Does Danish PM Mette Frederiksen have a Saviour Complex?

If so, her worldview and policies are more threatening to Denmark's future than Russia, Iran, North Korea and Iran that she talks about incessantly

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It is not because I am a psychologist, but I am looking for a reasonable explanation for why the Danish Prime Minister has the worldview she has and why she - while maintaining a very confident, calm and, for the most part, clear demeanour - puts forward interpretations, policy proposals and arguments that are long and increasingly beyond the rational, factual, intellectual and knowledge-based sphere that one must assume - and hope - that a country's foreign and security policy is built on.

A number of her statements have long puzzled me - because they come from a head of state and party leader who has advisors, is expected to know certain facts and history and listen to analyses other than her own - and, incidentally, has a bachelor's degree in administration and social sciences from Aalborg University and a master's degree in African studies from Copenhagen University.

If the Prime Minister's worldview and these statements were to be translated into concrete international action at some point, they would lead to misfortune for Denmark and the Danes, because the world around them would react quite violently.

If there is any truth in this, it is reasonable to claim - and argue as I do in this article - that the Prime Minister and the government policies she is responsible for pose a security risk to Denmark. In any given future situation, under her leadership, Denmark will be put in a situation that is far worse than it needs to be - and the human, economic and other costs will be shockingly high.

I want to emphasise that I am not saying this polemically or to create debate; it is my best conviction based on studies of and practical fieldwork with international issues, conflicts and peace for about as many years as the Prime Minister has walked this earth, namely 47.

Mette Frederiksen - who, by the way, I have never met in person - is known as a decisive leader who does not shy away from taking risks. Keywords: Mink and Corona. The American business magazine, Forbes, has just put her up as No. 73 on the list of the 100 most powerful women in the world (I don't attach any objective significance to these kinds of charts; in this case because it's unclear what the selection criteria are and because no less than 47 of them are American women). But it shows that the Prime Minister, the only Danish woman on the list, has made her mark where she wants to be seen. Along with being made Commander 1st Class of the Order of Dannebrog and other awards she has received, this is something that is likely to increase her sense of self-worth.

For several months now, she has been promoting an image of the world - not the West, but the whole world as she sees it - that is very dark indeed. She speaks of a ‘moment of destiny’ and that the rest of the world is not in our favour and that a huge investment in military and combat efforts and equally huge sacrifices must, therefore, be made for Denmark to survive. She is also concerned about whether colleagues and other people realise how dark the times we live in, which she warns about, actually are.

She recently told the Danish Broadcasting (Danmark Radio) that the EU as we know it is dying and that she is therefore taking the lead to save it, i.e. create a new EU. The Ekstra Bladet daily also reports that she has saved the traditional Christmas and - as she puts it - ‘won the battle’ against her husband's proposal for a different Christmas dinner.

She uses the media effectively to get her message across in a rarely dramatised and staged way - in short comments, at press conferences and recently in four interviews on the same day with Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, Kristeligt Dagblad and Jyllands-Posten. None of those interviewing her seems to be able - or dare - to ask for arguments in favour of or elaborations on the rather confident, square and simplistic views and pure assertions put forward, let alone ask critical questions.

My hypothesis is that one must understand this as a psychological preparation for the Prime Minister to announce to the Danes - for example in her New Year's speech or early in parliament - that she and her government will make another decision regarding Danish armament or Danish participation in a new American project or deployment of Danish troops in e.g. the Middle East or perhaps Ukraine. Something big, in other words.

Another possibility is that she, as someone in a small NATO circle, knows of concrete war plans that will soon be put into action.

Denmark's leader and government have long since decided on a historically unprecedented rearmament and have purchased the world's most expensive F-35 fighter jet. Just a few weeks ago, her Minister of Defence sent up a trial balloon of sorts with a casual remark about an additional DKK 300 billion for military purposes. And Denmark has already invested around DKK 65 billion in the war in Ukraine, because this war must be won and Russia must lose - even though more and more solid military experts - including American ones - have judged it as already lost (of the DKK 65 billion, only 5 are civilian). Denmark is thus the country that has given the most to this war in relation to its size.

