Agency and several others. Articles and videos on these media very often multiply into countless Chinese (and Western media) that re-post them from these main media. Thanks to The China Academy, his analyses, interviews and comments are frequently posted on YouTube channels such as Thinkers Forum and Wave Media. These videos are often re-posted on Bilibili (China’s YouTube), the China Content Center on TikTok, and on the Chinese edition of TikTok, Douyin.com. This means reaching hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide over a year. While there are too many to catch on all these...