Is ANY of this sane?

Some analysts seem to believe that there are elements of sanity to US president Donald Trump’s foreign policy. I totally disagree. Read my full article below:

Is any of this sane?

January 29th, 2025

Exactly like in 2017, some right-wing opinion leaders in Danish media are trying to convince us that Trump might not be totally mad; that there is a core of rationality, and that he just has this bombastic way of expressing himself.

I understand they believe that Trump will settle for concessions in Greenland regarding more American military presence and mineral extraction. But then Trump’s rants about taking over Greenland don’t make sense: The US asking for stronger military and economic protection against Russian and Chinese influence is kicking in an open door. Also, Denmark has also finally increased pace and force of its contribution to the defense of Greenland. The reports from both Trump sr. and jr. about Greenlanders’ alleged dream of becoming Americans clearly indicate a megalomaniac’s goal of a globe with UNITED STATES OF AMERICA written boldly on the world’s map of Greenland’s 2.3 million km2. The means will probably be a mixture of economic pressure and promises – and a massive attempt to influence public opinion in Greenland. There seem to be similarities with Russia’s recent interference with elections in Moldova

There is much evidence that Trump along with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping believes in the right of a great power to subjugate what they consider to be their neighbouring areas or sphere of interest. Therefore, trump may also appreciate Putin’s similar desire in Ukraine and Xi’s in relation to Taiwan.

In any case, his first focus has been to get Canada, Mexico, Panama and Greenland under his heel with economic or military power. The fierce threats of punitive tariffs against Colombia recently is proof that all of Latin America is expected to comply as well.

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The Trump-sane-washers also seem to believe that plans to impose tariffs on goods from other countries are simply a ploy to be avoided with reasonable concessions of a different kind to Trump. Fortunately, it mayend up like that, but only if the rest of the world stands together to resist and resolutely respond to the American president’s abuses.

This requires unprecedented solidarity within Europe – including Great Britain, and closer cooperation with other parts of the world that are in the cross hairs of the White House.

But splitting European cooperation through support of national ultra-right parties in Europe is precisely what trump and his best buddy and efficiency spearhead Elon Musk are aiming at. 

There is no indication that Trump realises that he has to stop before he, in violation of all international law and all consideration for old allies, annexes e.g. Greenland and the Panama Canal and triggers a global war on tariffs: Over decades Trump has insisted on the excellence of tariffs, because they are a tax on foreigners which can fund tax breaks for Americans – the wealthiest in particular. This whole scheme seems to be based on the unrealistic expectation that the world will not dare to react to a tariff attack from the United States. This is voodoo economics, which will inevitably result in an enormous loss of wealth, both for trading partners and for the United States itself.

But what will Trump demand in return for mitigating the tariff threat? Most likely a stop to regulating and taxing his friends among US’ corporate giants, a demand that Europe buy fossil fuels from the United States, way into in the future, while emptying the European treasury through incredibly large purchases from the American arms industry:

In other words, concessions that are even worse than tariff walls, because we will cut ourselves off from competing with American high technology, be prevented from reigning in climate change in time, be forced to cut welfare and finally give up supremacy of democracy over the oligarchs.

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Some right-wing opinion leaders are shocked by Trump’s foreign policy course, but believe that much of his efforts on the home front make sense. How so? Is the total dismantling of restrictions on the billionaires’ rampage to hoard an even larger share of the nation’s wealth and monopolising opinion-making in favour of the MAGA movement in newspapers, TV and on social media okay? Is the attempt to cement a legal system that will always decide in favour of the president – even when Republican states gerrymandering, i.e. fiddling further with mapping of constituencies, making it even more difficult for a future majority against Trump to actually become a majority in the corridors of power? Don’t they see the threat to democracy itself?

*PS: By the way, I don’t believe that Trump wants war. But surrounding himself as he does, with ignorant and fanatical yes-men, while ridding his administration of all knowledgeable professional diplomats, dangerously increases the risk of war.

This is a translation of an opinion piece in the national Danish daily Berlingske

Find more of my articles in English here

End of the murder on Palestine?

Denmark is a member of the UN security Council 2025-26. Naturally, as former president of the UN General Assembly, I am proud of Denmark’s stated cross-cutting priority for the coming two years: ‘Standing up for International Law, including International Humanitarian Law, and pushing for a more Accountable, Effective and Representative Security Council.’ 

