With domestic political cultures in which the values of solidarity, equity and social justice figure large and a long history of internationalism in foreign policy, the Nordic states offer themselves as prototypical ‘good international citizens’. Danish foreign policy long had a passive quality to it, nonetheless it has been broadly consistent with the Nordic internationalist tradition, especially with the adoption of ‘active internationalism’ after 1989. Since the 2001 Election of the first Fogh Rasmussen government, however, the ethico-political rationales underpinning Danish internationalism appear to be changing at the same time as Denmark has enacted a controversially much more restrictive and, critics argue, strongly culturally framed immigration and refugee policy. Although the Fogh Rasmussen governments have not abandoned internationalism, and key aspects of current Danish foreign policy resonate fully with the Nordic internationalist tradition, Denmark is now much more closely aligned with the US...

Janus-Faced Solidarity Danish Internationalism Reconsidered

Unprecedented in the history of European integration, the sanctions against an Austrian government that included the far right Austrian Freedom Party in January 2000 clearly exposed the necessity to guarantee a minimum level of normative homogeneity in the European Union However, as the hasty lifting of the sanctions a few months later showed, EU leaders proved both unable and unwilling to defend a durable, common and coherent position on this issue Classic intergovernmental theories, which predict that the unification process cannot go beyond a certain threshold of politically acceptable integration without coming up against deep national divisions and sharpening tensions between the Union and domestic societies, only partly explain this rapid erosion of the European consensus against the FPO The article argues that the breakdown of this ‘cordon sanitaire’ is also largely due to the reluctance of domestic political elites to institutionalise a principle which might backfire against their own countries

The Fragility of the EU as a ‘Community of Values’: Lessons from the Haider Affair

This study provides a new multivariate assessment of core–periphery structures within the European Union. By applying different cluster algorithms to the broad set of Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure indicators, we detect a relatively stability-oriented and homogeneous group of European Union core countries that would be suitable for having a common currency. Unlike previous results, our analysis shows that countries such as the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden would also fit well within such a hypothetical euro area. However, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain plus Cyprus and Croatia on the southern periphery, as well as most of the countries of the eastern enlargement are found to form very distinct clusters in terms of competitiveness, indebtedness, and economic performance. Our findings thus reveal that a single monetary policy can be appropriate only for some countries, even when measured using the official Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure scoreboard specifically designed to monitor the smooth functioning of the Economic and Monetary Union.

/pdf/one-size-fits-some-a-reassessment-of-emu-s-core-periphery-1rezjlhucg.pdf

One Size Fits Some : A Reassessment of EMU’s Core–periphery Framework

A discursive approach to studying identity is proposed, presenting Positioning Theory as a theoretical framework for conceptualizing the construction of identity in discourse. A case study is presented in which the Positioning Diamond is employed to analyze discourse surrounding the Danish euro referendum. The analysis reveals how identities are constructed in discourse that promotes a “yes” or “no” vote in the referendum, highlighting the generally implicit allocation of rights and duties to actors within a specific narrative context. A discussion of appropriate criteria for evaluating discursive accounts and distinguishing between cases in which truth, normative, and ethical criteria are applicable is provided.

https://www.ies.be/files/repo/IES%20Working%20paper%202_2010%20Slocum-Bradley.pdf

Identity Construction in Europe: A Discursive Approach

An expanding literature on money and identity is built around the assumption that political elites deliberately use currency design to foster national identities. However, the empirical evidence in favor of this assumption has been fragmentary. Drawing on detailed primary sources we demonstrate nationalist intentions of political elites involved in currency design. We also examine how political elites use banknotes as official pronouncements on who is and who is not part of the nation and what the official attitude toward foreigners is. By tracing changes in the inclusive and exclusive messages directed at an intra-state or international audience we document that there is no connection between ingroup (national) love and outgroup (foreigners, minorities, opposition) hate. The amount of exclusive messages to outgroups culminated in conditions of perceived threat when political leaders tried to mobilize pre-existing identities to secure or maintain political power. In contrast, the officials deliberately tr...

