Committing War Crimes to Please U.S. Politicians: The Case of Denmark

The Sad Story of How a Once Progressive Nation Became an Outpost of the American Empire

By Ron Ridenour
January 3, 2021
photo source: reddit.com

“We perceive it as natural that once again we are on the way to war, part of our every day,” explained Vibeke Schou Tjalve, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

“People believe that if the USA says that it is wise, so it is wise for us to be with them … We have broken our hymen.”

Since the 1991 invasion of Iraq, Denmark has been fighting U.S. wars. It has sent troops into the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Tjalve explained that, since at least October 2, 2014, practically every military researcher at universities and military think tanks agree that “Denmark is at war to please America.”^[1]

The above date was significant because Denmark announced then that it had sent four F-16 war jets and 300 mercenaries to the Baltic States and Poland in response to the U.S.-led coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government. Sanctions against Russia followed. ^[2]

I had recently committed civil disobedience against Danish mercenaries who had returned from killing Afghans. The state created “Flag Day,” in 2009, to honor its modern Vikings fighting abroad. On that day, September 5, 2013, a parade-ceremony took place at the Queen’s Copenhagen castle (Rosenborg). As a colonel opened the ceremony, I stepped from the civilian onlookers onto the Queen’s grass, unfolded my “Stop the War” banner and shouted at the mercenaries, “Stop the Killing.”

A “patriotic” civilian leapt up and placed me in an iron grip. He and two soldiers dragged me off the holy grass to a police/military area where a leading police officer asked my birthplace and then instructed me: “You can return to America and demonstrate there, but not here.”

I refused to comply and landed in jail. The duty officer informed me, “There is democracy in Denmark, but you cannot disturb our ‘heroes’ ceremony. You can go to Syria and see what happens when you demonstrate.”

Having prevented me from more “provocation” by demonstrating for peace against the first woman prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, I sat in a tiny cell as this Social Democrat gleefully told her Danish war adherents, standing by the government-parliament Christiansborg castle, “Denmark is one of those countries that contributes most. We are at par with the Americans, and therewith we believe Denmark is a strong, active and most solidarity NATO nation.”

New Cold War against Russia

Denmark is not the only vassal state adhering to the U.S. Military Empire. All 27 members of the European Union (EU) and all thirty NATO members, follow suit.

Russia is now under sanctions by the EU (as are China, Iran, Venezuela and other “rogue states”), because 97% of Crimeans (1,274,096) voted to join Russia, while 2.5% (32,000) voted to remain with the neo-fascist-led coup government of Ukraine. Eighty-three percent of those eligible voted. A year later, the very capitalist Forbes magazine wrote:

“The U.S. and European Union may want to save Crimeans from themselves, but the Crimeans are happy right where they are. One year after the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea, poll after poll shows that the locals there—be they Ukrainians, ethnic Russians or Tatars—are mostly all in agreement: life with Russia is better than life with Ukraine.”

The EU was intent on punishing Russia for asserting its rights. Member-states rallied behind the sanctions despite their traditional worship of “free market trading.”

Economists from Kiel and Hong Kong calculated in 2019 that $4 billion in trade each month would be lost due to anti-Russian sanctions. Of these export losses, $1.8 billion, or 45%, are borne by authorizing countries, 55% by Russia.

The EU originally introduced sanctions on July 31, 2014, for one year in response to Russia’s actions of “destabilizing the situation in Ukraine,” and extends the sanctions periodically.

A double standard is apparent in the fact that Russia is singled out when other countries that engage in far worse human rights violations are not sanctioned. Examples include Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Colombia, and Israel whose right-wing government routinely seizes Palestinian land and homes.

The United States itself has waged wars of aggression on numerous countries, backed a coup in Bolivia, encircled China’s waters, and established an unprecedented carceral state.

Denmark allows its banks to whitewash monies that come from drug and arms smuggling, and refuses to plug loopholes in taxes so that the very rich can claim refunds from taxes they have not paid. These matters have been news for years. Yet when a corporation sells jet fuel to Russia, which it uses to destroy IS terrorist enclaves in Syria, Denmark calls this criminal.

