{"id":244941,"date":"2023-10-02T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2023-10-02T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=244941"},"modified":"2023-09-26T06:12:31","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T05:12:31","slug":"denmarks-prime-minister-frederiksen-knows-nothing-about-ukraine-conflict-understanding-and-peace-she-wants-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/denmarks-prime-minister-frederiksen-knows-nothing-about-ukraine-conflict-understanding-and-peace-she-wants-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark\u2019s Prime Minister Frederiksen Knows Nothing about Ukraine, Conflict Understanding and Peace–She Wants War"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s Prime Minister<\/p><\/div>\n

22 Sep 2023 <\/em>– On 6 September, Denmark\u2019 TV2 Channel ran a 35-second clip with the Prime Minister under the headline \u201cMette Frederiksen: You don\u2019t win a war with words, you win it with weapons.\u201d Watch and listen to it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The brief presentation of her views on Ukraine\u2019s situation testifies to an ignorance \u2013 conscious, unconscious or opportunistic \u2013 that is not easily reconciled with State leadership in general and war participation in particular.<\/p>\n

I believe that a doctor of the same intellectual level of medical knowledge would be put out of commission.<\/p>\n

(1) War versus conflict<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mette Frederiksen believes that it is impossible to win a war with words, especially when you are \u201cup against Russia.\u201d By focusing on the war<\/em> and not the underlying NATO\/Russia conflict<\/em> playing out in Ukraine, she can avoid asking herself: Why did the war happen in the first place? Why are we \u2013 Denmark \u2013 actually at war with Russia?<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the statement is factually incorrect. There are always channels \u2013 even behind the scenes, far away from the media and while the war rages \u2013 where the parties can use words. But Denmark doesn\u2019t want that (because the US doesn\u2019t want that); just look at how communication has been reduced dangerously close to zero, the reduction of the Russian embassy staff, the closure of the Russian cultural centre and the almost boundless hatred of all things Russian \u2013 and of those who are Russian in today\u2019s Denmark.<\/p>\n

Danish politics, mainstream media and state-funded research are in lockstep in a self-righteous march of hate.<\/p>\n

But where does this war consensus lead in just a few months\u2019 time?<\/p>\n

A war can also be taken up in the UN \u2013 the 1949 NATO treaty states that NATO must \u2013 and dealt with there. In other words, with words<\/em>. The government has not put forward such an idea or taken any initiative other than unilateral condemnation of Russia and arms deliveries that each time exceeded previously set limits.<\/p>\n

As if war could lead to peace.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister also overlooks the fact that it was Russia that wanted to use words when, in December last year, it made a number of proposals to NATO for dialogue \u2013 among other things, to stop NATO\u2019s expansion to include Ukraine and to withdraw weapons systems that Russia felt were threatening near its border.<\/p>\n

Had she mentioned this fact \u2013 which NATO\u2019s Secretary General himself has highlighted and recently said was the cause of Russia\u2019s invasion \u2013 which then was not at all \u2018unprovoked\u2019 \u2013 then she would have talked about the conflict and mentioned NATO\u2019s role in it.<\/p>\n

Here is Jens Stoltenberg\u2019s sensational realisation in public<\/strong><\/a> that he knew Russia would invade Ukraine if NATO refused to negotiate \u2013 and that NATO did just that:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Putin \u2013 like all other Russian presidents since Gorbachev \u2013 wanted to use words. But as we hear at the end, there is only one cause of the war in Ukraine and that is, of course, Russia.<\/p>\n

The distinction between the war and the conflict is important because the key to a solution does not lie in the theatre of war, but in trying to understand the nature of the problem<\/em> that exists between the parties to the conflict that they cannot handle themselves and find a peaceful solution to.<\/p>\n

Therefore, it is disastrous that Danish politicians \u2013 and everyone else in NATO \u2013 only talk about the war, never about the conflict.<\/p>\n

(2) What does it mean to win?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Prime Minister is obviously irresponsibly ill-informed, because despite arms gifts to Ukraine totalling nearly US$ 200 billion, Ukraine and its counter-offensive are doing very badly. President Zelensky told the US Congress a few days ago that if Ukraine doesn\u2019t receive even more military aid, Ukraine will lose.<\/p>\n

And what does she mean by winning?<\/p>\n

That Ukraine kicks the Russians out of Ukraine? Or NATO defeating Russia and having it destroyed or broken up into small states so that it can no longer be seen as a threat to NATO and its member states (which Russia has never threatened or invaded despite constant claims over 50-60 years that it is imminent)?<\/p>\n

And at what cost? Is there any effort on the part of the West that the Prime Minister will refrain from in order to win \u2013 several of the weapons Ukraine has received were of the type that they first said they would never get and then they got them anyway. And US Secretary of State Blinken has just told the world that the US can\u2019t do anything about it if Ukraine increasingly takes the war into Russian territory.<\/p>\n

If NATO-Ukraine is in trouble \u2013 which it increasingly is because the West\u2019s military production capacity can\u2019t keep up and the social costs of NATO\/EU countries\u2019 sanctions against Russia are growing by the day \u2013 will the prime minister accept that NATO or Ukraine use nuclear weapons to \u201cwin\u201d against Russia?<\/p>\n