National identity and money: Czech and Slovak Lands 1918–2008

WHEN READING ABOUT their country in the international press, most people like to see themselves described in a favorable light. In the case of Denmark, the national self-image includes the Royal Ballet, Hans Cristian Andersen, fairy-tale castles, a popular queen, and a tolerant and well-educated population. A classic poster in Copenhagen shows a policeman holding up traffic to allow a duck and her ducklings to cross the street. So when the average Dane suddenly finds himself portrayed not as the easygoing humanitarian of his self-perception, but as timid, small-minded, and racist to boot, he is likely to choke on his pastry. This has been the case lately, as Denmark found itself front page news worldwide in connection with its referendum Sept. 28 on whether to give up its national currency, the krone, in favor of full participation in the European Monetary Union. In a closely watched vote thought to provide auguries for the future of the troubled euro, which has lost more than 30 percent of its value against the dollar since it was introduced in January 1999, Denmark voted "no," 53 percent to 47 percent. According to a national survey taken after the vote, 37 percent of those who voted "no" favored less integration with the rest of Europe, which is now well embarked on a project of greater transnational integration not only through the European Central Bank in Frankfurt but especially through the European Union in Brussels. Twenty-three percent of those voting "no" explicitly cited a lack of confidence in the European Union. But another 33 percent gave as their reason for voting "no" their concern about preserving "Danish identity." And that, especially, is where the international trouble begins, because concerns about "national identity" do not sit at all well with the cosmopolitan sensibility prevalent in the capitals of the new Europe. This is not the first time Danes have taken to the polls to deliver a rebuke to full-speed-ahead European integration. In 1992, Danes voted "no" even more narrowly to the Maastricht Treaty, which created the EU. Then, the foreign reaction was very different. Danes were treated like heroes for sending a message to the politicians in Brussels that they were out of step with the populations of Europe and going too far towards centralization. By their vote, they forced Europe to make some useful corrections in its political ambitions, which in turn paved the way for Denmark's approval (with certain reservations) of the Maastricht treaty in 1993. This time, however, the analysis has been unforgiving. An article in the New York Times shortly before the vote averred that the Danes had become suspicious, inward-looking, and fearful of outside influence, including the EU'S. Danes have grown worried about open borders and hordes of irnmigrants for whom Denmark is "a giant buffet table" asking everybody to come and help himself, as one politician put it. The German weekly Der Spiegel was even harsher, claiming that Danes are more racist than the Austrian nationalist leader Jorg Haider in their hatred of foreigners: "The thoughts that recently brought Freedom Party leader Jorg Haider into European discredit have partly become the law in Denmark." Whereupon the magazine, in typically breathless style, went on to offer a nightmarish description of the conditions in which immigrants supposedly live in Denmark. The negative publicity this time has been especially painful for a nation that for decades has been proclaiming the wonders of its welfare state and reg ularly lecturing others, notably the United States, on how to deal with everything from racial problems and poverty to Third World debt and energy conservation. The euro campaign as proxy BUT WHAT, really, does fear of foreigners have to do with the euro? On the surface, not a thing. And yet in the recent referendum, everything. The referendum was meant to cement 18 years of Danish fixed-rate currency policy, whereby the Danish krone has been tied to the German mark (since January 1999, to the euro). …

Denmark, the Euro, and Fear of the Foreign

MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS CHERISH heroes that confirm their self-image, and as the embodiment of British cool, Sir John Moore has few rivals: Described by his biographer Carola Oman as an Achilles without the heel, Moore was one of Britain's most accomplished commanders during the Napoleonic wars, and he has a timeless quality about him. Having risen in the army ranks due to ability rather than wealth, he served in the hotspots of the war against the French: in the West Indies, in Egypt, in Sicily, and on the Iberian Peninsula. "With his direct and unaffected manner, he was the very opposite of a show-off like the navy's Sir Sydney Smith, who had blocked Napoleon's advance at Acre and who was busy promoting himself as a second Nelson. Reporting home on the battle of Alexandria, Smith turned up at the Admiralty decked out in a Turkish outfit, complete with turban, shawl, and two pistols in his girdle. Smith was long on daring, but short on judgment. Moore had both. Needless to say, the two of them did not get along. In the British effort to drive the French out of Egypt, where Napoleon had left his army to fend for itself after Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in Abukir Bay, General Moore was sent to coordinate with the Ottoman army in Jaffa; his equanimity was deemed to have a calming effect on the volatile Orientals. In the ensuing battle of Alexandria, the reserve under Moore bore the brunt of the French onslaught and stood firm despite running out of ammunition, confirming Moore's image as "a man impossible to alarm." The surrender of the garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria marked the definitive end of the French adventure in Egypt. Not only could Moore fight. His reputation as a trainer of men was established as commander of the Light Brigade at Shorncliffe Camp on the Kentish coast, whence he directed defense preparations against the force Napoleon had assembled across the Channel during the 1803-1805 invasion scare. Moore did not share the enthusiasm for Prussian tactics shown by Sir David Dundas, the army's adjutant-general, whose drill manual boiled the Prussian method down to eighteen maneuvers, to which Moore referred dismissively as those "damned eighteen maneuvers": Prussian precision maneuvers might look fine on the parade ground, but on the battlefield, they were outdated. What Moore sought, he noted, was "not a new drill, but a new discipline, a new spirit that should make of the whole a living organism to replace a mechanical instrument." Thus the much looser light infantry tactics that became known as "Sir John Moore's system" required "not so much men of stature as it requires them to be intelligent, hardy and active." The point was to "encourage to the utmost the initiative of the individual, treating soldiers as men and not as machines." A well-read and humane man, he was sparing in his use of the lash. Of the 52nd, "there is not a better regiment and there is none where there is less punishment," he proudly noted. What was to be his final assignment was with the British expeditionary force on the Iberian Peninsula, an ill-planned and ill-led venture. Moore had to take over after its commander was recalled. The efforts of the Spanish allies had collapsed, but in a daring move, designed to lure Napoleon north, Moore attacked his line of communication, forcing the French emperor to move against him personally, but managing to give him the slip. In disgust Napoleon left it to Marshal Soult to take over the chase. A retreat is considered the most depressing maneuver a commander can undertake. After untold sufferings in the Spanish winter and casualties of 3,000 dead and 500 wounded that had to be left behind, Moore managed to get his force into position to be extracted by the navy. But first they had to make a stand to beat off their French pursuers, which they successfully did in the battle of Corunna. Moore, however, was among the casualties. …