I look forward to seeing it put into action in a volatile world with so many conflicts and unknowns that urgently need attention, call for strict implementation of human rights and urgent action against war crimes, not least in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The tragedy of Palestine 

Based on extensive documentation, Amnesty International has concluded that Israel is committing in genocide in Gaza with indiscriminately killing and injuring of tens of thousands of civilians, blocking emergency aid and killing emergency workers, resulting in widespread death from hunger and disease.

2.3 million people have been left in a pile of rubble the size of Langeland (a small Danish Island). Their society has been systematically made uninhabitable. Homes, hospitals and schools have been bombed to oblivion. 45,000 people have been killed – most of them civilians. 106,000 have been injured or permanently disabled. Children make up a terrifyingly large proportion of the dead and injured. Nowhere else have so many children had limbs amputated – often without anaesthesia, because medicine and equipment are allowed to arrive only to the absolute minimum, just as little as water and food. Hundreds of thousands of children without schooling and without a future,

On South Africa’s initiative, the accusation against Israel of genocide is being heard by the International Court of Justice. No verdict has yet been rendered, but the Court has for a long time and in vain demanded a ceasefire and sufficient supplies for the victims of the war.

The International Criminal Court has also brought proceedings against Israel’s Prime Minister and former Minister of Defence for their well-documented war crimes.

Yet there are still people in Denmark who believe that Israel’s warfare is necessary self-defence against Hamas’ brutal attacks on and hostage-taking of civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Some say that the Israelis have the right to defend themselves with all means necessary, so as not to be exterminated or expelled from Palestine again. This is said without the understanding that in the real world it is the Palestinians who are threatened with annihilation as a nation and with expulsion from Palestine. Israel cannot be defeated militarily.

Beyond all doubt Hamas’ attack was a war crime, branding the movement a sinister terrorist death cult that not only practices indiscriminate killings of civilian Jewish citizens, but also completely disregarding that the retaliation hits back at their own people by a factor one hundred.

But Hamas’ atrocities can NEVER justify Israel’s almost 15 months of war against the people of Gaza. Of course, neither does it justify the state-sponsored settler-violence and ethnic displacement directed against the Palestinian civilian population in the occupied West Bank – nor the internment of 12,000 Palestinians in prison camps where torture and ill-treatment are widespread.

Historic struggle

The struggle for Palestine between the Arab majority population and Jewish immigrants began well over a hundred years ago, when the Zionist movement – ​​based on centuries of persecution of Jews in Europe – formulated the idea of ​​a Jewish state in Palestine.

After World War I, Palestine passed from Turkish to British rule. In the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British promised the Jews ‘a national home’ in Palestine, but without specifying whether this meant a separate state. It was the recipe for conflict with the Arab Palestinians.

Jewish immigration accelerated with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and after World War II with survivors of the Holocaust. Indeed, the Holocaust that in 1947 led a newly founded UN, dominated by the victorious powers of World War II, to propose that Palestine be divided more or less equally between Arabs and Jews – with Jerusalem as a special area under international control.

The UN-plan was never implemented. The neighbouring Arab countries, who were soon to liberate themselves from European colonial rule, rejected the UN-plan calling it a colonialist solution that didn’t take the Palestinians into account, disregarding that they constituted a large majority of the population. Therefore, the neighboring countries declared war against the self-proclaimed Jewish state. But with the support of both the United States and the Soviet Union, Israel won on the battlefield and ended up in control of 77 percent of Palestine. Gaza came under Egypt’s jurisdiction rule, and the West Bank including East Jerusalem under Jordan’s.

Sympathy squandered 

I was born in 1946. My oldest living friend is of Jewish origin. I grew up with massive sympathy towards the Jewish people and their historic plight, the cruel persecution, everything they had to go through to get their own state. I experienced the kibbutzim in the new Israel as an exciting socialist experiment.

I took in the myth of the people without a country who came to a barren land without a people and made it flourish. But, with the growing understanding of how the birth of Israel led to the flight and expulsion of two-thirds of Palestine’s Arab inhabitants and the fact that Israel would never let them return, I became increasingly critical of the Zionist state. 

The history of the Jewish state is also the history of 77 years of displacement, occupation and humiliation of the Palestinians. And it is the history of how every time there was a movement towards peace, terrorists on one side or the other would blow it up.

The current catastrophe in Gaza places Netanyahu and his associates squarely as the most murderous terrorists in the long history of this conflict. In Denmark, fines and imprisonment are handed out to people who express support for terror. Should the International Criminal Court convict Netanyahu a terrorist, how will this legislation be administered towards those who praise Netanyahu’s war? 