Understandably, such militarisation requires frequent access to media that does not ask probing questions about what the government's long-term goal really is. It comes little by little like the tyranny of incrementalism: Once we've said A, we must also say B... and O. And we can now do almost anything we want, partly because the Danish economy is doing well and because we no longer accept any red line whatsoever: Russia is only bluffing, they should have no say in the Europe of the future - which you only say if you know you're superior.

I don't mean to be personal or unpleasant, but I find it necessary to try to search for a key at a slightly deeper level that can open up a possible explanation for how a Danish Prime Minister can pursue such a policy and do so with the arguments that she repeatedly presents. Because this policy and its presentation can not be rationally understood, for example, with reference to certain theories and concepts in political science, international relations, threat analysis, strategic studies - let alone peace research - or other academic disciplines. It seems so outlandish today that non-rational elements must be brought into play.

I readily admit that it is perhaps a little unconventional to analyse the Prime Minister's behaviour in such a way. Still, we are all entitled, each with our background, to try to understand her and the policy she pursues and the statements she shares with the population - not least given the possible consequences if it is one day translated into action in the belief that it can increase Danish security. It cannot. The disaster will be a fact for the entire Danish society.

It is still the case - as with Trump, by the way - that a leader's personality plays an important role, although we also know that structures, development trends, global changes - indeed the whole of what we call the outside world - are important for understanding the policy a government chooses to set and follow. Although I usually deal with the latter elements, in what follows, I will try to understand what drives this policy's leadership figure on a more individual level.

Thus, when the analysis of the rational falls short, other extra-rational or irrational and emotional explanations must be sought. Finally, I should say that the saviour complex I am talking about in the following is not part of a disease picture - as the literature on it also emphasises. It only becomes so if it reaches a certain intensity and ends in megalomania (megalomania) or other mental disorders.

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What is a saviour complex?

So what is a saviour complex - or Messiah complex or White Knight complex?

Well, it's about wanting to save someone or something. The saviour sees her/himself as called and capable of being a saviour. There is nothing wrong with wanting to help or save others - for example, when you hold back a child who is about to step in front of a bus. It becomes more problematic when you give advice that no one has asked for, and this advice is motivated by the desire to increase the saviour's own importance, self-esteem, power or status - i.e. where the motivation is not purely altruistic.

(Wanting) to help and (wanting) to save can be two very different things.

The saviour can also help - or rather ‘help’ - others because he or she feels better, wiser or superior to the one to be saved. In that case, there will be no real humanism or empathy, but rather that the saviour, to a certain extent, is actually forced to select things to be saved, and that the object/victim of this false care is actually cowed and dare not speak out: Thank you, but I don't actually need your help!

As a consequence, it becomes more of a domination technique for know-it-alls: You obviously don't realise that you need to be saved (because you are on the wrong path), but I clearly see that you are on the wrong path and that you need to be saved.

This compulsive relationship is based on the fact that the saviour has - of course - seen the light or, rather, the coming darkness (and that others have not yet).

He or she, therefore, has a great need to reach out to the many with his or her warnings: You all need to be saved, though you do not know it yourselves, for you have not seen the future that I see, and that has been revealed to me. Of course, the type called the White Saviour believes that skin colour or race gives a natural right to save the black person who does not know better because of his skin colour, but in principle it is the same mechanism, the same relationship.

This - as the only one - to have seen the Light/Darkness - or rather the Light out of the Darkness - is obviously a delusion and can lead to megalomania (or be created by it). In one's own perception of reality, one sacrifices oneself so that others can see this light or darkness and the true saviour is willing to toil and suffer for his mission; as mentioned, it is a calling, a greater mission than others have or can imagine.

