Denmark: who is pushing for war?

In recent weeks, one event after another has threatened to plunge the world into a major war. This is true both in Ukraine and in the Middle East. We are told that the only aggressors are the enemies of the West. But who is actually pushing for further escalation?

[Editors note: this article was originally published in Danish on marxist.dk. It was published before the dramatic escalation of events in the Middle East, but we believe its conclusions retain all their force.]

On 17 September, the Danish state broadcaster, DR, published a sensational article titled: Secret psychological war plan revealed: Russia wants to hit the West with 'nuclear psychosis'. In the article, DR ‘reveals’ a Russian scare campaign “to make Europeans fear a new world war.”

DR demonstrates this scare campaign with the example of a fake social media post from a non-existent European person: “I don't want my country to enter into an open confrontation with Russia. Is it really not clear that our actions could lead to World War III? Russia is not our enemy.” In the article, senior researcher Flemming Splidsboel from the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) states that “the message of the campaign is effective because we all fear nuclear war.”

Since the article was published, the situation has escalated in both the Middle East and Ukraine, and the fear of it developing into a major war has become widespread. The Danish media consistently blames every escalation on the other side.

What has become clear in recent years is that, far from being objective, all major Danish media outlets are on the side of western imperialism. If we look past the media propaganda and analyse the global situation, it becomes clear that the biggest threat of escalation is western, including Danish, imperialism. 

The propaganda machine is on a roll

War is fought on the battlefield with tanks, missiles and soldiers. But war is also fought on the home front, through psychological warfare, propaganda and scare campaigns. This is undoubtedly happening on both sides. DR’s so-called ‘revelation’ of a Russian scare campaign is not much of a revelation at all. The Russians are undoubtedly trying to scare people in the West.

But to be frank, they don’t need to put much effort into it. They are already receiving plenty of help from Danish politicians and the media themselves, who have been working overtime with their propaganda machine ever since the start of the war in Ukraine. Again and again we have been told that ‘the Russians are coming’ and that an invasion is imminent.

At the end of August, all Danes received an email from the Danish Emergency Management Agency titled, “Preparing for crises,” advising people to stockpile enough supplies to last for three days. The message does not directly mention war, but one of the reasons given for the message is “the deteriorating security situation in Europe”. 

This message from the Emergency Management Agency is a much more potent scare tactic than anything the Russians have attempted since the beginning of the war in Ukraine in 2022. It is just the latest example of the propaganda the government has been churning out since the war began.

After the Nord Stream gas pipeline was blown up, then Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod launched an operation to surveille the social media accounts of people who suggested that anyone other than Russia could have been behind the blasts. He labelled speculation about whether Ukraine or the US could have committed the sabotage as “false claims”. Anyone who is not fully supportive of Ukraine, we are told, is in Putin’s pocket and is labelled a ‘fifth columnist’.

It has now emerged that the Russians were not actually behind the Nord Stream blast after Germany issued an arrest warrant for a number of Ukrainian citizens who they believe were behind the attack. At the time, we in the Revolutionary Communist Party in Denmark were more or less the only ones to point out that it seemed highly unlikely that the Russians were behind it. 

Nord Stream was built to supply Europe with cheap Russian gas. For the Russians, it served as effective leverage against Europe in general, and Germany in particular, whose economy was hit hard by the blast. In recent weeks, several Danish journalists have admitted that they bought into the propaganda and abandoned all journalistic ethics under pressure from the government’s narrative.

If anyone is stirring up fear among the Danish people, it is Danish politicians and media. The aforementioned article from DR is just the latest instance of this. Their function is unequivocally one of supporting the politicians’ and the rest of the ruling class’ narrative about the war in Ukraine, so that the population can more easily swallow its consequences. Anyone who dares to question the official narrative that the war is an expression of Putin’s insanity, or who refuses to support endless military aid to Ukraine, is directly or indirectly labelled a traitor.

We in the Revolutionary Communist Party of Denmark have no intention of succumbing to this propaganda, as the majority of the left has already done. We will not be deterred. 

We do not support Putin in any way. He is reactionary and is waging war in Ukraine for his own imperialist interests. But we will not be cowed into the other camp, to the side of western imperialism. On the contrary, our duty as revolutionaries is to present an independent class perspective: both sides in this war are reactionary and imperialist. Instead of going along with the propaganda, we must explain that western imperialism, including Danish imperialism, is the most reactionary force on the globe and expose who the real warmongers in the world are at this time.

Danish warmongers

In the weeks after DR’s article was published, the question was raised as to whether the West should allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles against targets inside Russia itself. This would represent a huge escalation in the war by the West, but it was hardly covered in the Danish media.

