Defense & Security Analysis

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Defending Small States: Norwegian and Danish

Defense Policies in the Post-Cold War Era

Håkon Lunde Saxi

To cite this article: Håkon Lunde Saxi (2010) Defending Small States: Norwegian and Danish
Defense Policies in the Post-Cold War Era, Defense & Security Analysis, 26:4, 415-430, DOI:
10.1080/14751798.2010.534649

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14751798.2010.534649

Published online: 13 Feb 2011.

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26.4 Master.qxp:D&SA 12/11/10 10:41 Page 415

Defense & Security Analysis Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 415–430, December 2010

Defending Small States: Norwegian

and Danish Defense Policies in the
Post-Cold War Era
Håkon Lunde Saxi*
Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Postboks 890, Sentrum, 0104 Oslo, Norway

INTRODUCTION
Norway and Denmark are two countries with a great many similarities. The two
states have closely related Scandinavian languages and cultures, democratic political
systems, generous welfare states and are members of the same military alliance. For
many non-Scandinavians, the two states may appear almost politically and socially
indistinguishable. Even very similar countries can sometimes develop marked differ-
ences in particular sectors of society.This article will argue that defense policy is one
such marked difference.
After the Cold War, Norway was reluctant to get involved in international military
operations and initially did so only with low-risk support units. Denmark, however,
wholeheartedly embraced the expeditionary employment of its armed forces, and
Danish units were frequently among the few western forces to engage in combat. In the
two decades that have passed since the end of the Cold War, Norwegian and Danish
defense policies have therefore diverged significantly. How can this difference be
explained?
The most common explanation is the different geopolitical situations facing Norway
and Denmark after 1991. Norway continued to share a border with Russia, an unstable
and unpredictable great power, as well as having several huge maritime economic zones
that were partially disputed. This required the Norwegian Armed Forces to retain a
reduced invasion defense posture and concentrate resources on exercizing Norwegian
sovereignty and authority in its maritime areas. Meanwhile, Denmark suddenly found
itself surrounded by friends and allies, with no credible threat to its territory.This made
it possible to transform its Armed Forces into a small expeditionary force designed to
operate far from Danish territory.

*The author wishes to thank Magnus Petersson and Joseph Maiolo for their invaluable comments and
advice.

ISSN 1475-1798 print; 1475-1801 online/10/040415-16 © 2010 Taylor & Francis 415
DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2010.534649
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416 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

By itself, this geopolitical explanation fails to explain the degree of continuity in

Norway and radical change in Denmark. By 2000, the Norwegian government declared
that their armed forces were in a crisis, having become unaffordable as well as unfit and
unsuited to the security environment of the day.1 Norway’s continuation of its ColdWar
defense policy through to the 1990s had given it status as a “special case” in NATO,2
and the country was in danger of being seen as the last cold warrior in the alliance.3
While the Norwegian reform of its armed forces came too late, the Danish were
ahead of their time. Even before the new security environment had been fully realized,
Danish combat forces were being sent abroad on qualitatively new missions, and her
armed forces were being ambitiously reformed. Considering the country’s Cold War
policy of an almost pacifist nature,4 which gave it a reputation as the “weakest link” in
NATO,5 this turnaround seems remarkable. Based on Denmark’s past behavior, a more
likely reaction to the new security environment would have been an even larger peace
dividend.
The purpose of this article is primarily to make an empirical contribution by
providing an in-depth study of the post-Cold War defense policies of these two small
European NATO members.While much is written on the policies of the great powers,
comparative studies of smaller states are rare. This article will argue that what drove
Denmark and Norway apart in defense policies was not only their different geopolitical
circumstances but also different military and strategic cultures. In Norway, the armed
forces viewed themselves solely as an instrument for the defense of the nation and the
territory of the state, and actively fought attempts to reorient them towards new tasks
abroad. Norway’s political leaders also remained deeply sceptical of employing military
power as a foreign policy tool, preferring to continue restricting Norwegian forces
deployed abroad to consensual peacekeeping and support roles. Meanwhile, the
Danish Armed Forces enthusiastically embraced expeditionary military operations as
its new sine qua non, and pushed actively for greater professionalization and internation-
alization of the Services.The Danish leadership simultaneously came to reappraise the
utility and morality of utilizing force, seeing the employment of military force abroad as
a useful and effective foreign policy too.