So if someone were to pass by this saving soul and say with a twinkle in their eye: ‘Hey, climb down from the cross, we need the wood’ - it would not go down well.

People who have reached a high (power) position can sometimes develop this complex due to a sense of omnipotence, of almost being able to walk on water - we say of them that ‘it's gone to their head.’ That's when there is no need for statements and opinions to be backed up by facts and arguments, by something rational. According to the saviour who has seen the Light, it should be enough for him or her to say this or that; it thus becomes the truth about the question in question - about which others must therefore be enlightened, not least by repeating the truth as a mantra.

If the object listens to the saviour's warnings and accepts (unwanted) help, then he or she is inside. The one who says: No thanks, I don't believe in your light and truth... is rejected, condemned. He or she is not one of us but belongs to the ‘unbelievers’ or is already lost.

Inherent in this whole process, of course, is the assumption of responsibility for others, a supposedly burdensome act of self-sacrifice. It is reminiscent of the overprotective parent who, instead of challenging the child to think for themselves and take initiative, emphasises that ‘I will take care of you’ (if you are obedient...) in which there is again a drift towards creating dependence.

Salvation thus has its price: ‘Follow me and all will be well, I will protect you from the darkness you will otherwise end up in - for I have seen the Light.’

Those who sacrifice themselves for the otherwise lost easily see themselves as morally superior and naturally pretend that they have the solution to the problems ahead. Salvation itself lies in having such a solution that leads the object of salvation out of the darkness: I know what is best for you and how to get out of the darkness that threatens!

This in itself increases the burden of responsibility, the weight of the cross - because what if the saviour's solution does not work as she or he claims and promises? The thought is unbearable and must be dismissed; you can't promise salvation if you don't fully believe in the solution you offer. The Saviour's solution - the way to fight the evil that threatens - is simply the only possible truth. It is the Saviour's honest and strong conviction that the solution he or she promotes is the only one and, therefore, can and will work on the day of salvation.

Therefore, if anyone dares to point out that there is something wrong in the entire thought figure, in this self- and worldview, as well as in the proposed solution , it will be resolutely rejected, as it tampers with the saviour's role, the saviour's self- and worldview and supposed good deeds.

And if the tangible reality suddenly intrudes and perhaps turns out to be different from the saviour's imagination, the saviour will only see criticism or other interpretations as a stimulus to stand even more firmly - yes, almost as a confirmation: Those who do not see the Darkness and the Light that I see certainly also need to be saved. And if they don't, then they belong to ‘the others,’ the unbelievers. They do not belong to ‘us’ because they speak for the forces of Darkness.

It is worth mentioning that there is a neighbouring complex called the Hero Complex. This is about a person who seeks recognition by acting selflessly and performing good deeds (as they see them). What is special about them, however, is that they actually act in such a way that a harmful situation arises, which they then see it as their job to help solve, i.e. save people from.

The above general description of the saviour complex should provide a clue to the interpretive framework - or inspiration - I will now try to place Mette Frederiksen's foreign and security policy positioning in.

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What is it that Mette Frederiksen wants to save?

The first question, of course, is: Who and what does Mette Frederiksen want to save?

In the big picture, it is nothing less than the Western-dominated world order that the US has led since 1945, which is often referred to as liberal-democratic, based on capitalism, NATO and the idea that as a leading empire you have a mission.

More specifically, you could say it's Denmark and Europe (against a Russia that she does not - as she puts it - belong to Europe), and that is the larger struggle that Ukraine is preparing for. As well as Israel.

According to her worldview, this Western world is innocent and represents the Light, while much of the rest of the world represents Darkness - the forces of Darkness. The actors she always mentions without any argumentation whatsoever are Russia, Iran, China and North Korea. They have joined forces and mean us harm - and as her predecessor Helle Thorning Schmidt also said: We must take good care of Denmark - and who should do it first if not the all-embracing - or all-consuming - mother of state?

