Between Paradise and Power: Denmark\'s Transatlantic Dilemma

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Between Paradise and Power: Denmark's Transatlantic Dilemma Article in Security Dialogue · September 2005 DOI: 10.1177/0967010605057974

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Special Section: European Security and Transatlantic Relations in the Age of International Terrorism: Challenges for the Nordic Countries

Between Paradise and Power: Denmark’s Transatlantic Dilemma ANDERS WIVEL*

Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

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N TERMS OF OFFICIAL DANISH foreign policy priorities, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington of 11 September 2001 resulted only in the small and predictable change that the fight against terror and the spread of weapons of mass destruction were explicitly mentioned as forming one of the specific foreign policy priorities within the new foreign policy agenda published by the Danish government in 2003. The mention was relatively brief and the tools traditional: the European Union was seen as the central forum for fighting terrorism (in close cooperation with the UN and the United States), and the United Nations as the key instrument in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons (Government of Denmark, 2003: 20–21). In 2004, this was followed up by a government report on terrorism underlining the continued importance of the UN, the EU and NATO (Government of Denmark, 2004). However, if we look instead at Danish security policy actions after 11 September 2001 and their match with Denmark’s traditional role as a country with a typical ‘Nordic’ foreign policy profile that underlines the importance of peaceful conflict resolution, international law and the United Nations, the effect of 9/11 on Danish security policy seems to have been much more dramatic. Denmark was a cosignatory of the ‘Letter of Eight’ in January

2003 supporting the US position on Iraq and effectively undermining the prospects for any common EU position on the issue, and it subsequently joined the US-led coalition in Iraq despite a lack of authorization from the UN Security Council. Moreover, the Danish government has consistently supported the invasion of Iraq and the ensuing efforts by the United States to fight Iraqi insurgents. Even though human rights concerns have been central to Danish foreign policy in the post-Cold War era, the government’s critique of the US policy of keeping prisoners at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been relatively mild and low-key. In sum, these actions all seem to point to a radical shift in Danish foreign policy in the wake of 9/11. Despite official statements, the current Danish foreign policy cannot be viewed simply as a continuation of traditional priorities. However, at the same time, the change is neither as recent nor as dramatic as it may seem at first when looking at security policy actions after 9/11. The shift has been in the making since the end of the Cold War, but the events of and since 11 September 2001 have changed its implications and presented Danish foreign policy decisionmakers with a dilemma between a European and a US approach to pursuing their most important security policy priorities.

© 2005 PRIO, www.prio.no SAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.com Vol. 36(3): 417–421, DOI: 10.1177/0967010605057974

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The end of the Cold War led to a significant shift in the conditions for and priorities of Danish foreign policy. Though the majority of Danish policymakers were initially confused about what to make of the end of the Cold War – and in particular the ensuing European dynamics, with deepening European integration and German unification (Wæver, 1992) – consensus soon emerged that this should be seen as ‘a unique window of opportunity’ (Holm, 2002: 21). Accordingly, from 1989, Danish foreign policy was transformed from reactive pragmatism to active internationalism (see also Holm, 1997). The new policy was initiated by the end of the Cold War in a successful Danish attempt to help the three Baltic countries to rebuild their states and become integrated in European and transatlantic institutional structures, and was subsequently developed as a new foreign policy doctrine, making common security and the spread of democracy and human rights the foundation of Danish foreign policy from 1993 onwards. As noted in the 1998 White Paper of the Danish Defence Commission (cited in Rasmussen, 2005: 77), following the end of the Cold War the EU and NATO had created a European security order in which Denmark now enjoyed ‘unprecedented security’ and was allowed to focus on the ‘indirect’ threat to Danish security stemming from instability in Europe in the absence of a ‘direct’ threat, which had disappeared with the Soviet Union. Soon, the country ‘involved itself to an unprecedented degree in international peacekeeping, peace-building and peace-making operations’ (Holm, 2002: 28–29), and played an active and successful role in the EU’s eastern enlargement, which was finally decided at the Copenhagen Summit in 2002. Denmark, it seemed, was a perfect example of Robert Kagan’s (2003) depiction of contemporary European foreign policy: moving beyond power politics and making a virtue out of weakness; refusing to play by the rules of a Hobbesian world, because the postmodern international relations of the present