DEFENSE POLICY 1989–2009

Before approaching the question of why they differed, a short introduction to how
Norwegian and Danish defense policy diverged after the ColdWar is necessary. During
the Cold War, both countries had shared a territorial defense concept based on con-
scription and a large mobilization reserve.The peacetime Armed Forces were mostly a
training establishment for the wartime forces, their equipment was old and lacking, and
the training standards were generally not impressive. Service abroad was limited to
classical UN peacekeeping and was a voluntary service with low prestige in the armed
forces. Both the Danish and the Norwegian armed forces were therefore ill-equipped
for the new post-Cold War paradigm that called for more high-quality, rapidly pro-
jectable military forces.
For Denmark, the reorientation towards the new tasks began in 1992 with the
establishment of a brigade for international operations to be made available to the
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D E F E N D I N G S M A L L S TAT E S • 417

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), NATO and the UN.The
brigade was equipped with heavy weaponry, such as tanks and artillery, making it very
different from the light-infantry-based peacekeepers that Denmark had earlier dis-
patched on UN missions. The Danish Armed Forces first became involved in combat
operations during the disintegration of Yugoslavia, where they deployed with heavily
armed ground formations. In one incident in April 1994, Danish tanks engaged
Bosnian Serbs forces, firing 72 main tank rounds and possibly killing as many as 150
Bosnian Serbs.6
Norway increased the size of its traditional UN peacekeeping forces after the Cold
War, but did not equip or train them to conduct high-intensity warfare missions. In
1993, a special battalion was established to act as a contribution to NATO’s Rapid
Reaction Forces, but the battalion was both inadequately equipped for a warfighting
mission and was hampered by its continued reliance on conscripts. Norway avoided
sending combat forces to Bosnia and Croatia, choosing instead to participate only with
medical and transport units.
This Norwegian reluctance to send combat forces ended in 1997, when a mecha-
nized battalion was sent to Bosnia as part of NATO’s Stabilisation Force (SFOR).Two
major reforms in 1999 and 2001 also scraped together much of the inactive mobiliza-
tion forces and made international military operations a main task for the military.
Norway and Denmark participated with combat aircraft and mechanized battalions in
the 1999 KosovoWar, and during the 2002 US-led invasions of Afghanistan both states
sent F-16 fighter aircraft and Special Forces to aid their superpower ally.
In 2004, Denmark abolished its remaining territorial defense forces, maintaining
only short-term conscription as a way of gaining recruits for its professional expedi-
tionary forces. In 2003, Denmark joined the American-led “coalition of the willing” in
Iraq, and in 2006 Danish combat forces were sent into Southern Afghanistan. Norway
only sent engineers to Iraq, following the UN authorization in May 2003 and, except for
the initial invasion phase, Norwegian forces remained in Kabul or the relatively safer
northern parts of Afghanistan. Denmark thus continued to surge ahead of Norway in
terms of expeditionary warfighting capabilities and willingness in the twenty-first
century.

GEOPOLITICS – OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS

The insight that the disappearance of a territorial threat opens up a space for reorient-
ing the armed forces is hardly unique to Denmark. Karl W. Haltiner, in his study of the
decline of mass armies in Europe, found that countries closely integrated into multilat-
eral security institutions and facing no territorial threat, had reoriented their armed forces
more towards standing, volunteer forces, intended for expeditionary operations.7 In
this, Denmark and Norway seem to be no exceptions. Bertel Heurlin found that, for all
the Nordic states, geographical proximity to Russia has provided a major explanation
for the degree of change away from territorial defense after the Cold War. Norway,
Sweden and Finland all shared proximity to Russia and, therefore, continued to feel
uneasy about its giant neighbor in the East. Denmark, however, was suddenly sur-
rounded by friendly states to its East that acted as a buffer against any Russian threat.8
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418 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

A number of Danish inquiries coming directly on the eve of the end of the Cold War
recognized the new security situation facing the country and moved official Danish
policy towards a more comprehensive view of security.9 Denmark’s relocation from the
frontlines to the backwater of the alliance made it possible to reorient her Armed Forces
and, especially, the Army, towards crises management away from Denmark proper.
Thus, from an early point in the post-Cold War era, the disappearance of a concrete
threat to Danish territory enabled the reorientation of Danish defense policy towards
combating “chaos” on the fringes of the international system.10 Heurlin argues that
since Denmark was “faced with an international environment without any possible con-
ventional military threats, the only usable choice for the Danish military was in
international operations.”11 The Armed Forces were also transformed into a foreign
policy instrument in order to retain influence in the new NATO, and especially with the
sole superpower.12 As the Danish journalist, Jørgen Dragsdahl, expressed it: “[the
armed forces] are to be visible and harvest good-will in Washington.”13 Heurlin thus
sees the shift towards expeditionary operations as a result of Denmark’s altered geo-
political position.
Hans Mouritzen further argues that, with German unification, Denmark faced the
unpleasant scenario of being placed in Germany’s shadow once more.The EU served as
a way of preventing this by tying Germany into a European political structure from which
it could be controlled. However, without full integration in the EU, due to the Danish
“opt-out” on defense, a strong and well-functioning NATO would have to serve as the
Danish instrument for tying Germany down effectively.14 Denmark’s “opt-out” from the
European Security and Defence Policy in 1992–1993 thus served to make the country all
the more dependent upon NATO and its relationship with the United States.15
But while Danish officers and politicians in the early 1990s asked publicly, “Where is
the front?,”16 and looked for new tasks for the Armed Forces, there was little such exis-
tential soul-searching within the Norwegian officer corps and political leadership. The
Norwegian historian, Olav Riste, argues that due to its next-door neighbor “Norway
had good reasons for seeing that the end of the ColdWar was not ‘the end of History’.”17
The massive military presence in the Leningrad Military District did not disappear
overnight, nor did the Northern Fleet on the Kola Peninsula with it strategic nuclear
missile submarines. Russian democracy was seen as unstable and it still had an unsolved
territorial dispute with Norway. Riste attributes the relative stability of Norwegian
defense spending after the end of the Cold War to Norwegian uncertainty about its
Eastern neighbor.18 Even if Russia slashed its military spending to a normal European
level, there would still exist a huge local military disparity between the two countries.19
The Norwegian historian, Rolf Tamnes, similarly found that the Norwegian govern-
ment felt that certain geostrategic factors still persisted after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.20 Norway was still located “within the Russian great power sphere of
influence,”21 and the natural resources located in the partially disputed Northern areas
were seen as a potential source of conflict with Moscow.22 Norwegian security and
defense policy, therefore, exhibited greater continuity in the post-Cold War era than in
most other NATO countries.
Norway’s huge maritime economic zones also tied down a great deal of Norway’s
military resources. The enlargement between 1977 and 1980 of maritime economic
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D E F E N D I N G S M A L L S TAT E S • 419