Danish politicians are not known to hold back and have proven themselves to be some of the most rabid warmongers / Image: President.gov.ua, Wikimedia Commons

The question of whether NATO would allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles is a step up from the previous occasions that NATO has donated military equipment to Ukraine. Long-range missiles cannot be operated without American personnel, and therefore it would mean direct US involvement in acts of war on Russian soil. If permission to use such long-range missiles on Russian territory is granted, it would mark a new stage in the conflict, whereby NATO soldiers would become actively involved in hostilities against Russia. This would amount to nothing less than a declaration of war by NATO against Russia, which would risk escalation into a direct confrontation between two nuclear powers.

The threat of such authorisation by the West prompted Putin to warn: “It will fundamentally change the very essence and character of the conflict. It will mean that the NATO countries, the US and European countries, will wage war against Russia. In that case, we will take appropriate countermeasures based on the threats that are facing us.”

This has caused the US to put its foot on the brake and, for now, it seems that the Americans, who are ultimately the ones who would have to approve their usage, are holding back.

Danish politicians, however, are not known to hold back and have proven themselves to be some of the most rabid warmongers. Denmark is one of the most vocal supporters of Ukraine and has given the most money per capita of any country to Ukraine’s war effort. The Danish government, along with the British government, has led the war hysteria against Russia. They accuse Russia of fear-mongering, but with their completely irresponsible behaviour, it is the Danish politicians who are pushing us closer to world war.

In early September, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Troels Lund Poulsen attended a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, a US-led initiative. The more than 50 participating countries discussed whether they should support the Ukrainians’ desire for long-range missiles. Denmark was among the countries wholeheartedly supporting this request. Lund Poulsen stated: 

“Denmark has always said that Ukraine should have a free hand to fight Russia in whatever way is necessary. This means having the potential to launch attacks inside Russia to destroy the supply lines that the Russians use.”

With this statement, he is completely in line with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who said at a NATO summit in July:

“They [Ukraine] pay the highest price, but this is first and foremost about a Russia that wants to decide what happens deep inside European countries. We can't allow that, so we have to shift gears.”

And further, commenting on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s peace mediation, she said: 

“You can’t be on a peace mission to Russia. We have tried, but we have nothing to talk to Putin about anymore. And we in Europe will soon have to realise that Russia does not want peace. So we have to dare to do what the generations before us did: use military force to secure democracy and human rights.”

No one in the media questions such statements or their consequences. What is Mette Frederiksen, the Danish Prime Minister, actually saying here? She is openly stating that she sees no room for peace negotiations. She is stating that the West, including Denmark, must therefore “use military force”, the logical conclusion of which is that, if necessary, we must go to war with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power.

For Danish politicians to push for escalation and the use of long-range missiles by Ukraine – when the Russians say that this is equivalent to a declaration of war by NATO – is not only irresponsible, but completely brainless.

Zelensky is obviously a desperate man – it is now a matter of time before Ukraine loses its war with Russia. The only way it can continue is if Ukraine can manage to drag the West, led by the US, directly into the war on their side. In practice, this means that Zelensky needs to turn the current war into a third world war. This is the perspective Mette Frederiksen de facto supports with statements like those she’s given. Either she doesn't understand the implications of her own actions, or she is showing an astonishing indifference to human life.

This war-mongering not only meets no resistance in the media, but also in the Danish Parliament. The supposedly left-wing Unity List has taken the plunge and has become one of the most hysterical parliamentary supporters of the war in Ukraine. In February, the party adopted a statement demanding that the EU adopt a ban on European weapons exports out of the EU, so that all EU weapons could go to Ukraine instead:

“Every single bullet. Every single rocket. Every mortar shell produced in Europe must be sent to Ukraine.” 

There is not a single party in the Danish parliament that opposes the war hysteria. Quite the contrary, in fact.

‘Red lines’

Right now, the world’s media is speculating over whether Putin is bluffing, and politicians are making the same calculation. But as a British diplomat recently said: “Putin is bluffing, until he isn’t”. Danish politicians are assuming that a man they themselves portray (quite falsely) as ‘insane’ is currently simply bluffing. By their own logic, this is an extremely risky approach.

The entire years-long run-up to this war involved pushing the Russians to the brink again and again. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was seriously weakened. Despite promises to restrict NATO expansion to East Germany, US imperialism exploited Russia’s weakness and moved further and further east, expanding NATO right up to the Russian border. The US felt all-powerful. Pax Americana reigned supreme. American imperialism intervened in the former Soviet spheres of influence without Russia being able to do much about it.