were seen as qualitatively different from the great power-dominated politics of the past. Denmark had made effective use of its post-Cold War window of opportunity by choosing paradise over power. Soon, however, there was trouble in paradise as the conditions of Danish security policy activism changed. The EU was the cornerstone in Denmark’s activist security policy. In the UN, the Nordic bloc was integrated into a more influential European coalition. This made the specific Nordic contribution less visible but probably more effective, because traditional Nordic priorities such as peace, human rights, the rule of law and sustainable development were now pursued by the EU (Laaitikainen, 2003). However, Denmark’s ability to influence the EU as a security actor was seriously damaged by the Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and by the Edinburgh Agreements signed the following year, which allowed Denmark four exemptions from their terms, including an opt-out from EU defence policy. This exemption mattered little as long as the EU combined weak military capabilities with an explicit intention to be a civilian power concerned with a broad, but mostly ‘soft’, security agenda. However, the continued strengthening of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) in recent years has left Denmark with a still more constrained role in EU security policymaking (Larsen, 2004). This is the case in regard to specific military operations and issues that involve both civilian and military aspects. In principle, Denmark can contribute to the civilian aspects, but ‘the close integration of these two components on the ground makes the Danish situation very difficult to sustain’ (Holm, 2002: 34). Most importantly, it creates a tension between the general Danish security policy, where the EU is seen as a security actor with decisive importance for both regional stability and specific Danish security interests, and the inability of Denmark to contribute to a number of the most important developments of this actor because of the defence opt-out.

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Anders Wivel Denmark’s Translantic Dilemma

Facing a Eurosceptic electorate domestically and finding itself increasingly marginalized in the development of the EU as a security actor regionally, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the Danish government has chosen to cultivate its bilateral relations with the United States. Denmark participated in the war in Kosovo even though there was no clear mandate from the United Nations, and it voiced strong support for the US approach to the conflict. Though the pro-US Danish reaction in the immediate aftermath of 11 September 2001 was no different from that of most countries of the world, the almost unconditional Danish support for the United States in regard to the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq deviated from many of Denmark’s traditional allies in the European Union and the United Nations. Denmark continued its presence in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, when other EU and NATO member-states began to pull out. Now, it seemed, Denmark had accepted the US view of power, ‘where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might’ (Kagan, 2003: 3). Did Denmark go from living in a postmodern paradise to playing power politics in less than a decade? Two observations suggest that the picture is a little more complicated than that. First, Danish policymakers viewed military and institutional activism as basically two sides of the same coin, because both served as means to the same end: a stable, rulegoverned and highly institutionalized international environment protecting Danish security interests. Thus, as noted by one analyst, ‘on the aggregate level of integration as defined as the nexus between the EU and NATO’ (Rasmussen, 2005: 78) ‘the use of military force [was perceived] as the continuation of European integration with other means’ (Rasmussen, 2005: 77). Whereas the interventions in the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s may be characterized like this, military operations far from the European continent are diffi-

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cult to justify in this way. However, it can be argued that the latter are consistent with the fundamental Danish long-term security priority of promoting international rules and norms of behaviour. This was in fact the argument of the Danish government in the weeks preceding the US invasion of Iraq, when Foreign Minister Per Stig Møller stressed the importance of keeping policy towards Iraq on the ‘UN track’ – that is, actions should be approved by the international community. When the USA invaded Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council, the Danish government argued that the war was actually an enforcement of earlier UN resolutions. In addition, the government compared the situation to NATO’s Kosovo action in 1999, when Denmark participated despite the lack of UN Security Council approval because it considered the defence of human rights more important. Even though these arguments might be highly problematic (see Knudsen, 2004), they show – in combination with Denmark’s continued active participation in the EU and the UN – that the traditional institutional priorities have not been abandoned and that military action and cooperation and integration may be seen as two sides of the same coin outside Europe as well. Second, since the end of the Cold War, Denmark has aimed at playing an active role in the European Union as well as building a strong Danish–US relationship. Danish activism in relation to the Baltic Sea Area combined with Danish support for NATO enlargement had created a strong Danish–US relationship since the early 1990s, as underlined by President Clinton’s visit to Copenhagen in 1997. In the same period, Denmark made the European Union the cornerstone of its foreign policy. This was never seen as problematic until after 11 September 2001. What is special about the post-9/11 era of Danish security policy is not that Denmark tries to have it both ways, but rather that the different policies of the EU and the United States are making that