zones to 200 nautical miles had given Norway approximately two million km² of
oceanic territory. This huge area had to be managed under conditions where the legal
rights of Norwegian authorities to do so were constantly being challenged.23 The
discovery of large quantities of oil in the North Sea in 1969 had also given Norway new
responsibilities and, by the 1990s, Norway had become the world’s second largest
producer of oil and Europe’s second largest source of natural gas.24 The growing impor-
tance of Norway’s energy resources was frequently invoked as a reason why the country
needed to maintain air and sea forces capable of maintaining situation awareness and
exercising authority and sovereignty in its maritime economic zones.25
But if proximity to Russia and oceanic jurisdiction were the key reasons for the con-
tinuity of the territorial defense posture of the Norwegian Armed Forces, why then did
Norway choose to reform its military in the early twenty-first century? Did geopolitics
diminish in importance around the turn of the millennium? First, Norway experienced
a similar problem to Denmark – diminishing allied interest in its territory.26 As one
Norwegian Foreign Minister expressed, the attitude in Washington was that “the
problem with Norway is that there is no problem with Norway.”27 Like Denmark,
Norway was no longer able to maintain a relationship with the US based simply upon
American interests in Norway’s strategic location. Providing Norwegian forces for US-
led multilateral military operations, mostly within NATO, consequentially became a
new way of maintaining friendly relations with the now sole superpower.28 By so doing,
Norway hoped to maintain NATO’s and, by association, the American’s security
guarantee, which made up the cornerstone of the alliance. It became a common
argument among the political leadership that if Norway expected to receive allied assis-
tance when needed, the country had to contribute to the alliance in return.29 When
legitimizing sending Norwegian troops to Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr
Støre emphasized that, due to Norway’s “location, geography and resources,” it needed
the alliance.30
Second, the nature of the threat from the East had changed after the Cold War.
Specifically, Norway’s strategic environment had changed due to the deterioration of
the Russian military and due to the advancements made in military technology. The
Norwegian shift away from conscripted reserve units and towards more regular con-
tracted units in 2001 was, therefore, in some respect driven not only by the realization
that Russia continued to be a potential threat, but also that scenarios involving Russia
had changed from the threat of a massive Russian military invasion to more limited
scenarios. Under these circumstances, better and more mobile units, with shorter
reaction time, would be required to win in this type of limited warfare.31 Crisis manage-
ment now replaced invasion–defense tasks for the Norwegian military units in
Northern Norway.32 The seriousness of these new tasks was underlined by the fact that
the probability of the use of limited force in or near Norway could be said to have
increased after the Cold War, because such limited use of force would not necessarily
lead to any automatic escalation.33 Under these circumstances, quality and response
time became more important for the Norwegian Armed Forces than quantity and
endurance.
Third, the importance of the Norwegian maritime economic zones increased in the
new century due to the abundant fishing stocks, as well as the future potential as an
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420 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

energy region and as a maritime transport hub across Eurasia through the Northeast
Passage.34 By 2008, the Norwegian Chief of Defence considered strategic competition
concerning access to these resources to be the most likely source of conflict in the
region.This threat would most likely take the form of a tactical confrontation involving
mainly air and sea forces, and possibly short-term air- or sea-launched raids with
limited land forces against valuable military and economic targets.35 As expressed by
the State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence: “Many of the geopolitical factors we
used to think of as obsolete are once again relevant.”36 While careful to emphasize that
there was no new Cold War, Norwegian policymakers remained aware of Russia’s
military resurgence and the growing geopolitical and energy importance of the High
North.37
But while geopolitical differences provide an important and indeed necessary
condition for the divergences in Norwegian and Danish defense policy, they fail to
provide a sufficient explanation for these differences. The enhanced security environ-
ment only gave Denmark the opportunity to reorient its Armed Forces towards
expeditionary operations, but it does not explain why this opportunity was seized upon
so early and so decisively. Also, Norway’s move away from invasion defense came rather
late. The new geopolitical situation had been apparent for some time before the major
defense reform of 2001. Because geopolitics alone only provides part of the answer, it is
necessary to examine also the cultural factors that decided the respective shape of
Danish and Norwegian defense policies.