No wonder Jews around the world took in the same positive narrative about Israel that I myself listened to in my early youth – and many of them supported the establishment of the state of Israel financially with considerable amounts of money.

But early on, there were also Jews realising the danger that the Zionist project might lead to.

One of them was Albert Einstein, who wrote the following to his friend, the chemist and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, in 1929: “Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us, […] Should the Jews not learn to live in peace with the Arabs, the struggle against them will follow them for decades in the future.” A grim prophecy indeed!

Einstein declined the presidency

Weizmann became the first president of the state of Israel. Upon his death in 1952, Einstein was urged to succeed him. However, Einstein declined to become president of Israel because he disagreed with the way the state was developing.

Einstein’s concerns were confirmed when, in the 1967 war, Israel gained control of all of historic Palestine and began to colonize the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, especially with Jewish settlements. This systematically undermined the possibility of realising the UN peace plan for a two-state solution, because this tiny piece of land and the Gaza Strip was to be the foundation of an Arab Palestinian state.

There was a moment of reflection with the Oslo Accords between Israel and Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation in 1994. The last Israeli leader to have both the will and the authority to realise a two-state solution was probably Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish terrorist for precisely that reason in 1995.

Large waves of immigration of Arab and Soviet Jews into Israel gradually increased the political power of ultra-nationalist and religious parties who believe they have a God-given right to all of Palestine and to continue to keep the Arab Palestinians in Palestine under occupation. 

This policy has been condemned time and again by an overwhelming majority of UN member states, who demand an end to the occupation, and the implementation of a two-state solution.

No progress has been made because Israel, with massive support from the US, has developed into the Middle East’s military superpower – even with nuclear arms. In the US, support for Israel is regarded as necessary domestic policy if one wants to be re-elected; successive presidents have talked about a two-state solution, but in reality, the US has undermined any such solution by effectively accepting that Israel has established colonies of 700,000 Jewish settlers on occupied territory in violation of UN resolutions and International Law. And the US has supplied Israel with large quantities state of the art weapons, and systematically vetoed any resolution in the UN Security Council demanding a stop to Israel’s rampage, even when all other members voted for.

Tacit US-approval

President Joe Biden, during his recent dramatic aging, turned out to be a scandal and a tragedy, not only because of not stepping down honourably and in time for his replacement to lead a decent election campaign – also because, despite his dislike of Netanyahu’s barbaric warfare, he did not pressure Israel to agree to a ceasefire and to giving access to effective emergency aid that could stop the annihilation of Palestine. Now the return of Netanyahu’s friend Trump may make things even worse:

Biden was led around by the nose in the most humiliating way by Netanyahu, Trump’s henchman in the US election campaign. Perhaps the old president did not even fathom that Netanyahu is no longer defending himself against Hamas’terrorist attacks, but is using it as a pretext to definitively bury the Palestinians’ dream of and legitimate demands for a tolerable life and national self-determination.

This is why the US has unfortunately given in to Israel’s murder of the UN refugee agency UNRWA which, in the absence of a political solution, kept the displaced alive and, not least, ensured education and hospitals in Gaza during 17 years of confinement. 

UNRWA is the organization best equipped to provide emergency aid to Gaza, but is now completely obstructed; Israel regards UNRWA as an instrument not for physical survival, but for keeping a Palestinian identity alive. Israel’s war against Palestine has therefore also, dramatically, become Israel’s total war on the UN.

Netanyahu’s Israel

Netanyahu’s version of Israel believes that the Jewish state can only survive if the Palestinians are expelled or locked behind walls. The two extreme parties in Netanyahu’s coalition are the ideological children of Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir’s terror groups, which in the 1940s massacred Arab villages, driving people to flee, and murdered the UN mediator Folke Bernadotte because he insisted on sharing Israel equally between the Israeli and the Palestinians. The man who murdered the praying Muslims in the Hebron mosque in 1994 to derail the Oslo peace process is also one of their role models!

Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was a private secretary to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who, strongly inspired by Mussolini, was the leader of the fascist wing of the Zionist movement. Jabotinsky believed that the Jewish state could only exist by placing the Arabs ‘outside an iron wall’ around the state. That is, expelling them.

Why do I bother?

As frightening and tragic as it all is – and as difficult as it seems to change with Trump’s return and Netanyahu’s huge and bloody victories on the Middle Eastern battlefield – why do I bother to write yet another long article about this instead of writing about all the world’s other tragedies and crimes that deserve just as much attention?

Firstly, because I believe that many in the West – and in Danish politics – are monumentally ignorant of the history that has led us to the current catastrophe in Palestine.