As I said, the West is good and innocent. For the Prime Minister, there is no question of the West being part of a conflict formation or that there is an interaction between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

The West is like a family in a villa on a peaceful road, not behaving in any way threatening - but out on the road, there are always some scary-looking people walking back and forth, glaring up at the villa in such a way that it is reasonable to believe that they have some evil plan they are trying to put into action. And we must guard against these in time.

It is clearly not possible to find anything in the Prime Minister's way of talking politics that even hints that this US-dominated world has, in the eyes of others, committed any offences that would cause them to have a negative attitude towards the West.

She famously says that there should not be so much as “an A4 sheet of paper” between the US and Europe; we should be essentially one, stand firm and not engage in constructive criticism of friends. There is - as another prime minister used to say - simply nothing to criticise (Anders Fogh Rasmussen). No self-criticism, no reflection: WE cannot be wrong.

The fact that US/NATO countries have committed major crimes in e.g. the Global War on Terror, in Yugoslavia (NATO's bombing of Kosovo and Serbia in violation of treaties and international law), Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and so on and are indisputably responsible for the suffering and death of millions of people does not exist in her worldview - not explicitly/spoken but not implicitly as a reason for her to think that we should tread lightly. No, the West is 100% right and can, therefore, go full steam ahead - and save it from the threats everyone else represents.

As for Ukraine, it is clear that there is only one single cause of the conflict and war (she never distinguishes between the two, as it is reasonable to do analytically) and that is Russia and President Putin. He has ‘unprovoked’ launched his ‘full-scale’ invasion, breaking all the rules and needs to be knocked into place so he can feel it forever. That is so desire Russia's relative influence around the world - like its military spending - is far less than the Soviet Union’s was in the 1960s-1980s.

Interestingly, Prime Minister Frederiksen lacks any sense of the history of the conflict. She doesn't know that NATO set up an office in Kiev immediately after Ukraine's independence. She never mentions that in 2008, over the heads of the Ukrainians, NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO. She never mentions the Obama administration's regime change in 2014 in Kiev, that the US decided who would become the new president and prime minister of Ukraine. Never a word about this ‘new’ Ukraine's 8-year war, killing some 15 000 citizens, and political cleansing of everything that could be called Russian, and so on.

World history begins here with Putin taking Crimea and then invading Ukraine as the first part of a great European conquest plan. And - unintentionally comical - the Prime Minister's only reference to history is the one about Munich and how Hitler tricked Chamberlain, who came home and talked about ‘peace for our time.’ This false analogy serves only one purpose, namely to turn Putin into Hitler - but you can get away with that kind of thing in a West that increasingly lacks general education and has undermined the humanities for decades.

If she were aware of these things, it would be impossible for her to talk about the invasion being unprovoked and Putin having - sick? - imperialist ambitions (with at the time 8% of NATO military spending). Any military expert will also know that to occupy and administer a country, you need 3-4 times more invading soldiers than the one you are invading. Russia’s was anything bu “full-scale” - the word is US propaganda.

And now that Russia has spent almost 3 years occupying about 20% of Ukraine, we are still waiting for a serious explanation of how this could be the beginning of an occupation of all of Europe - which would include Denmark - and why the Danes should prepare for the war to come soon by - as she says - following the Danish Emergency Management Agency's guidance. It is enough for the Prime Minister, the media and other politicians - even well-educated experts - to say that this is just the way it is.

In diplomatic terms, the whole thing can be characterised as paranoia at the highest level. Or calm hysteria.

And when it comes to Israel, one recalls how, after Hamas' attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, she rebuked a journalist in a rather undiplomatic way that there was no reason to compare Palestinian and Jewish suffering. Since then, we have heard the mantra that Israel has the right to defend itself every time someone has asked the Prime Minister what she thinks about the obvious Israeli genocide, which today has passed 45,000 victims in Gaza, made the territory uninhabitable, displaced millions - and so on.