MILITARY CULTURE – ENABLER AND BREAK ON REFORM

Like many other Western military forces, both the Danish and the Norwegian Armed
Forces had been mostly homebound “unblooded” armies after the SecondWorldWar.38
This changed with the end of the Cold War, as both became involved in a new type of
international military operation around the world. Both the Norwegian and the Danish
military gradually came to rediscover some of their warrior roots, embracing some of
what Christopher Coker has called “The Warrior Ethos.”39 The Danish experience in
the Balkans, however, meant that this transition was much more rapid and complete.
When Danish officers came face-to-face with the harsh new reality of peacekeeping,
they experienced a change in their world view.40 Generally, the Danish Armed Forces
came to accept their new role as a foreign policy instrument within a warfighting-
focused framework.41 The Norwegian contingents to the Balkans in the period 1992 to
1995 were primarily involved in support functions and did not, therefore, gain first-
hand experience of engaging in regular platoon- and company-size combat
engagement, as had the Danes. The view within the Norwegian Armed Forces
continued to be that international operations were “an unwelcome diversion of
personnel and resources, rather than an opportunity to gain valuable experiences.”42
During the transition from the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to
the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia, attitudes in the Norwegian
military began to change. Norwegian officers serving in NATO’s SFOR in Bosnia in
1996–1997 began to sense a shift in the attitude of the military towards a more positive
view of participating in international operations.43 High-ranking officers spoke out in
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D E F E N D I N G S M A L L S TAT E S • 421

favor of revising the existing practice of only sending support units.44 The trickle in favor
of changing the priorities of the Armed Forces became a flood after the Kosovo War,
with officers returning from abroad with vocal calls for change.45
While not sharing the Danish Armed Forces quick and positive experience with
robust peacekeeping in the Balkans, there were also more deep-seated reasons why the
Norwegian military was a less manageable foreign policy instrument than the Danish
Armed Forces. The Norwegian approach to international military operations in the
post-ColdWar era represents what PeterViggo Jakobsen has called “an interesting com-
bination of civilian activism and military foot-dragging.”46 The Norwegian military was
a “less-than-willing” instrument in the brave new era of Western military intervention-
ism.
The Norwegian Minister of Defence who pushed through the 2001 reform of the
Norwegian Armed Forces, Bjørn Tore Godal, describes the confrontation that ensued
over the reform as a “collision between two different views on what the tasks of the
Armed Forces were.”47 He sees an important reason for the strong opposition as being
due to the military’s top-heavy structure. In 2002, Norway had three times as many
officers at lieutenant colonel/commander level as had Denmark – nine percent of all
military personnel in Norway compared to three percent in Denmark.48 This large
group of surplus officers of colonel and lieutenant colonel rank, in alliance with retired
senior officers and so-called friends of the Armed Forces, made up the bulk of those
opposing the reforms. This group was, according to Godal, still thinking in terms of
yesterday’s security challenges.49
The Norwegian military was not only top-heavy, but uniquely in NATO it also lacked
a professional non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps. In most alliance countries, e.g.
Denmark, this was where the technical expertise in low-level tactics and weapons would
lie. With the increasingly risky and demanding involvement in military operations
abroad, the Norwegian government appointed a Commission to consider re-introduc-
ing a dedicated NCO cadre. It concluded that such a reform would not only give it more
experienced leaders at the tactical level, but crucially it would also slim the ranks of the
surplus senior officers who had previously opposed reforming the armed forces.50 A
professional NCO corps, modeled on the Danish system, was subsequently introduced
in 2005.
There was, however, another key personnel difference that made the Danish Armed
Forces much more capable of expeditionary operations than their Norwegian counter-
parts, that of a much stronger tradition for employing contracted enlisted soldiers.
Neither in Denmark nor Norway was it possible to order conscripts abroad, so units
dependent upon conscripts were basically unemployable except for national home
defense tasks.
In 1973, Denmark had introduced a mixture of units manned by contracted enlisted
soldiers alongside conscripted units; the idea of the all-volunteer force had thereby
enjoyed considerable political support in Danish politics.51 In Norway, conversely,
proposals to recruit a large number of volunteer enlisted soldiers during the Cold War
always met strong opposition. Consequently, this group was restricted to just a few spe-
cialists with certain technical skills for the duration of the East–West confrontation.
After 1991, a deep ambivalence about “elite” units persisted within the ranks of the
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422 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

