The Four-Party Governments Rearmament Agenda Requires a Counter-Response

The dominant narrative shaping political debate today is that Denmark is threatened by a Russian invasion — perhaps not today, but tomorrow or the day after, and in any case within the next three to five years. If one accepts that premise, the entire package that follows comes with it, writes Communist Party Chairperson Lotte Rørtoft-Madsen in this blog.

"The problem for Europeans is that they still think and behave as if we were living in peacetime."

In mid-May, then Acting Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen participated in the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, where she was interviewed by the event s host, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Prime Minister, former NATO Secretary General, and now an "international advisor."

During the interview, she made it clear that it is no longer possible to act as though we live in peaceful times.

Among the other views she expressed, which accurately reflect Denmark s current foreign, security, and defense policy, were the following:

"If you want to win a war, you must fight it. ... There is only one way to win on the international stage, and that is to be stronger than the others. ... Power is the only currency."

Rearmament and Militarization on the Agenda

Once again, Mette Frederiksen leaves little room for doubt: rearmament, militarization, and war have firmly been placed on the political agenda.

This is also reflected in the platform of the newly formed four-party government. Among other things, it states that a "large-scale industrial production of cost-effective military equipment" must be established.

Furthermore, "barriers to the Danish defense industry" are to be removed. A "systematic collaboration between the Armed Forces and the Danish research and innovation system" is to be created.

At the European Union level, the government will support efforts to "achieve the EU objective of defense readiness by 2030." In that context, the ability of individual member states to delay or block the ReArm Europe strategy should be reduced or entirely eliminated.

Most importantly, the platform institutionalizes an endless cycle of military expansion:

"The government is firmly committed to ensuring that expenditures on defense and civil preparedness amount to at least 5 percent of GDP by 2030, of which 3.5 percent will be allocated to defense."

These highly significant elements of the government platform have received surprisingly little attention.

Yet they completely define the framework within which all other economic activity will take place. That broader activity is, in turn, governed by what could be called the constitution of economic policy for any Danish government in the twenty-first century, regardless of political color:

"The government will conduct economic policy within the framework of the fixed-exchange-rate policy, the indexing mechanism of the 2006 Welfare Agreement, the Danish Budget Act, and Denmark s international economic obligations, including the EU Stability and Growth Pact."

To "administer the society we already have" today means accepting a form of militarism that is destructive to society. Perhaps there are people out there who would like to bring such administration to an end. We certainly would in the Communist Party.

A Bourgeois and Militarist Government

Thus, one thing is clear: when it comes to the overall economic framework, there is very little that is new.

That is why Arbejderen was correct when it recently wrote that the new government is handing out cakes to the rich and crumbs to everyone else:

"The new government is not a red-purple government, as the media likes to describe it, but a deeply bourgeois, pro-EU, and militarist government."

Of course, things could have been worse. A more conservative government would undoubtedly have directed even harsher attacks against ordinary workers.

Naturally, we should welcome any positive concrete initiatives that may actually materialize after commissions and economic calculations have done their work over the coming years.

But things could also have been much better. Not a single step or initiative can be found that seeks to pull Denmark out of the deadly rearmament spiral in which it is currently trapped.

Accepting the narrative of the enemy from the East, accepting the continued devastation of Ukraine in order to be able to "advance toward" Russia — all of this constitutes the fundamental premise that virtually no one in Parliament challenges.

The Narrative of the Russian Threat

The overwhelming narrative dominating political debate today is that Denmark faces the threat of a Russian invasion, perhaps not immediately, but within the next three to five years.

Once that premise is accepted, the entire accompanying package follows automatically.

In recent days, Denmark s public broadcaster DR has, according to the author, joined what she describes as a propaganda war by publishing dramatic satellite images showing massive Russian troop concentrations near the borders adjoining the Baltic states and Finland.

Unless DR has, like Berlingske recently, fallen victim to an AI-generated image trap, the images certainly appear alarming. Yet perhaps they are not as difficult to explain as they seem.

Are these genuinely offensive military preparations, or are they reactions to Western expansion — for example, following the rapid incorporation of Finland and Sweden into NATO?

And does Russia actually have a real interest in going to war — that is, initiating an offensive military confrontation — against Europe and NATO?

The Logic of War

Denmark s political leaders have no doubts about the answer.

They act according to the logic of war and rearmament.

We in the Communist Party believe that people should not be misled into supporting European militarism on the basis of an alleged "Russian threat."

Such a narrative serves no one except the advocates of war and the major interests of the military-industrial complex.

It is precisely this narrative that one accepts when accepting the platform of the four-party government.

As is well known, the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) serves as the parliamentary support party for the government.

This means that it will not seek to bring the government down, though it has not promised to support every proposal either. The government will therefore seek parliamentary majorities on a case-by-case basis.

But, in our view, Enhedslisten has sold itself very cheaply. The potentially valuable concrete improvements it has negotiated are being shamelessly oversold, obscuring the underlying realities.

Experiences from other countries — for example, the parliamentary history of Germany s Die Linke — demonstrate that creating such illusions ultimately leads to frustration and disappointment, not only within the party itself but also among the social movements that place their hopes in it.

As was recently stated in an article published on Altinget:

"Politics is ceasing to be a struggle over what kind of society we want and is becoming a competition over who can best administer the society we already have."

Today, "administering the society we already have" means accepting a socially destructive militarism.

Surely there are people who would like to help bring such an administration to an end. We in the Communist Party certainly do — in both large and small matters, in everyday life and over the long term.

Lotte Rørtoft-Madsen
Chairperson of the Communist Party of Denmark.

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