There - simply - is no Palestine-Israel or Middle East history before 7 October 2023.

The West has not historically or today done anything wrong or in any way, given others a motive to relate negatively to the West - and thus, the others' (alleged) threats against us become nothing but vileness and must never be understood as - at least also - a reaction to something we have done.

But does this Western world - the US, the EU, including Ukraine and Israel - want Mette Frederiksen's salvation?

It may sound a bit strange to ask the question like that, but there's nothing to suggest it. The Western world is going full steam ahead with confrontational policies, sanctions, condemnation, armament, war, regime change, arms exports, provocations, trade sanctions, threats and genocide (Gaza) and it now also wholeheartedly supports the invasion and occupation of a country by a terrorist Islamist organisation such as al-Nusra/HTS and total regime change (Syria).

For the rest of humanity (88%), it is impossible to see the West wanting to change signals and shape a positive role in the future world order where there are new players on the scene - and players that no longer submit obediently to Western one-polar dominance.

What BRICS+ and other countries want - for those who study it - is in no way to bring down the West. Not a single country has threatened or is plotting to conquer the EU or the US. It is the US and EU countries that surround China these years - China does not have a single base near the West and does not seek - like the US with Taiwan - to get Hawaii, for example, to secede from the US (China has one base in Djibouti, the US 650 in 135 countries).

What the ‘others’ want is the freedom to create a more multipolar, co-operative world - but by no means to destroy the West.

Regrettably, such interpretations are irrelevant in Danish politics.

No, the salvation the Prime Minister sees before her is the paradoxical salvation: the West must be saved by speeding up all the way round, taking up the fight - and not by fundamentally changing and adapting to the new - multipolar - world. The West must win by intensifying and investing in its way of being the West - a kind of turbo version. Because the West is fundamentally good and innocent, it just hasn't been aware that ‘the others’ have become stronger and more skilful, coordinate themselves and stand for values that are different from ours. And something must be done about that.

Mette Frederiksen’s Light out of Darkness is more West, stronger West a more unwavering, fundamentalist and above all militaristic West - not a West that listens, navigates and adapts to developments. The West does not adapt, it rules, it dominates, it rules alone and only its values are universal - all others are therefore lower on the ladder of civilisation.

This is also why Russia must be subdued, weakened and broken - perhaps even divided as Yugoslavia was. Russia is the Western brother that has chosen to sit outside the West - western in the sense that we have an enormous amount in common, one based historically on Karl Marx, the other on Adam Smith, true Westerners. This is also why the Prime Minister doesn't understand anything about China because it can only be understood if you want to understand the Chinese way of thinking, history, and philosophies - yes, have respect for China as a millennia-old civilisation.

It is politically correct and systematically undiplomatic to call China names - while China in every possible way expresses its desire for cooperation with the West and respect for, for example, the UN Declaration, just as China has enshrined the - famous 70-year-old - Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence in its constitution. This is all something that the Prime Minister seems completely unaware of or brushes off with the tendentiously racist (delusional) notion that all non-Western countries are inferior to us.

One is reminded of former Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen's unintentionally comical statement that Western values are simply better than everyone else's.

For the Prime Minister, Article 1 of the UN Charter that ‘peace shall be achieved by peaceful means’ is irrelevant. She has no advisors in conflict analysis, peaceful conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation, peacekeeping, reconciliation, forgiveness and that kind of - soft - stuff. Peace is something that comes when we have won a war - preferably a major war - and the others have lost, when Europe or large parts of it lie in ruins. Will it also be peace if we lose? That possibility does not enter her imagination because - in that case - her saviour policy would have failed completely and that is an unthinkable thought.