Zelensky was elected president on a programme of making peace with Russia, but urged on by the far right and Washington, he pursued the exact opposite policy / Image: own work

But everything has a limit. For Russia, this was reached in 2008 with the US’ push for Georgian membership in NATO, which Russia put an end to through a short-lived war. With the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine in 2014, NATO once again strengthened its influence right at the Russian border. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and supporting the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In 2019, Zelensky was elected president on a programme of making peace with Russia, but urged on by the far right and Washington, he pursued the exact opposite policy. Instead, he ended up pushing for NATO membership and escalating the civil war in eastern Ukraine. In 2020, it was even written into Ukraine’s constitution that the country would apply to join NATO. This was not unreasonably seen as a threat by Russia, which has watched NATO, an explicitly hostile military alliance, press closer and closer to its borders for decades.

To clarify the implications of this, let us pose a hypothetical analogy. Imagine what would happen if it was Russia or China expanding its influence in Cuba and Central America. There is no way the US would accept this. We don’t even have to guess what their response would be: the US threatened military intervention in the Solomon Islands just weeks after the Ukraine war broke out, if it allowed China to set up a military base on this small island nation. The Solomon Islands are not even on the US border, but rather more than 10,000 kilometres away. The Americans still saw it as an intrusion by a hostile superpower into their sphere of influence.

Putin tried to stop the West’s incursion into Ukraine with the threat of military intervention to force American imperialism to the negotiating table. His demands were: no NATO membership for Ukraine, a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion, and security guarantees in Europe.

For a while, it seemed that the tensions could be resolved by peaceful means. Joe Biden said publicly that the question of Ukrainian NATO membership was not on the agenda in the near future and the Americans knew that allowing Ukraine to join NATO would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia.

But things changed. By August 2021, the West had suffered a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan on top of the major blows previously inflicted on the authority of American imperialism in Iraq and Syria. These were blows to US dominance on the world stage.

This opened up the danger that enemies and allies alike would recognise the situation and exploit it for their own benefit. Joe Biden therefore decided to play hardball in Ukraine and escalate the situation to avoid appearing weak. Putin, on the other hand, saw an opportunity to strike another blow against US imperialism, which he expected would be a quick war in Ukraine. Although neither side had an interest in armed conflict, when considered ‘logically’, war became a reality. We can see here how things take on a dynamic of their own, that unreason becomes reason.

Who are the aggressors?

Either Danish politicians naively believe that Putin will hold back forever, or they don’t care that they are pushing the world closer to World War III / Image: public domain

The war did not end as quickly as Putin had expected, however. This was primarily due to the West’s extensive military support. Cynically, the West has sacrificed tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives to their interests, which consist of weakening Russia as much as possible. US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, standing with Zelensky during his visit to the White House in early September, said:

“You’re trying to stop the Russians so we don’t have to fight them. They [the Ukrainians] don’t want American troops, just weapons to free their country from a terrible invasion. They’re sitting on a trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be useful to our economy. So I want to keep helping our friends in Ukraine."

The West has stubbornly rejected Putin’s claims that the West is the aggressor. But NATO’s aggressive behaviour in the decades leading up to the war was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Russia. Since the start of the war, the West has violated one Russian ‘red line’ after another. Starting with military helmets, they have escalated again and again with new, more advanced types of weaponry and with assistance in intelligence operations, training of Ukrainian soldiers, etc. In August, the first F16s were put into combat.

They have completely ignored the Russians’ repeated warnings. In May, for example, Putin warned the West that they could face “serious consequences” if European countries allowed Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia with their weapons, and yet, they have given their approval to such attacks.

Denmark has been one of the countries that has most blatantly ignored the Russians’ warnings. “You are allowed to use what we have donated to Ukraine, also outside Ukraine – that is, on Russian targets – if it is within international law,” Mette Frederiksen said in May. Subsequently, Denmark has fully supported Ukraine’s attack on Kursk inside Russia, they have allowed them to use the F16 fighter jets donated by Denmark inside Russia, and now Denmark supports the authorisation of Ukraine’s use of long-range missiles.

It is the height of arrogance to continue to call Russia the aggressive party while pushing for further escalation and ignoring all of Russia’s red lines. Either Danish politicians naively believe that Putin will hold back forever, or they don’t care that they are pushing the world closer to World War III. They are playing a very dangerous game and are effectively gambling with millions of human lives.

World War III?

For now, a third world war does not seem to be the immediate perspective – although, no thanks to Danish politicians! The Russians and Americans are currently trying to prevent the war from escalating into a direct confrontation between the two superpowers. This, however, does not mean that we can look forward to a more peaceful world. Quite the contrary.