Secondly, because Israeli democracy discriminates non-Jewish citizens and renders non-Jews in occupied territories in particular completely without rights. The territory that Israel controls is an apartheid society. Furthermore, the current far-right nationalist government is trying with all its might to curtail the power of the courts and the freedom of the media. Democrats on the near extinct Israeli left fear that Israel is developing into the second theocratic dictatorship in the Middle East, in line with its main opponent Iran.

Thirdly, because Israel will never find peace by relying solely on its overwhelming military might against its neighbours and the massive oppression of the Palestinians. This is the very recipe for eternal conflict.

Fourthly, because if Israel succeeds in completing the murder of Palestine, while the United States and many Europeans look on passively or even approvingly, it will cement the perception in the Global South of the West’s monumental double standard regarding human rights violations and war crimes: When Putin is summoned to the war crimes tribunal, we all, rightly, applaud; but when Netanyahu is summoned to the same place, the United States wants to punish the tribunal rather than letting justice take its course. And too many Europeans who only mumble about our obligation to support the court. 

Denmark has little to say when it comes to changing the course of this tragic development.

But we must support with all our might a total ceasefire, where surviving hostages on both sides are released, and with equal dedication work to create a peacekeeping force – likely with an Arab majority – to replace Israel’s rule over the people of Gaza. And we must step in with ample humanitarian aid.

Recognition of Palestine

It is regrettable that Denmark has not yet – in line with Sweden, Iceland, Norway and the vast majority of other countries in this world – diplomatically recognised Palestine as a state: Recognition serves to symbolically strengthen and support the inadequate self-rule in Ramallah, which represents the Palestine that sought peace and has long since recognised the state of Israel, but which was humiliated and made irrelevant, being denied any and every concession from Israel.

Therefore, recognition should be supplemented by the demand for the release of Marwan Barghouti, the most popular Palestinian freedom fighter, whom Israel has imprisoned for life. Barghouti is the real – and only realistic – alternative to both the discredited leaders in Ramallah and the Hamas death cult. Along with the other European countries we should have set this agenda long ago.

As member of the UN Security Council it is important for Denmark to do the right thing. Therefore, we must speak clearly on Israel and Palestine, even if it triggers disapproval in the White House.

As member of the UN Security Council, Denmark must use the position wisely and do the right thing. Therefore, we must speak loud and clear on Israel and Palestine, even if it triggers disapproval in the White House.

Mogens Lykketoft is former MP in Denmark, (1981-2019), he served as Danish Minister for Finance as well as for Foreign Affairs, he is former leader of the Social Democratic Party and Speaker of Parliament (2011-15). He served as President of the UN General Assembly in New York (2015-16).

Translation of my piece in the national Danish daily Politiken from 22nd of December, 2024.

United Nations in the Web of Power Politics

Presentation by Mogens Lykketoft at the opening of International Progress Organisation’s roundtable discussion in Istanbul, september 2024.

(Min tale ved åbningen af International Progress Organisations møde om FN’s rolle i verden i Istanbul september 2024).

Presentation:

Ladies and Gentlemen. During a lifelong interest in international affairs, I have always hoped to see nation-states further commit themselves to the UN system and the respect of international law and conventions. Therefore, it was a great honor and experience to serve as the 70th President of the United Nations General Assembly, 2015-16. 

Our roundtable today will focus on the limitations of global order and lack of equality among nation states in the UN system, due to the veto power and impunity of the P5 in the Security Council.

But first, let us not lose sight of the gains we have achieved for civilization through the creation of the UN system:

It is the first time in human history that we have succeeded in creating a permanent forum of some influence where (almost) all governments are present and talk to each other.  

Yes, the Security Council  has, on account of a veto from one of the Permanent Five (members), P5 – all too often been blocked in efforts to end conflicts. But even so, since 1945 the UN has played an important role in assisting avoidance of direct military conflict between superpowers with nuclear weapons.

Remember too, that back then, the power of veto was seen as a precondition for keeping the mightiest members inside the tent, so to speak – contrary to what happened in the League of Nations. And importantly: The UN is much more than the Security Council (UNSC) and the General Assembly (UNGA) – its 50 associated units have produced plenty of results and recommendations, which have contributed to important progress for humanity. For example, the World Health Organisation has, in my lifetime, been instrumental in increasing the average living age on the globe by twenty years.

But it is a fact that, except for a few times in the first years after the end af The Cold War, the Security Council did not fulfil its obligation and live up to the high ideals of the charter.  