172,000 tons of jet fuel! That is what Dan-Bunkering in Denmark sold to Russia in the decisive years of 2015-17. According to Mikkel Storm Jensen, a military analyst for the Defense Academy, “Without Russian flying would Assad not have won the civil war?”

That would mean the preferred victors would have been the terrorists of IS, al-Qaeda and other “milder” U.S.-armed opposition groups. Another Libya.

In November 2020, Denmark’s government charged the company with violating EU sanction rules and is seeking not only a fine, which is the most the government ever seeks for corporate crimes, but also imprisonment of those responsible

DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) wrote that it was U.S. documentation and “sources” (read: NSA/CIA) that showed its government in Denmark this “criminal” behavior on the part of Dan-Bunkering. The company purportedly earned about $3 billion from free market trading.

“Authoritarian” Russia was eliminating real terrorists who cut off heads for any “sinful” behavior or simply for being born in the wrong family. The “democratic” CIA and Pentagon back different terrorist groups fighting against the Syrian government army while also fighting one another.

The Los Angeles Times reported on March 27, 2016, that

“Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war.

In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving in from Kurdish-controlled areas to the east. A fighter with the Suqour Al-Jabal brigade, a group with links to the CIA, said intelligence officers of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State know their group has clashed with the Pentagon-trained militias.”

The CIA operates inside Turkey where it directs aid “to rebel groups in Syria, providing them with TOW antitank missiles from Saudi Arabian weapons stockpiles.”

Fursan al Haq sometimes is with al-Qaeda’s group in Syria, Al-Nusra.

Russia backs governments in Syria, Iran, Crimea, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba, which the U.S. and its vassal states consider illegitimate and criminal. On top of sanctions, more war weaponry is brought to Russia’s borders, and war exercises take place in anticipation of a “Russian attack.”^[3]

In 2018, NATO troops and 500 war vehicles crossed into Denmark from Germany on their way to Norway to conduct war maneuvers against a Russian invasion. Two hundred and fifty war aircraft, 65 warships and 50,000 troops participated from 29 NATO nations plus non-member partners Sweden and Finland.

Social Democrats Embrace the New Cold War with Relish

In the autumn of 2019, the new Social Democrat government leaders wet their skirts scrambling to convince the most narcissistic president in U.S. history (only 6% of Danes think well of Donald Trump, according to polls) that they are his most loyal of all lackeys. Great Britain move over. Mette Frederiksen heads the government.

She and her war minister, Trine Bramsen, felt the need to make up for not being able to sell its logistically strategic colony, Greenland, to Donald Trump’s government, something he felt was a condition for his scheduled September 2019 visit.

As such, Frederiksen pledged closer U.S. and Danish cooperation in efforts to control the Arctic, whose melting ice has increased competition for oil and minerals with Russia

Frederiksen also made further offerings to assist the United States Military Empire, which included:

1. September 2, the same day that Trump would have walked beside PM Frederiksen, she instructed her war minister, Trine Bramsen, to send four F-16s to Lithuania just in case Russia decided to invade there first.
2. The same day, Frederiksen-Bramsen announced they were buying top-notch sonar so it could help search for Putin-run submarines.
3. Offsetting Trump’s criticism that Denmark as a wealthy country should pay more for its military, Frederiksen-Bramsen pledged millions for NATO.
4. Bramsen assured us that her elite corps (comparable to Navy Seals and Frogmen) will be used to protect us against Russia. She did not tell us what the threat was but emphasized that the elite corps would be “effective when there is need for it.”
5. September 6, the PM, Secretary of State and War Minister stood together as they announced sending 500 more soldiers to various vulnerable parts of the globe. They will sail Denmark’s largest vessel, a frigate, to patrol the waters close to Russia and Iran alongside U.S. aircraft carriers. (A Danish frigate with helicopters and 155 sailors sailed in a France-led surveillance mission in Hormuz Strait beginning in December 2019, increasing tensions.)
6. September 27, the largest military exercise on Danish soil in 15 years engaged in maneuvers against a hypothetical Russian invading force. Operation Brave Lion confronted the invisible Brown Bears with two thousand men and women (women now comprise 20% of the military).

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