Jacob Christensen

Via Julien Frisch I was made aware of a discussion of the famous quip by Henry Kissinger: “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”. It turns out that Mr. K really didn’t want to call Europe because, after all, why bother with one Europe if you can divide and rule – and let’s face it: When do the French, the Germans and the Brits ever agree on anything related to foreign policy?

But the debunking of that story led me to consider another problem. In his blog post, Gideon Rachman writes this (or rather wrote, the post is several months old):

According to the late Peter Rodman, who knew him well, the saying is apocryphal, and in fact Kissinger’s concern was the precise opposite – he was fed up with having to deal with a Dane whom he regarded as incompetent and ineffective, who was trying to represent the whole of the EU as President of the Council.

But who could the incompetent and ineffective Dane be? Well, first of all, Kissinger was US National Security Advisor from January 1969 to November 1975 and US Secretary of State from September 1973 to January 1977 and Denmark joined the European Community, as it was then, in January 1973. Between 1973 and 1977, Denmark held the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in the second half of 1973, so in all likelihood we must be looking at one of the members of Anker Jørgensens first government which was in office from October 1972 to December 1973.

Here things begin to get complicated. K.B. Andersen was Foreign Minister, Ivar Nørgaard Minister for European Affairs and Anker Jørgensen (well, duh) Prime Minister. Now, you could call K.B. Andersen a lot of things but “incompetent and ineffective” would not be the first things to come to my mind. I suspect that the foreign affairs portfolio was split so that Nørgaard was chairing the meetings in the EC Council of Ministers but I don’t ever recall his name being mentioned in relation to high politics.

This could leave Anker Jørgensen as the unfortunate candidate. Although he (head of government) and Kissinger (foreign minister) probably weren’t on an equal footing in terms of diplomatic protocol, Jørgensen would have been chairing the (inofficial) EC Summit which I actually dimly recall being held in Copenhagen in late 1973 and to be perfectly honest, international politics and diplomacy was not exactly Jørgensen’s best discipline. (Economic policy was one of his other main weak points). Earlier in 1973 he had managed a big-time goof in a domestic speech where he happened to touch on the question of the causes of the Yom Kippur War. As a result the Arab OPEC countries were not happy and Denmark one of the countries singled out in the oil embargo.

Oh, and as you can see, the Kissinger remark in all likelihood was linked with the fall-out of the Yom Kippur War and the first Oil Crisis.

Update: Guan Yang pointed me to another possiblity – the former Danish Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag who was EC representative in Washington during 1974-1975 and who, frankly, did not make the best impression in that position. But maybe “incapacitated” would have been a more correct description of Krag during his time in Washington than “incompetent”. (Also, Krag was never president of the Council or anything like that).

But maybe there is a simpler explanation to the story: Kissinger would be looking for some random EC member country he could insult without any risk of provoking a large scale impassé. Any small country would do nicely and who, after all, would take Denmark seriously in international relations anyway?

Weekendavisen wants to challenge its readers about what happens in 2010. Instead of waiting until December 2010, I’ll forgo the bottles of red wine already now and give you my more or less badly founded predictions:

1. Will the Danish national team reach the semi-finals at the Football World Cup in South Africa?

No. It would be fun, but I think the 1/8 or possibly the 1/4 finals will be what we have to hope for.

2. Will the author Jens Christian Grøndahl change publishers again?

Who cares? Okay: Yes.

3. Will Caroline Wozniacki win a Grand Slam tournament?

If she can keep free of injuries, yes.

4. Will Lars Løkke Rasmussen reshuffle his government.

Yes. But the reshuffle may be less extensive than many imagine or hope for.

5. Will the Iranian regime and president Ahmadinedjad be overthrown?

No. But there will be continued unrest.

6. Will the world’s countries reach a binding agreement at COP16?

No. Not with China and the US Republicans obstructing.