Therefore, the majority of the 188 other member states have become increasingly impatient with the P5’s privileges: Their reaction has been to try to attain more authority for UNGA itself, and put further pressure on the P5 by closer cooperation among the non-permanent members of the UNSC. In this context, being President of the General Assembly is not just an honorary position; it is a central position as negotiator to increase that exact pressure on the P5.

I was able to change the selection procedure for the appointment of Secretary General. Each candidate had to present his or her vision and programme and take questions from the entire GA as well as from civil society. This new process made it very difficult for any of the P5 to ignore the candidate that was preferred by most member states. The SG is no longer decided in last minute compromise in a smoky backroom by 2 or 3 of the P5. That may pave the way for Secretary Generals being less dependent on the P5.

I was also called upon push for reform of the SC. But – very predictably – that dossier could not be moved forward. It stalled yet again, as it it has done in the past forty years, because the Charter demands a majority in the GA of 2/3 including the P5.

But we did get some idea of what might be possible – or the opposite – on a good day:

It is broadly agreed that the number of GA-elected members in the SC should increase – perhaps by another five members – especially from the global south to make the SC more representative of our world today. There was also some sympathy for giving access to unlimited reelection – theoretically opening for a de facto increase in permanent presence. 

But neither the US nor China or Russia are willing to give up their veto-power nor grant it to other countries. Old ideas of elevating specific larger countries to permanent membership meet different opposition. Spanish-speaking Latin-American nations do not support Brazil, China is against Japan. India is opposed by Pakistan and other neighbors. Southern Europe does not support Germany. African member states cannot agree on one or two among them as eligible permanent members.

Beside calls for reform of membership and voting rules in the SC there is a strong demand from the general membership to commit the P5 to restrain their use of veto and be obliged to explain any veto that they put down to the General Assembly. This demand for explanation has recently been adopted in the GA in the hope that the rest of us gain more moral leverage against the use of veto, if able to argue against it in a more united fashion. 

Other proposals with considerable support among member states have been circulated trying to commit the P5 to promise not to veto actions to stop crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide – but without success.

Despite continued deadlock on reform of the Security Council, the UN moved the general global agenda in a better direction in 2015. 

But from 2016 we were turned backwards again.

We got the Iran nuclear deal through consensus between Iran and all the P5 plus Germany, the EU and a united UNSC. This was accomplished mainly due to the ingenuity of foreign ministers John Kerry of the US and Javad Zarif of Iran.

Trump tore that agreement up with lasting negative impact on Iran and the entire Middle East region.

The General Assembly unanimously approved the Sustainable Development Goals – and we had the COP-meeting in Paris adopting the hitherto most ambitious goals and commitments to Climate Action. The Climate Agreement was reached because of good leadership from the UN and French Presidency of the COP, and most importantly because the US under President Obama worked together with China under Xi Jinping – also in bringing their most hesitant  allies, friends and clients onboard. 

Trump left that agreement a couple of years later – delaying the existentially important global efforts to stop climate change. Biden brought the US back into the agreement; but global action on climate has suffered because of attention turning first to the pandemic and later to the Russian war of horrible aggression against Ukraine. And in the last 11 months focus has been on the lack of American action to end the totally devastating Israeli war against the civilian population in Gaza – and the violent escalation of the occupation and colonisation of the West Bank. 

All of this further demonstrates the arrogance of the P5 in relation to the overwhelming demands of a huge majority of UN member states,

The bad state of global affairs reminds me of an old anecdote about Mahatma Gandhi being asked about his opinion on Western Civilisation. His sarcastic answer was ‘It is a good idea!’

The same comment could be made on the idea of the UN Charter and international conventions as constitutional obligations for every member country, big or small. It is indeed a good idea. But we still have a very long way to go!

Dare we hope to ‘civilize’ Vladimir Putin – unless he himself is made to realise that he will not be able take Ukraine by force?

Dare we hope that American and European double standards on human rights and war crimes in Ukraine and Palestine will come to an end through combined pressure from domestic public opinion and the political necessity of closing the credibility gap to the global south?

Dare we hope for an understanding that the unipolar world is forever a thing of the past? That we need to reinvent an international order where a large majority of UN member countries never again will have to get in line as clients of the US, Europe, China .. or Russia?

Most countries in the world will never become model democracies – and, as ever, we must live together, a multitude of different kinds of democracies and authoritarian regimes. But hopefully, we share a common interest in preserving or reestablishing peace and creating sustainable development for future generations.