The Perfect Officer

OF ALL THE kinds of fighting, urban warfare is the one that soldiers hate most. Just ask the Russian troops who fought in Grozny during the First Chechen War. Green, untrained troops were up against experienced guerilla fighters: The Russians may have had plenty of hardware, but their weapons were not the ones suited to the situation. Tanks in particular proved clumsy in the streets, because they couldn't fire high and they couldn't fire low, and many were disabled by Chechen rebels. Otherwise, the Russian tactics in city fighting hadn't changed much since Stalingrad. In terms of sheer viciousness, the fighting in Chechnya was remarkable. In their very own version of Shock and Awe, the Chechen methods included snipers hiding behind the bodies of dead or dying Russian soldiers strung up in the windows, and the display of cut off Russian heads along the roads leading into Grozny. Everything was booby-trapped, even an innocent looking object like a football. The Russians would respond in kind by killing Chechens in less than gentlemanly fashion: Once, when they found some of their own men crucified and castrated in a village, they castrated all the village's male inhabitants. Having been badly bloodied in the First Chechen War, the Russians were determined to prevail in the second round. After pinning apartment bombings in Moscow on the Chechens, the Russian response was to level Grozny to the ground in 1999. They ringed the city with artillery, tanks, and rocket stations and let fly. Among the new features was the use of fuel air explosives, which form an aerosol cloud that gets into every cranny of a building and ignites, crushing everyone inside. As Stalin might have put it, "No city. No city warfare." The Grozny model is not available to the Western democracies, but since urban warfare is becoming the most common type of fighting, they have had to come up with some other answers and fast. As former Marine Corps Commander General Charles Krulak predicted, "Our enemies will not allow us to fight the son of Desert Storm, but they will try to draw us into the son of Chechnya." Thus, military theorists like Britain's Michael Evans talk of "Mad Max" hybrid wars, combining elements of traditional and guerilla warfare, where irregulars, acting as proxies or on their own, now use the kind of weaponry previously reserved for states. Aware of their economic and technological disadvantages, such organizations seek to change the nature of the game, to play it by their rules, which means no rules. They seize the initiative, choosing when and where to strike. They wear no uniforms. They use civilians as shields, and use civilian homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques as command posts and weapons depots. When outgunned, they melt back into the civilian population. Their aim is to suck the conventional army into the city and bleed it in a war of attrition. And civilian casualties have become a great propaganda tool. The traditional army suddenly becomes the villain in the eyes of the press, because of misguided notions of fair play and lingering third-world romanticism. As Frank Hoffman drily observes in his groundbreaking study "Conflicts in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars," for Western democracies, these are not wars of choice. But still, we must fight them. Israel has had more urban-warfare experience than most countries, first in the Second Lebanon War and recently in the operation in Gaza. As Hoffman notes, the war in Lebanon afforded the clearest instance of the new type of hybrid war, which is why U.S. officers have paid special attention to the lessons that can be drawn from it. Civilized nations need to strike a careful balance in urban warfare: They must spare the civilian population, but also kill terrorists. They must fight humanely, but not so humanely that they end up paralyzed: At some point, it becomes a question of "better their civilians than ours." Oddly enough, many influential Western opinion makers seem to prefer it the other way around. …

Henrik Bering

Papers

Denmark, the Euro, and Fear of the Foreign

The Perfect Officer

Two Battles at Once: Democracies and Urban Warfare