Without the slightest evidence or empirical references, Mette Frederiksen knows that China is behind Russia in Ukraine - and behind Iran and North Korea, and therefore all forms of cooperation are unthinkable. And that is why we, the entire Western world, must stand together - the Good against the Evil. Not so much as an A4 sheet of paper and I/we will not move a millimetre regardless of the complexity of reality and other relevant interpretations of world change.

Her worldview has the old dichotomising, archetypal fairy tale character: them and us, either them or us, we the good and them the bad. Not ‘we.’ Not coexistence. Only struggle. We must win. They have to lose. Win/Lose, not Win/Win. There is no room for diversity or any kind of unity in diversity. One is almost tempted to jokingly say that in Mette Frederiksen's vision of the world and the future, there is only room for unity in uniformity, not in diversity. There is, naturally enough, only one possible - redemptive - policy regardless of how reality changes: that of the Prime Minister.

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And how will the West with NATO win?

Well, by fighting. Not by competition or by fighting for innovation, morality, new thinking, science, vision, technical and economic development - sure, there may be that too, but it is the fight with weapons and not competition that will save us.

Diplomacy, negotiations and the like would lead to compromise, not victory. In other words, they are irrelevant. It is striking that words like diplomacy, negotiations, mediation, international law, UN, reconciliation, etc., never appear in her vocabulary and thus not in her worldview or political toolbox. There is only one tool - a hammer - and all problems, therefore, look like nails.

As you know, her first international saviour object is Ukraine - the key to the ongoing battle for the future of the West.

And there is no room for negotiation there. Putin is the type of man we know you can't trust in the slightest. He only understands one kind of politics - the politics of big words and weapons. If we make some kind of peace around Ukraine, he will wait a bit and then greedily throw himself at another country; we know that. And therefore, there is no need to argue this in any conversation with the press; it's just the way the Prime Minister feels it is.

And by the way, what we have seen so far is only a beginning - if he is allowed to succeed even a little bit in Ukraine, he will move on - take Poland, the Baltic republics, then Finland and Sweden and yes, sooner or later, dear Denmark of which she is the patron, protector. So Ukraine may be Ukraine, but it is also a kind of symbol - for Putin's expansive, imperialist-revisionist policy - Ukraine is just the first step on a long march across Europe. Therefore, the whole of the West must unite to help Ukraine, which fortunately also stands for our Western values. The fight for Ukraine is the fight for our future.

And this is where you can introduce the Hero Complex: you first perform some - in your own eyes good - deeds, which, however, cause enormous problems for the person to be saved. NATO had to be saved from disbandment and so the alliance expanded against all the promises Western leaders made to Mikhail Gorbachev - and against all common sense. Now Ukraine must win so that NATO's biggest blunder ever will not become clear to everyone and therefore lead to the alliance's demise.

Contrary to the false Western NATO narrative, more and more people have realised that NATO's expansion was such a problem-creating heroic act and anything but an expression of statesmanship. Mette Frederiksen will - like NATO and the EU on their websites - say that Gorbachev was never promised that NATO would not expand ‘one inch.’ However, this is an extremely well-documented lie.

She will flatly deny that leading and very different Western diplomats and experts like George Kennan, Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock, William Burns (current CIA chief but former US ambassador to Moscow), many diplomats and e.g. Angela Merkel warned against making Ukraine a NATO member. She has never heard of Realpolitik scholars like Mearsheimer, Soviet/Russia experts like Stephen Cohen or peace researchers like myself, who years ago warned against this expansion in general and the inclusion in it of Ukraine in particular. Because it would inevitably lead to war with Russia.

Furthermore, she would argue that - as NATO leaders and the US always claim - it's about countries making their own security policy choices. Unfortunately, this is not true either: in opinion poll after opinion poll up to the Russian invasion, no more than 15 per cent of the Ukrainian people wanted NATO membership. The surveys were conducted by the Kiev University Institute of Sociology with the assistance of American researchers.