For now, a third world war does not seem to be the immediate perspective – although, no thanks to Danish politicians / Image: own work

Danish media and politicians accuse the Russians of fuelling fears of World War III. But who is escalating the conflicts around the world? It is the West and their allies – Zelensky in Ukraine, as well as Netanyahu in Israel. 

Like Zelensky, Netanyahu is in an incredibly high-pressure situation. As with Ukraine, Danish politicians have stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel and Netanyahu since the beginning of the carnage in Gaza. In this case, though, there is no condemnation of what the UN itself has said there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to describe as a genocide. Rather, they maintain ‘Israel’s right to defend itself’.  

Although the West has no interest in a major war in the Middle East, they cannot withdraw support from Israel, their only solid ally in the region. They are therefore bound to follow Netanyahu in his madness. Netanyahu realises that as soon as his war in Gaza stops, he will be overthrown, prosecuted and end up in prison. That is why he is trying in every possible way to continue and escalate the war. He has done so with countless provocations against Iran and as we have seen in recent days with the terrorist attacks inside Lebanon, which risk starting a regional war and, once again, moving the world closer to a third world war. [Note from the editor: this article was originally published in Danish on 23 September, before Israel’s invasion of Lebanon began.]

Once again, it is the West, including Danish politicians, who are helping to lead the world towards war. Netanyahu is the one at the helm, but without the West’s support he could not continue. The western imperialists have the power to stop the carnage in Gaza and keep the world from a major war that has the potential not only to cost countless lives but also destabilise their own regimes. Such a war would mean rising energy and food prices, including in western countries, where social tensions would only increase. Yet they stick with Netanyahu through thick and thin.

The ruling class in the West is playing with fire and pushing for increased war, armament, cyber attacks etc. Danish politicians are leading the way in beating the war drums and poking the Russian bear. They have moved the crosshairs firmly over Denmark. Overthrowing our own ruling class is becoming more and more a matter of life and death. For now, we can be glad that Danish politicians do not have the power they wish they had. But we cannot be satisfied with that. We have to fight them and the system they represent.

Books not bombs

Danish politicians show a complete disregard for human life both in their approach to a war with Russia and in their support for Israel – a contempt they also show here at home on a daily basis.

Danish politicians show a complete disregard for human life both in their approach to a war with Russia and in their support for Israel / Image: marxist.dk

On the same day as the DR published its article about ‘nuclear psychosis’ and Russia’s alleged scare campaign, DR also ran an article about waiting times in mental health facilities. It explained that, since 2018, the waiting time to see a psychiatrist has increased from 23.6 weeks to an estimated 103.6 weeks – in just under 2 years!

This is just one example of an entire welfare system in a state of decay. If you ask any nurse or school teacher, they will tell you that the welfare system is on its knees. “We can’t afford it,” say the politicians, while they throw billions of dollars at the military, for gunpowder and bullets.

The war in Ukraine alone has so far cost Danish taxpayers DKK 60.4 billion (almost £6.8 billion). That is the amount that Danish politicians have donated in financial support and weapons so far. The amount grows by the month. To put it into perspective, it is roughly the same amount that Denmark spent on public schools in 2023 (DKK 60.7 billion). Yet in Denmark’s primary schools, teachers are now being laid off due to cuts totalling DKK 254 million. These layoffs could be stopped for a fraction of what has been poured into Ukraine in recent years. 

But it is not just spending on Ukraine that is exploding. Last year, Denmark’s military budget increased by almost DKK 10 billion from DKK 27.1 billion in 2022 to DKK 36 billion in 2023. And that's just the beginning. By 2030, they plan to reach the NATO target of spending 2 percent of GDP, which will mean an additional DKK 20 billion. If the NATO target is raised to 3 percent, it will cost around DKK 28 billion more.

This is what is on the agenda in the period we are living through. War and militarism are an inherent part of the capitalist system. As the Revolutionary Communist Party, we fight for a world of peace; a world where resources are spent on securing a better life for the vast majority, not on gunpowder and bullets; a world where children look to the future without fear of being bombed.

But this requires us to overthrow the system that is the cause of the wars and conflicts we see today, and to overthrow the politicians who choose to gamble with our futures. Only a fool does not fear nuclear war, but we do not let fear stop us. Instead, it energises us to step up the fight for a different world.

The Revolutionary Communist Party, along with comrades across the globe, is fighting an international campaign to bring down militarism and imperialism. We call on everyone serious about ending war, militarism and imperialism to join us in this fight – the time is now!

Books, not bombs!

Capitalism must die so that humanity can live!

Down with Mette Frederiksen and the rest of the Danish warmongers!

Stop supporting Israel and Ukraine! Immediately halt all aid and weapons to the reactionary warmongers Netanyahu and Zelensky!