7. Will the Danish government set up a commission to examine the separation of state and church in Denmark?

No. Not even if we imagine the Social Democrats and the Socialists taking over government after an election.

8. Will a Danish rider win a stage in the 2010 Tour de France?

Yes. Well, it’s possible.

9. Will health warnings be introduced on wine bottles in Denmark?

No.

10. Will the Litterature Prize of the Nordic Council be awarded to Ida Jessen or Peter Laugesen?

Hmmm… No.

11. Will the US Government go bankrupt?

No.

12. Will the Sweden Democrats win more than 4% of the vote in the Swedish general election?

Yes. If the Social Democrats do not get their act together.

13. Will MECOM sell parts or all of Berlingske Media?

Sneaky question. MECOM may very well want to sell but the money are tight, so I wonder if there will be buyers. No.

14. Will Sophie Marceau be cast in a leading role in a Lars von Trier film?

No.

15. Will the Maldives disappear under the sea level?

No.

16. Will Helge Sander still be Minister of Research after 1 December 2010?

No. (Well, here’s to hoping, but I really don’t think a new minister will make that much of a difference)

17. Will Bob Dylan attend the opening of the exhibition of his paintings and drawings at the Danish National Art Gallery?

No.

18. Will Keith Richards and Jack White record a cd?

Fascinating thought, but: No.

19. Will Nikolaj Znaider be awarded the Sonning Music Prize?

No. (Tricky one, though)

20. Will Peter Ramsdal still be the vicar at the Brorson Church in Copenhagen on 1 December 2010?

Yes.

And with this: Godt nytår.

Via Twitter the – rhetorical – question “how do you say this in Danish?” reached me. “This” was astroturfing, which is the not uncommon practice where companies or other established interests try to create popular legitimacy by setting up or funding organisations that look like ordinary grassroots organisations.

I doubt if the term astroturf with reference to artificial grass is generally well-known in Denmark, if only because top-level football (that’s soccer to you yanks) is played on real grass in this country, but we do talk about kunstgræs. So maybe astroturfing could be kunstgræsrødder in Danish? After all, the practice of astroturfing is not that uncommon: As politicians have learnt, the activities of one or the other organisation of patients or people suffering from some kind of disorder have over the years turned out to be heavily subsidised by medical companies, even if completely artificial organisations are very rare.

Oh, and kunstgræsrødderne are coming this way.

Wow. Just: Wow.

Wordled that one as well. But that doesn’t really capture the speech.

Via Dan Drezner and Crooked Timber: The Republicans¹ want to eliminate political science as a research discipline.

Actually, the real surprise would be if anybody from the Republican Party would support something called science these days.

1. Yes, yes, I know: One stupid senator. But given the state of the Republican Party these days… [↩]

(click)

… it fell through the floor and I had to fetch it in the cellar. Please understand that you will press “play” at your own risk. You have been warned. This guy is considered a serious political commentator in the US.

HT: Peter Santesson-Wilson.

As a Germanic language, Danish offers the possibility of making compound words. Take kvindeh�ndboldlandsholdet, just to illustrate the point. In some cases, though, political or administrative considerations lead to the formation of strange compounds like flygtningeindvandrere – technically: “refugee immigrants” – where two distinct groups (refugees and immigrants) are conflated into one (non-Danes). To prove that you master political language, you also have to pronounce the word in a particular way: Not ‘flygtninge-indvandrere (with stress on the very first syllable), but flygtninge’indvandrere (with a stress on “ind-”).

Another quasi-compound is b�sselesbiske which means “gay lesbian” – pronounced b�sse’lesbiske, not ‘b�sselesbiske. Here the motive behind the creation is that homoseksuel is considered politically inappropriate.

But move across �resund and things get really complicated. The Swedish words for gay and lesbian, respectively, are b�g and flata but you never hear about b�gflator or b�gflata politics. The politically correct term is …

… er, right. It used to be HBT (and you should remember that the Ts are not transsexualla but transpersoner), but it may be HBTQ these days. Or something.