There is even an article on the NATO website that points out the worrying lack of interest in NATO among Ukrainians. And as you know, Ukraine's (and Georgia's) NATO membership was decided by NATO in 2008 (the year after Putin's worried speech in Munich) and about ten years later declared as part of Ukraine's constitution by its then President Poroshenko.

These are the kind of facts journalists hardly know anything about - or if they do, know not to bring up with her - lest they risk her shouting "What!? ’ as she once did in a parliamentary debate.

You could say that Mette Frederiksen devotes her political life to covering up the biggest political blunder of the NATO deterrence alliance, namely making expansion itself its raison d'être. Whatever the cost. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, there was no reason not to dismantle NATO as well and create a new security system together.

And so on and so forth: facts that don't fit into the worldview simply don't exist. They don't balance or nuance because they don't exist.

So the solution - in the singular - is the fight. It is now or never. It's a moral crusade - supported by Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who recently saw fit to claim that ‘we’ have the moral upper hand in Ukraine and therefore it is - always - a bad time if someone suggests that the government should perhaps, in light of the reality of the situation, think again. He also announces that he takes Russian colleague Sergei Lavrov's views on NATO countries' policies ’with great calm.’

You have seen the Light - or, perhaps rather, you are the Light. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lost and/or should be fought because this other represents the Darkness. Any critic of the first policy in Ukraine thus becomes a Putinist or Putin Lover and the discussion is closed. Anyone who criticises the Prime Minister's friend, Israel, the apartheid system, Greater Israel or its genocide of now 45,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, is an anti-Semite. And then the discussion is closed.

And that's how weakly founded today's Danish foreign and security policy is.

It is therefore very easy to explain why ‘the others’ are called authoritarian - it is a pure psycho-political projection. This means that you yourself, albeit deep down, realise that you have some dark, less flattering sides, and then you get rid of them by projecting them onto ‘the others.’

Such projection is not harmless when coupled with an increasingly resistant Saviour project or mission.

Thus, significant parts of reality are rejected - in what is also called groupthink.

Groupthink involves a small group of decision-makers (and officials) working together over time on a policy and worldview that allows them to feel that they represent the Light and the Solution; any information that tampers with this self-perception is repelled - they are just stupid and uninformed or ‘against us’.

As time passes, a very firm - and dangerous - belief in our own infallibility emerges : we simply cannot be wrong and our motives are noble. And with this firm belief, one day a crucial decision is made that has disastrous consequences - predictably for everybody else but just not for the group itself.

As mentioned above, the saviour complex can often mean that external opposition only makes you feel even more certain of your cause, your worldview and your unique competence.

The Prime Minister has stated countless times that she does not move in the slightest in the face of what is actually happening. For example, if Russia has put forward something called red lines, it makes no impression - Putin is not allowed to influence anything we do, let alone put forward what he considers to be Russia's legitimate security interests. That's something you can safely ignore.

The solution, therefore, is to say that from now on, you don't care about any red line Russia might have. They're just bluffing.

I see nothing to suggest that the Prime Minister sees such an attitude as an intellectual capitulation or a loss of moral compass. I also doubt that she sees anything potentially dangerous in such an exercise of politics - probably mostly because this politics is not formed in interaction with the real world, but only in the cemented inner worldview in which you can almost walk on water because you have seen the Light and know the difference between Evil and Good.

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The Saviour's new clothes

It should be fairly clear that in most cases, the saviour has no new clothes, or perhaps none at all. It is, therefore, not possible to have an intellectual discussion about these things. The Danish foreign affairs leadership headed by Mette Frederiksen is - probably unconsciously - running on a series of irrational, emotional delusions that cannot be problematised or dealt with in a sensible, multifaceted, democratic public debate.

To be fair, the Prime Minister is not alone to blame for this. All parliamentary parties, all old-fashioned mainstream media, DR public service and virtually all experts used from exclusively state-funded research institutes believe - with very few variations - basically the same thing: We have done nothing wrong in the last 30 years, Russia's invasion was unprovoked, now we need to help Ukraine win militarily, Russia is a nasty enemy doing things we would never do, and large parts of the rest of the world have - despite our innocence - become our enemies.