Armed Forces as well as in the Norwegian political leadership.52 This skepticism about
“elite” units can arguably be traced back to the strong Norwegian emphasis on egalitar-
ianism.53 Historical accounts from the Second World War tended to idealize the
Norwegian “citizen-soldier”, who took up arms despite a lack of proper military
equipment or training.54
The different attitudes towards professionalization within the Danish and
Norwegian military manifested themselves in the different roles of the military unions.
While the Danish military unions supported more widespread professionalization, for
example by proposing in 1990 that the Army be reduced to two brigades manned by
regular contracted soldiers,55 the Norwegian military unions continued to oppose intro-
ducing more all-volunteer units as late as 2007.56
While these debates about the personnel structure of the Armed Forces were
important, being linked to the Armed Forces’ ability to participate in international
military operations, a more direct debate dealt with the issue of whether such participa-
tion was an obligation or a choice for serving members of the military. In both Denmark
and Norway, service abroad had been voluntary during the Cold War and the UN
peacekeeping missions, who made up the bulk of such active service, had been regarded
negatively by officers in both countries. This attitude changed relatively rapidly in
Denmark, partly driven by the positive experience of carrying out robust peacekeeping
in the Balkans. Even so, there were also some deeper reasons.
First, the conceptual leap of employing the Armed Forces outside national territory
was smaller in Denmark than in Norway. Unlike the Norwegian Armed Forces, the
Danish military had been charged during the Cold War with defending not only their
own territory, but also being employed in a forward-defense role in parts of Germany.
To do this, they had been tightly integrated with West German land, air and sea
forces.57 Because the Danish doctrine came to emphasize robustness and the capacity
for warfighting over and above classic peacekeeping roles, and these missions were
initially in the Balkans, the new international tasks could be seen as a continuation of
the old NATO tasks of defending the near abroad as an extension of defending
Denmark.58
The shift towards projecting forces outside national territory hence came as less of a
revolution in Denmark than in Norway, where the Armed Forces had solely been tasked
with defending Norwegian territory in case of a general war.59 The mental shift required
was probably even greater than this would suggest. Norwegian national romanticism
has historically been particularly tied to Norwegian landscapes and geography and his-
torical accounts tended to reflect this by mainly focusing on events that took place
within the borders of the realm.60 Norwegian military history had, therefore, tradition-
ally ignored historical accounts of military operations outside Norwegian territory.The
objective had been to present the Armed Forces primarily as an institution tied to both
the territory and the Norwegian nation, so as better to be able to function as a nation-
building institution.61 Hence Norwegian officers saw it less natural, even in historical
terms, to do warfighting abroad.
The difference in mentalities can be seen in the different responses to international-
ization within the armed forces.There seems to have been little grass-root resistance to
further internationalization within the Danish Armed Forces.When service in interna-
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D E F E N D I N G S M A L L S TAT E S • 423

tional operations became mandatory in 1994, only five percent of the serving military
chose to reserve themselves against this.62 In contrast, when the Norwegian government
later proposed making participation in international military missions obligatory, this
caused widespread debate and controversy. It was particularly controversial within the
ranks of the military, evoking strong opposition from the ranks of the largest military
unions.63 The result was that only in 2004 was there a genuine universal obligation to
serve abroad introduced for regular members of the Armed Forces. By then, military
obstructionism had delayed the introduction of this legislation for a full decade after it
had been introduced in Denmark.

STRATEGIC CULTURE – WILLINGNESS TO USE FORCE

While there were substantial differences within the Armed Forces of Norway and
Denmark as to how willing they were to be employed in military operations abroad,
there were also important differences with respect to Danish and Norwegian society’s
willingness to employ force as a part of their foreign policy. During the Cold War,
Denmark and Norway had shared a common Nordic outlook on sovereignty and the
use of force. After the Cold War this changed in Denmark. Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen
argues that what made the Danish change in defense policy possible was the new
consensus that was built within the Danish political elite. He argues that, “Denmark
had begun to think of armed interventions as a natural part of its foreign policy and
organize its defence accordingly.”64
The key factor which drove this change was the successful entrepreneurship of the
Danish Foreign Minister, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, and the Minister of Defence, Hans
Hækkerup.The former presided over the dispatching of a Danish warship to the Gulf in
1990, and the latter pushed through the decision to send robust combat forces to the
Balkans in the 1990s in the face of both domestic and international opposition.65 These
actions changed fundamentally the conception of what was “normal” or “routine” in
Danish defense policy. Once policymakers, officers, and the public became accustomed
to using the Armed Forces successfully as instruments of Danish foreign policy, the
activity became self-reinforcing. Hans-Henrik Holm finds that “Hækkerup [. . .] funda-
mentally changed the traditional Danish approach to the role of the armed forces in
Danish foreign policy.”66
Sten Rynning sees the new Danish relationship with its armed forces as being rem-
iniscent of the mid-nineteenth century, when Denmark was willing to employ force to
achieve its aims in its relationship with its German neighbor states. Denmark now
again sought to become a strategic actor. The development of an expeditionary inter-
vention force was intended to secure Danish influence within NATO and with the US,
as well as to further a law-governed liberal world order from which Denmark would
benefit.67 Poul Villaume claims that what emerged was something akin to a “great
power” mentality in Denmark, driven forth by military activism and a close alignment
to the United States.68 Anders Wivel in turn argues that the Danish world-view in the
post-Cold War period moved at least somewhat towards that of the US, in seeing
security and a liberal world order as requiring the possession and use of military
force.69
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424 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