Andrew Gelman noted that the proliferation of letters in the US version of the acronym has taken one further step. It’s no longer LGBTQ but LGBTQI – and even LGBTQIA has been spotted. So wait for HBTQI to appear in Swedish anytime soon.

But why the proliferation of letters? Gelman wonders if Q (for queer) wouldn’t fit the bill perfectly and from a rationalistic social science perspective it is a reasonable assumption. After all, queer politics are about breaking down cultural and political hierarchies and distinctions.

But there is more to it (cue Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildawsky): Queer politics are also about creating new identities and distinguishing yourself from the dreaded heterosexual squares – we are not in the individualistic but in the collectivistic, or high group, range of politics here. The problem with queer is partly historical (the term hasn’t succeeded in supplanting gay, lesbian and so on), party dimensional (queer could just as well be taken as expression of an individualist or low group lifestyle, but ideologically the queers are in the collectivist or high group range).

In terms of language, the queers are faced with a problem: They want to appear inclusive but as they rely on a strong group identity, they are in fact exclusive. Gay politics? What about the women? Gays and lesbians? Yeah – think about us bisexuals! Etc, etc.

My guess is that the proliferation of letters only stops when the queers either run out of sexual subcultures or the politics move in an individualistic or low group direction. In a way it is interesting that the alphabet soup is widespread in the US, otherwise seen as a strongly individualistic culture, and Sweden, but has failed to make much of an impact in Denmark.

And by the way: Mess with language at your own risk.

And a shorter way of making the same argument.

On a slightly more serious note, I would like to point out, that if you want to perform some real comparisons between the US and European countries, you might want to check out the World Values Survey or the work of my former colleague Torbj�rn Bergman.

By the way, judging from this figure on the WVS site, it looks as if Northern Ireland followed by Austria (!) are the European countries that are closest to the US.

Let us for the sake of argument assume that you are a Republican – perhaps even a Republican eyeing public office. Now, a recurrent theme in Republican propaganda has been that the GOP was the party of ordinary people from the Heartland while the Democrat (sic!) Party catered for the wine-drinking, latt�-sipping elites of the East and West Coasts.

Unfortunately, political scientists have debunked Republican claims of representing Joe Sixpack. True, rich states in the US are more likely than poorer states to elect Democratic candidates, but rich voters are much more likely to be Republican in any state. The difference in support for different parties is explained by differences in political polarisation.

But suppose you could find a country which fit your ideal of political dimensions? A country where the internationalist, bleeding-heart, latte-sipping elite supported the left wing while the right wing enjoyed the support of ordinary, hard-working Joe the Plumbers? And where the left seems condemned to eternal minority status.

Enter Denmark. Yes, Denmark used to be Social Democratic stronghold, but during the 1990s support for the Social Democrats among blue-collar workers eroded and since 2001 the Liberal Party and in particular the Danish People’s Party have managed to turn the traditional fault-lines in Danish politics upside-down. The left is right and the right is left. In short: Today’s Denmark is as close you will get to living the Republican dream in Europe.

What happened was that the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party during the late 1990s managed to undermine the Social Democrats on the Libertarian-Authoritarian dimension while carefully moving ever closer to the centre on the traditional socio-economic dimension. The Social Democrats still don’t know what hit them. But they know that they have been bombed back to the early 20th century in terms of electoral support.

True, the Conservatives are left as a high-income earner component in the governing coalition, but they have found it hard to promote their tax policies and are more often than not on the receiving end of DF taunts (and so, the Danish dream is not without nightmarish elements for true Republicans, but hey: You can’t always get everything you want).

So maybe Sarah Palin and her advisers ought to consider a visit to Denmark in the near future. Pia Kj�rsgaard (and her Norwegian colleague Siv Jensen) might be able to share one or the other secret about how a politician can come out of left field to become a deciding force in national politics.