In almost 50 years, I have followed Danish foreign and security policy, and there has never been such a homogeneous, narrow-minded, and debate-killing atmosphere in Denmark.

And why is this in itself a security risk?

The solution, as mentioned, is Fight with Weapons = Victory. If it comes to a major war in Europe, this policy will almost inevitably mean that Denmark will have to send soldiers into battle - in Ukraine or into Russia or elsewhere depending on the course of the battle. Given the Prime Minister's worldview and her obsessive insistence that Russia must lose, she cannot (even with her A-4 sheet in hand) keep Denmark out of this war.

In her own words, her hero/saviour complex dictates that ‘we’ should not shy away from ‘putting our hand on the hotplate.’ On the contrary, Denmark must go to war, show courage and strength, stand together - even if no one has attacked a NATO country and the NATO treaty's article 5 on helping each other in case of attack is therefore not relevant.

The saviour does not abandon the one he or she has promised to save. The possible human, financial, cultural and physical cost of this ‘salvation’ does not seem to worry the Prime Minister, her entourage, the media or the government as a whole. But I wonder if it worries many Danes?

So, ignoring Russian red lines and - legitimate - security interests, and taking critical counter-arguments from Russia with calm, the Ministries of State, Foreign Affairs and Defence must believe that things will go well in the long term - even though most indications are that this longer term is not included in anyone's risk or impact assessment.

But it won 't. And it can ‘t.

You only have to imagine how Mrs Frederiksen would feel if Russia had tried for thirty years to make our neighbour, for example Germany, a member of a Russian-led alliance and said loud and clear that they didn't care what Denmark thought about that.

But empathy is not part of today's intellectually and ethically blunted security policy - and certainly not the concept of "common security, ’ which the Prime Minister's historical party colleague, the intellectual high jumper Olof Palme, promoted in the 1980s: We are only safe even when we know that the other side also feels safe with us.

Therefore, a completely predictable realpolitik judgement must be that Denmark and other countries that have been leaders in (mis)using Ukraine as a lever for military victory over Russia will become the object of the old familiar thought: He who will not hear, must feel - which is also what Mette Frederiksen herself must have as a slogan towards Russia.

In other words, all or parts of Denmark will be destroyed - conventionally or nuclear - by Russia.

This also applies to Sweden, which now has 17 US bases, Finland, which has 15 and Norway, which has 4-5. Russian rockets are probably already aimed at these targets because it is from them that the US/NATO will seek to destroy Russia. What other function would they have? Of course, this also applies if the US bases in Denmark - which Mette Frederiksen also fully supports - become operational before a possible major war ravages Europe. Bases are like magnets.

In conclusion, I would like to argue that - with just a little creativity and free from psycho-political complexes and threat obsessions - there are many ways in which the scenario just outlined could be avoided and some kind of solution to the NATO-Russia conflict that all parties, including Ukraine, could live with.

But tragically, this kind of free thinking is not a part of Mette Frederiksen's worldview and politics. Saviour complexes, by definition, do not allow for solutions other than the one the saviour advocates and prepares the Danes for through politically correct media - war and then, to some extent, peace as in ‘Rest in Peace.’

To summarise: If war comes - that is, if the fragile and intellectually debunked deterrence philosophy breaks down psychologically, politically and militarily - the government's policy will hit the Danes harder than any other conceivable and possible policy would.

In such a perspective, the Prime Minister is more loyal to NATO's interests than to those of Denmark and the Danes. Such prioritisation is already problematic in peacetime.

King Frederik will probably end his New Year's speech as we enter 2025 with ‘God Save Denmark.’ However, that is probably too much to hope or wish for as long as Mette Fredriksen insists on saving Denmark and the West in her special way.