In Norway, few norm-entrepreneurs came forward to deliberatively change what was

considered “natural” or “appropriate”, as did Ellemann-Jensen and Hækkerup in
Denmark. Less assertive use of Norwegian military forces after the ColdWar meant that
the new paradigm of using the Armed Forces as a foreign policy tool took longer to
develop; and when it did, it did not penetrate as deeply into the Norwegian collective
mindset. Norway consequently found it much harder to adapt to the new international
environment, where use of force beyond self-defense had become more common.This
new paradigm was seen to run counter to the traditional Norwegian emphasis on
peaceful conflict resolution and mediation.70
Halvard Leira argues that Norwegian foreign policy culture since the late nineteenth
century has been influenced by a strong emphasis on the peaceful nature of Norway and
its people. This powerful “peace discourse” in the foreign policy realm meant that
defense issues were seen as being separate from foreign policy, as defense policy lacked
an international dimension. This necessitated the portrayal of Norwegian military
engagements abroad as inherently humanitarian and as a continuation of this peace
tradition.71 For a Norwegian politician to challenge the established traditions by advo-
cating a more proactive use of Norwegian military forces would involve taking
considerable political risk.72 There was therefore a poor match between the new
paradigm of employing military force as part of wider foreign policy and domestic
Norwegian practices. In 1990, it was considered unnatural to contribute combat forces
to the Gulf War,73 and there was said to be “nothing in our historical tradition” which
suggested Norway should participate.74 As seen above, this Norwegian reluctance to
send combat troops did not change until SFOR in 1997. Denmark, while also exhibit-
ing much of the same discourse, had a stronger tradition for thinking strategically about
employing military force as part of its foreign policy, and its peace tradition was less
“missionary” than its Norwegian counterpart.75
Torunn Laugen Haaland argues that the Norwegian political leadership did not want
to be associated too closely with military endeavors. The solution was to emphasize
non-military parts of the Armed Forces activities abroad, portraying Norwegian
soldiers as “military humanitarians”.76 This pattern continued in Kosovo, Iraq and
Afghanistan, even as the Norwegian military contribution changed towards more
robust combat forces. Norwegian politicians still continued to emphasize the non-
military and humanitarian aspects of the Armed Forces’ deployments, downplaying
and camouflaging by clever rhetorical ploys the military aspects of their activities
abroad.77 Karsten Friis argues:

[T]hat Norwegians have to kill and die on another continent to secure national
strategic security appears to have been difficult to state publicly for the govern-
ment. The humanitarian version is safer and less controversial.78

Janne Haaland Matlary, an academic and former State Secretary in the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, finds that the resulting difference between rhetoric and reality was so
great as to lead to something akin to “cognitive dissonance”.79
The Danish Government and prominent members of the public did not have the
same inhibitions as their Norwegian counterparts when it came to talking publicly
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D E F E N D I N G S M A L L S TAT E S • 425

about utilizing military means. Prominent Danish politicians repeatedly stated publicly
that the country was at war and that Denmark was being a defender in Iraq and
Afghanistan. These public statements became so common in Denmark that Jacobsen
claims that “nobody raises an eyebrow” when the Minister of Defence stated that
Denmark was being defended in the Iraqi desert or the mountains of Afghanistan.80
The Danish government also seemed to have grown more willing than its Norwegian
counterpart to condone the idea of engaging in war without necessarily needing to
obtain a UN Security Council mandate. In 2003, the Iraq War was a case in point,
marking a break with past practice in Danish foreign policy.81 Norway, however,
remained insistent on the primacy of international law. Anthony Forester argues that
this placed Denmark squarely in the post-Westphalia group of countries, whereas
Norway remained more tied toWestphalian norms as far as the use of military force was
concerned.82 Overall, Norway remained committed to a more traditional Nordic
position regarding international sovereignty and the use of force, whereas Denmark had
reappraised its utility and morality.83
Finally, in Norway, the role of the Armed Forces had also been more diverse than in
Denmark. Consequently, the calls for change were fewer and less successful.While the
end of the Cold War acted as an external shock, changing the traditional way in which
most Western states organized and utilized their armed forces, neither Norwegian
politicians nor the Armed Forces were sufficiently shocked by the end of the Cold War
to call for radical changes.84
Already during the nineteenth century the Norwegian Armed Forces had become
closely tied to civilian society through voluntary organizations and broad parliamentary
oversight.85 Conscription in Norway was said to serve as a socializing and educational
institution, gluing the nation together.86 This made Norway different from Denmark,
where the traditional attachment to conscription was weaker; hence the system of long-
term conscription was easier to reform.87 Unlike in Denmark, the Norwegian military
continued to be seen as an institution that should serve as a homogenizing vehicle for
the young men of the nation.88 Conscription had become institutionalized and tied to
national myths to a degree where it was difficult to challenge on functional grounds.
Any attempt to reform the system was faced with strong emotional reactions.89

THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE

It has been argued here that it was the combined effect of a geopolitical freedom of action,
a military ready and willing to take on the role of an expeditionary fighting force, and a
political consensus that the use of military force was necessary to ensure national security,
that caused Denmark’s transformation into one of NATO’s most willing warrior states.
Conversely, it was Norway’s continued geopolitical uncertainty on its Northern
periphery, her Armed Forces’ reluctance to reform and prioritize the new missions
abroad, and the political leadership’s refusal to accept military force as a legitimate and
necessary foreign policy tool, that made Norway a more reluctant and less martially
inclined member of the new NATO. Thus, despite their many likenesses, Norway and
Denmark have nevertheless chosen radically different defense paths for most of the post-
Cold War era.There is at present little to suggest that this will change soon.
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426 • H Å KO N L U N D E S A X I

The 2008 Defence Bill for the period 2009–2012 did not present any upheavals in
Norway.90 The Norwegian Armed Forces remain occupied with their dual mission: a
national, territorial one and an alliance, integrated one.The government is increasingly
concerned about a resurgent Russia, not least after the 2008 Georgian–Russian War,
and it now seeks to increase the armed forces presence and readiness in the High North.
Norway has also sponsored an attempt within the alliance to bring NATO “back in
area,” arguing that the alliance’s legitimacy depends upon it being seen to be doing
something besides “out of area” missions.There also seems to be little prospect that the
present center-left government will change the established patterns of providing
combat troops only to relatively safe locations, such as Northern Afghanistan. Norway
seems, therefore, to continue to focus more on rotating troops for stability operations in
calmer parts of the world, than in participating in combat operations alongside allies.
In Denmark, the 2009 Defence Agreement covering 2010–2014 continues the
present, expeditionary course for Danish defense policy.91 The recent appointment of
former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO’s General Secretary
seems to confirm Denmark’s status as a “top dog” in NATO circles, giving Denmark
some room for complacency. Denmark continues to change ambitiously the structure
of its armed forces in order to be able to concentrate resources on top-notch expedi-
tionary capabilities. After scrapping its submarines and ground-based air defense
missiles in the 2004 Defence Agreement,92 the 2009 agreement scrapped the M-109
howitzers, leaving the Danish Army without long-range fire support. Resources are
concentrated on internationally deployable capabilities, such as the new flexible
support ships and frigates for the Navy.
While empirically important in itself, what can be learned from examining
Norwegian and Danish defense policies over the last two decades? A clear lesson is the
necessity of a cultural transformation, both within the military and the national leader-
ship. Failure to change established ways of thinking, using words or actions alike, can
result in a defense posture, which fails to update itself to new circumstances. At best, the
result will entail being seen as backward and unfashionable. At worst, it may leave a
country with a defense structure that fails the test of being relevant. As nearly all small
European states are presently engaged in the transformation of their armed forces, pol-
icymakers need to keep in mind the importance of culture, a factor that if neglected can
be a formidable obstacle to defense transformation.

NOTES
1. Norwegian Ministry of Defence, Omleggingen av Forsvaret i perioden 2002–2005, Proposition
to the Storting, No. 45, 2000–2001, pp. 6–10.
2. RolfTamnes, “The Strategic Importance of the High North during the ColdWar”, in Gustav
Schmidt (ed.), A History of NATO – The First FiftyYears (Volume 3), Basingstoke and New
York: Palgrave, 2001, p. 274.
3. Leif Mevik, Det nye NATO: en personlig beretning, Bergen: Eide forlag, 1999, p. 101.
4. Henning-A. Frantzen, NATO and Peace Support Operations 1991–1999: Policies and Doctrines,
London and NewYork: Frank Cass, 2005, p. 186.
5. Jonathan Søborg Agger and Trine Engholm Michelsen, “How Strong was the ‘Weakest
26.4 Master.qxp:D&SA 12/11/10 10:41 Page 427

