Jacob Christensen

Denmark = Indiana. You’ll find it between Australia and Mexico.

Hat tip: Bryan Caplan.

In a short note in today’s Dagens Nyheter (not available on the paper’s homepage), op-ed columnist Peter Wolodarski asks why Denmark was not represented at the recent yearly conference organised by “Folk och Försvar”.

Just from reading the note it is a little difficult to see if Wolodarski implies that “Folk och Försvar” is at fault or if he is curious about Danish security policy, but if I had been at the conference and Wolodarski had asked me about the Danish absence, my answer would probably have been that there were no Danish representatives because Nordic cooperation is not a priority for the Danish government.

If you read the latest general policy speeches by the Danish PM to the Danish parliament (October 2007, November 2007), the Nordic dimension is not even mentioned. Searching for “Norden” on the homepage of the Danish Ministry of Defence yields a blank.

So maybe “Folk och Försvar” asked the Danish Ministry of Defence to send a speaker but was turned down or the arrangers, knowing the lay of the land, decided that it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

By the way: Here is the brief for the defence commission which was set up earlier today. No mention of the Nordic countries here either although the Arctic is listed as an important area.

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