It is fortunate that journalists no longer ask questions about the war, let alone critical questions.<\/p>\n

(3) Russia can just stop this war?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Prime Minister\u2019s second theme is that Russia can simply withdraw its troops and stop killing innocent people. \u201cThe responsibility for the war is Russia\u2019s alone. No one else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

The above quote from Stoltenberg shows very well the extent to which the prime minister is ignorant of the conflict underlying the war. Here we have a conflict that not only has national and European dimensions and future perspectives, but obviously also global ones.<\/p>\n

The minister herself probably believes in this reductionist trivialisation of something very complex \u2013 and she probably subconsciously hopes that thinking people in Denmark will believe her simplification of reality beyond recognition.<\/p>\n

But it is not good for the formulation of an adequate Danish policy that the country\u2019s leader is so ignorant and at the same time believes she can manipulate reality via submissive media.<\/p>\n

It has all happened far too quickly and is racing off in the wrong direction towards war. The Prime Minister does not see it, she is blind to the consequences of her own militaristic, war-fascinated way of thinking: We can never, ever recognise that we have also made mistakes over the last 30 years.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t understand that this conflict is 30 years old, that NATO is a role player in it, that NATO is superior to Russia (at least 12 times higher military spending than Russia) and has never listened seriously to Russian concerns for its security.<\/p>\n

She does not understand that NATO\u2019s policy of deterrence \u2013 as described in many places on the NATO website \u2013 can frighten others. She will not or cannot understand that NATO\u2019s de facto policy is a persistent breach of the alliance\u2019s own treaty, which, with the exception of Article 5 \u2013 the so-called musketeer\u2019s oath \u2013 is a copy of the UN, i.e. an obligation to create peace by peaceful means.<\/p>\n

In this short clip, the Prime Minister documents \u2013 probably without realising it \u2013 an almost boundless contempt for the letter and spirit of the UN Declaration.<\/p>\n

And Russia can just do what?<\/p>\n

Well, the USA and other NATO countries could have just left Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq\/Kuwait, Yugoslavia\/Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Libya, Syria, Yemen and thus ensured that millions of people had not been killed in these war-torn countries and even more millions made homeless \u2013 war-torn especially by the USA, which the Prime Minister has said several times that there must not be so much as an A4 sheet of paper\u2019s distance to.<\/p>\n

The US could have done without 70-80 regime changes; could just remove its 650 bases in 130 countries and withdraw all its special forces and CIA operators. (Also from Ukraine).<\/p>\n

The US\/Obama could also \u2013 but the prime minister keeps it quiet \u2013 have abstained from financing and organising the regime change in Kiev in 2014 that removed a Russian-oriented president and was the beginning of the US-friendly Poroshenko\u2019s army build-up, which then, together with extreme nationalist ethnic cleansing of Ukrainians with Russian roots, language and feelings, could start a civil war that cost 14,000 of them their lives. (And which led Russia to annex Crimea because they didn\u2019t want to risk having their third largest base, leased for 30+ years, in a NATO country).<\/p>\n

The US\/NATO could have refrained from making NATO membership preparations in Ukraine throughout this phase since Ukraine became independent; it could have refrained from deciding over the heads of the Ukrainian people that Ukraine should become a member of NATO even though all opinion polls before the invasion showed that no more than 15% of Ukrainians wanted their country to be a NATO member.<\/p>\n

Where was Mette Frederiksen\u2019s \u201cThey can just leave it alone\u201d to all these things?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right, they were never there.<\/p>\n

On the contrary. When the US assassinated No. 3 man in Iran on a peace mission to Iraq, a journalist asked her at a press conference what she thought about it \u2013 to which she said the famous or infamous words: \u201cI have no need to comment on American activities.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the US and NATO are not on the prime minister\u2019s political map \u2013 well, then there is no one else but Russia to blame for all evil. We have previously heard a Danish prime minister say that there is no need to criticise (\u201cingenting at komme efter\u201d) on the biggest Danish foreign policy misjudgement with thousands of human lives on his conscience (if such a thing exists with him). I\u2019m referring to Mr Fogh Rasmussen who in hos role as prime minister led Denmark to be an occupation power in Iraq 2003-2007 and was then rewarded be becoming NATO\u2019s secretary-general.<\/p>\n

Danish foreign and security policy today is driven by irrationality and emotionalism \u2013 you can see it in her face when she says that only Russia is guilty \u2013 by anti-intellectualism and ignorance of conflict resolution and peacemaking.<\/p>\n

These things are, of course, prerequisites for blind US\/NATO faith \u2013 faith<\/em> indeed \u2013 and permanent escalation of war efforts and militarism. Regardless of the political, economic and moral cost.<\/p>\n

Whether Prime Minister Frederiksen is aware of this, thinks about such things, has a little doubt when she comes home every night, only she knows. There is no outward sign of even the slightest doubt about her co-responsibility for the indescribable suffering her and thus her government\u2019s policies are inflicting on innocent Ukrainians and the whole of Europe.<\/p>\n