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Link’? Danish Security Policy Reconsidered”, in Sven G. Holtsmark and Andreas Wenger
Vojtech Mastny (eds), War Plans and Alliances in the ColdWar:Threat Perceptions in the East and
West, London and NewYork: Routledge, 2006.
6. Lars R. Møller, Operation Bøllebank: Soldater i kamp, Copenhagen: Høst & Søns Forlag,
2001, pp. 276–299.
7. Karl W. Haltiner, “The Decline of the European Mass Armies”, in Giuseppe Caforio (ed.),
Handbook of the Sociology of the Military, NewYork: Kluwer Academic, 2003.
8. Bertel Heurlin, “Verden eller nationen?”, Politiken, 3 October 2007.
9. Bertel Heurlin, “Forsvar og sikkerhed i Norden: Ligheder og forskelle hos de nordiske
lande”, in Bertel Heurlin (ed.), Nationen ellerVerden? De nordiske landes forsvar i dag, Copen-
hagen: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, 2007, p. 31.
10. Interview with Heurlin in NielsTobiesen, “Fjenden hedder kaos: Sikkerhedspolitisk ekspert:
Danmark får en ny rolle som leverandør af soldater til urocentre”, Politiken, 18 August 1993.
11. Bertel Heurlin, “Denationalisation of Danish Armed Forces and Militarising of Danish
Foreign Policy”, in Janne Haaland Matlary and Øyvind Østerud (eds), Denationalisation of
Defence: Convergence and Diversity, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, p. 130.
12. Ibid., p. 118.
13. Jørgen Dragsdahl, “Danske soldater skal ikke i violette uniformer”, Dagbladet Information,
11 February 2004.
14. Hans Mouritzen, “Denmark in the Post-Cold War Era: The Salient Action Spheres”, in
Bertel Heurlin and Hans Mouritzen (eds), Danish Foreign PolicyYearbook 1997, Copenhagen:
Danish Institute of International Affairs, 1997, pp. 34–36.
15. Klaus Carsten Pedersen, “Denmark and the European Security and Defence Policy”, in
Alyson J. K. Bailes, Gunilla Herolf and Bengt Sundelius (eds), The Nordic Countries and the
European Security and Defence Policy, Solna and Oxford: SIPRI and Oxford University Press,
2006, p. 48.
16. H.T. Havning, “Hvor er fronten?”, Militært Tidsskrift,Vol. 119 No. 5, 1995, pp. 150–153.
17. Olav Riste, Norway’s Foreign Relations – A History, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2005, p. 277.
18. Ibid., pp. 277–278.
19. Nils Petter Gleditsch, “Defense Without Threat? The Future of Norwegian Military
Spending. Cooperation and Conflict”,Vol. 27 No. 4, 1992, p. 403.
20. Rolf Tamnes, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie: Oljealder 1965–1995, Vol. 6, Oslo:
Universitetsforlaget, 1997, p. 134.
21. Long-serving Norwegian Minister of Defence Johan Jørgen Holst in conversations with US
Deputy Secretary of State, Lawrence S. Eagleburger, 21 December 1992. Quoted in ibid.,
p. 135.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., pp. 279–283, pp. 305–316.
24. “Norske petroleumsressurser i et utenrikspolitisk perspektiv”, in Chris Prebensen and Nils
Skarland (eds), NATO 50 år: Norsk sikkerhetspolitikk med NATO gjennom 50 år, Oslo: Den
norske Atlanterhavskomitè, 1999.
25. Norwegian Ministry of Defence, Styrke og relevans: Strategisk konsept for Forsvaret, Oslo:
Norwegian MoD, 2004, pp. 43–44.
26. Tamnes, Norsk utenrikspolitikks historie: Oljealder 1965–1995, pp. 139–145.
27. Jonas Gahr Støre, Å gjøre en forskjell: Refleksjoner fra en norsk utenriksminister, Oslo: Cappelen
Damm, 2008, p. 141.
28. Tormod Heier, Influence and Marginalisation: Norway’s Adaption to US Transformation Efforts
in NATO, 1998–2004, PhD thesis, University of Oslo, 2006, pp. 80–155.
29. Nina Græger, Norway between NATO, the EU, and the US: A Case Study of Post-Cold War
Security and Defence Discourse, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 18 No. 1,
2005, pp. 88–92.
30. Maria Reinertsen, “I krig for freden”, Morgenbladet, 16 February 2007.
31. Norwegian Defence Policy Committee of 1999, NOU 2000: 20 Et nytt forsvar, Oslo: Statens
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forvaltningstjeneste, 2000, pp. 40–43, 47–57.

32. Kjell Inge Bjerga, Enhet som våpen – Øverstkommanderende i Nord-Norge 1948–2002, Bergen:
Eide forlag, 2002, pp. 196–216.
33. Svein Vigeland Rottem, Geir Hønneland and Leif Christian Jensen, Småstat og
energistormakt: Norges sikkerhetspolitiske rolle i nord, Nordområdepolitikk III, Bergen:
Fagbokforlaget, 2008, pp. 118–119.
34. Jon Bingen, “Nordområdene og polhavsdiplomatiet”, in Marianne Marthinsen and Stein
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36. Espen Barth Eide, “The Return of Geopolitics and Energy Security”, in Rose Gottemoeller
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37. Jonas Gahr Støre, “Perspectives on Current and Future Challenges in the High North”, in
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56. Norwegian Union of Military Officers (NOF) and Military Officers’ Association (BFO),
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59. Arne Olav Brundtland, “Nordisk optikk”, in Bernt Bull and Anders Kjølberg (eds), Norge i
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