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increasingly difficult to achieve. Since the end of the Cold War, Denmark has pursued an activist foreign and security policy often formulated explicitly in contrast to what is perceived by policymakers as the reactive and pragmatic policies of the past. Institutional and military activism have been combined and are seen as two important means of creating a stable and rule-governed international society, but after 9/11 this strategy has increasingly faced Danish decisionmakers with a dilemma. On the one hand, the pro-US Danish position allows Denmark to continue its military activism, now outside Europe. On the other hand, Danish support for US security policy in general and the Iraq war in particular is in conflict with Denmark’s institutional activism, since it legitimizes action outside the institutional frameworks usually promoted by Denmark and other EU member-states. Denmark’s defence opt-out in the EU constrains institutional activism in the short term. Military support for the

United States offers an alternative activist strategy, but at the same time military activism outside international organizations might contribute to undermining institutional activism through the EU and other institutions even further in the long term. How Denmark handles this dilemma is important for the short-term promotion of Danish security priorities, as well as for Denmark’s long-term position in regional and global politics. It entails the danger of being caught in the middle between the country’s two most important cooperation partners in security policy, thereby diminishing the prospects of Danish influence. At the same time, being engaged with both sides of the Atlantic divide gives Denmark an opportunity to act as a bridge-builder between Europe and the United States, a goal still more explicit in Danish security policy. If this goal is implemented successfully, future Danish security policy may be characterized as not only activist but also influential.

* Anders Wivel is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science of the University of Copenhagen and author, most recently of ‘The Security Challenge of Small EU Member States: Interests, Identity and the Development of the EU as a Security Actor’, Journal of Common Market Studies 43(2) (June 2005), and co-editor (with Hans Mouritzen) of The Geopolitics of Euro-Atlantic Integration (Routledge, 2005).

REFERENCES Government of Denmark, 2003. En verden i forandring. Regeringens bud på nye prioriteter i Danmarks udenrigspolitik [A Changing World: The Government’s Vision for New Priorities in Denmark’s Foreign Policy]. Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Government of Denmark, 2004. En verden i forandring – nye trusler, nye svar. Redegørelse fra regeringen om indsatsen mod terrorisme [A Changing World – New Threats, New Responses: Report from the Danish Government on Priorities and Actions Against Terrorism]. Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Holm, Hans-Henrik, 1997. ‘Denmark’s Active Internationalism: Advocating International Norms with Domestic Constraints’, in Bertel Heurlin & Hans Mouritzen, eds, Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 1997. Copenhagen: Danish Institute of International Affairs (52–80). Holm, Hans-Henrik, 2002. ‘Danish Foreign Policy Activism: The Rise and Decline’, in Bertel Heurlin & Hans Mouritzen, eds, Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 2002. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (19–45).

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Kagan, Robert, 2003. Paradise and Power. London: Atlantic. Knudsen, Tonny Brems, 2004. ‘Denmark and the War Against Iraq: Losing Sight of Internationalism?’, in Per Carlsen & Hans Mouritzen, eds, Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 2004. Copenhagen: Danish Institute for International Studies (49–90). Laatikainen, Katie Verlin, 2003. ‘Norden’s Eclipse: The Impact of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy on the Nordic Group in the United Nations’, Cooperation and Conflict 38(4): 409–441. Larsen, Henrik, 2004. ‘Udviklingen af EU som sikkerhedspolitisk aktør efter Irak – konsekvenser for dansk sikkerhed og forsvar’ [The Development of the EU as a Security Actor After Iraq: Consequences for Danish Security and Defence], Militært Tidsskrift 133(1): 26–40. Rasmussen, Mikkel Vedby, 2005. ‘“What’s the Use of It?”: Danish Strategic Culture and the Utility of Armed Force’, Cooperation and Conflict 40(1): 67–89. Wæver, Ole, 1992. ‘Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe After the Cold War’, International Affairs 68(1): 77–102.

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