Where there can\u2019t be as much as an A4 sheet of paper, there\u2019s also no room for a single independent thought. Or even the smallest doubt.<\/p>\n

(4) What diplomacy is and that only Russia does not want peace in Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n

The final theme in the Prime Minister\u2019s presentation here is that diplomacy can only be used when the partners want peace and Russia, unfortunately, does not want peace.<\/p>\n

The first is simply wrong or untrue, take your pick. As mentioned above, diplomacy can of course be used in parallel with war in order to achieve a ceasefire \u2013 after which the word<\/em> takes over. Diplomacy is also about co-operating to ensure that neither side will lose face when this ceasefire is declared. The Cuban Missile Crisis is still a very good model.<\/p>\n

The terrible and intellectually and ethically deeply problematic thing is that Prime Minister Frederiksen does not want to see it. She only wants the war. No other interpretation is possible from what she says at the end of these 35 seconds.<\/p>\n

Neither she nor the Foreign Minister probably has any advisors who might think otherwise \u2013 can\/dare to suggest anything other than more war.<\/p>\n

That Russia does not want \u2013 or has not attempted \u2013 a peaceful solution with the NATO countries is also incorrect or untrue. Choose your word again. NATO\u2019s Secretary General has documented this in the quote above. Putin\u2019s speeches are full of considerations in this direction \u2013 years ago he (and myself, by the way) proposed the stationing of a very large UN peacekeeping mission in the area.<\/p>\n

Why has NATO had some kind of dialogue and common institutions for dialogue with Putin for 20 years if he is either insane, suicidal or only wants war, including nuclear war, with NATO countries? Did he threaten war in his speech in Munich in 2007?<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister cannot<\/em> be unaware that there were previous negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, and that Boris Johnson, among others, demanded that President Zelensky withdraw from them. She cannot<\/em> be unaware that the Minsk agreements officially aimed to put in place an autonomy solution and other modus vivendi, but that NATO countries did not require Ukraine to fulfil its obligations because the real purpose was to gain time and strengthen Ukraine\u2019s army as much as possible. The respected and decent Angela Merkel, who was there, has publicly stated that this is what it was all about.<\/p>\n

Mette Frederiksen cannot <\/em>be unaware that the US itself is continuing with arms packages, one after the other, and pressurising its NATO allies to deliver even more. For the war.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, she cannot <\/em>be unaware that Denmark, as the largest military donor (in terms of national military expenditure) after the US and the Baltic states, is sending the signal that peace is not to be discussed here, war is to be won. With weapons and not with words. And that she never uses the word peace herself.<\/p>\n

Here, as on almost all other points, the Prime Minister seems to be building on something that can reasonably be called psycho-political projection:<\/em> Condemn others for doing something that you yourself do to a far greater extent \u2013 project your own dark shadow sides onto the other person so that you feel that you yourself are always right, innocent and behaves as the exclusively good person fighting the other person \u2013 who is the exclusively evil one.<\/p>\n

This is not a sign of health.<\/p>\n

Based on the ethical, intellectual and psychological level I have described here in concrete terms, any future Danish decision will increase the risk of a major war in Europe.<\/p>\n

If, like me, you have followed Danish security policy for almost 50 years \u2013 and I personally knew most of the Social Democrats and, for example, Radicals and SF who shaped it in the 1970s and 1990s \u2013 today\u2019s Danish course is as incomprehensible as it is tragic, unethical and dangerous.<\/em><\/p>\n

I can compare a bit since, during all the 1980s, I was a member of the Danish government\u2019s Commission for Security and Disarmament Policy.<\/p>\n

Since bombing in Yugoslavia in 1999, Denmark has become a leading militaristic rogue state. Mette Frederiksen acts as the real ambassador of the US warfare state. She repeatedly positions herself as more loyal to Washington than to the Danish people\u2019s best security and peace interests.<\/p>\n

The blind rearmament of militarism presupposes the disarmament of humanism, thought and morality \u2013 as has happened before in European history.<\/p>\n

What has gone so horribly wrong in Denmark that it is now at the front of this humanity-threatening lemming train?<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some readers will probably think I\u2019m a \u201cPutinist\u201d and want to legitimise Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. For the benefit of those black-and-white viewers who don\u2019t bother to understand arguments but simply use framing and categorisation of others, I can refer you to my article from the day after the invasion, \u201cThere were alternatives: Why Russia should not have bombed Ukraine,\u201d<\/a> which incidentally also predicted a lot of what happened next.<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, it is actually quite possible to be critical of both Russia and the US\/NATO in this whole affair, even if the lying black-and-white narrative of self-righteousness still dominates \u2013 albeit not for much longer.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent <\/em>Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research-TF<\/em><\/a>F in Sweden and a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>. CV: <\/em>https:\/\/transnational.live\/jan-oberg<\/em><\/a>
\n<\/em>https:\/\/transnational.live<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article in Danish on my online home and blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 transnational.live<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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