This is the important reason why the word democracy is not mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goals. We cannot expect China to become at Western Style democracy – but the climate cannot wait; we must all act together on climate now.

In the long perspective, most important for all of us is that the US and China manage to contain and administer their conflicts of interest and realise that they have much more important common interests in peace, economic development and climate action.

The disturbing fact is that – veto-power in the UN or not – we will have no lasting and peaceful international order if the biggest powers do not recognise that they share overarching common interests. 

What the rest of us can do is to argue and pressure for their understanding and acceptance of this – including their support for more and stronger UN peacekeeping missions and much more investment through the UN system in eradication of poverty and climate solutions in poor countries.  

And by the way – to support a stronger international system, we not only need a Security Council much more representative of the of peoples of world of today – we also need a reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, better to reflect the actual distribution of economic strength. 

The broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest load and carry the highest of responsibly to live up to the UN Charter.

🇬🇧 Dangerous changes in China policy

We should be wary of ostracising China further. And I still believe what Henry Kissinger said to me some 16 years ago: Taiwans future will be peacefully solved so long as the rest of us don’t intervene.

This article is a translation of an opinion piece of mine in Berlingske on the 21st of March, 2023:

China and the US must cooperate

My former colleague, Denmark’s longest serving Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen once told me that neither China nor the climate were high on the agenda during his tenure as foreign minister. Now, 30-40 years later, China’s importance on the world stage has exploded. Climate change is our worst existential threat, provided we don’t wipe out civilization in a nuclear war. Peace and economic stability for the remaining 21st century depend on whether the United States and China can rein in their rivalry and together lead the way in international cooperation.

Since China put the chaos and disasters of Maoism behind her in 1978 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the enormous country has experienced sensational progress. The economy is more than thirty times bigger. My wife Mette Holm and I have, separately and together, witnessed this formidable upheaval. Mette has lived in China for ten years – first as an exchange student, later as a reporter. I have visited China 18 times in the past 45 years, and in my capacities of Minister of Finance and Foreign Affairs, chairman of Denmark’s Social Democratic Party and Parliament, and President of the UN General Assembly, had meetings with a large number of top Chinese leaders.

In China’s self-perception, the country is the world’s oldest and most important nation, now rising after a short-term weakening of 150 years. But China’s path to prosperity and greatness is through trade, investment and diplomacy – not a desire for belligerent conquest. In my view this has not changed, even if Xi Jinping’s autocracy and the massive uniformity is terrifying. There is fierce repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, Tibetans and of the few dissidents who dare to speak out. Hong Kong’s freedom is denied in violation of the agreement with Great Britain on ‘one country, two systems’. Also, rearmament and talk of unification with Taiwan by military force ‘if necessary’ is cause for concern.

We need Xi to influence Putin

The US is leading a drastic change in the West’s attitude towards China. After decades of mutual commitment to trade and investment and successful political cooperation as seen with the Paris Climate Agreement – the West is now perceived as setting a course to inhibit China’s progress towards prosperity, while encircling the country with strong alliances under American leadership. China spends only one-third of the resources that the US spends on the military, and the US is strengthening ties with large neighbouring countries such as Japan and India. 

Trump initiated the trade war and the covid-bashing against China, and since then a paranoid fear as well as a demand to be ‘tough on China’ has arisen in American politics. It peaked with the hysteria about and the shooting down of the Chinese hot air balloon. The relationship has taken a dangerous turn that this little interlude could lead to the cancellation of the American Foreign Minister Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing. Precisely the opposite is needed: détente and relaxation of tension. 

Most importantly, if the US and China could come on speaking terms to an extent so that Xi Jinping would be willing to put pressure on his ‘friend’ Putin to stop the war of aggression in Ukraine. Sadly, until now China’s course has been guided by joint Sino-Russian opposition to US global dominance.

China a major player

The United States must accept and recognize a new balance where China’s progress cannot – and should not – be inhibited permanently. China has established strong economic relations in East and South Asia and increasing influence in Africa, Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East. China is now a major diplomatic player who has succeeded in mediating between arch-enemies Iran and Saudi Arabia. The US must also understand that both China and Europe want to preserve significant parts of our considerable economic relationship. This is why Foreign Minister Løkke Rasmussen was right, when he said that the EU must contribute to reducing tension between the US and China.

But shouldn’t we fear invasion of Taiwan – analogous to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine? I find this analogy false. China has no interest in starting a military conflict that could overturn the basic unspoken ‘contract’ with the population: the government has had solid popular support, while managing to pull 800 million people out of poverty. The vast majority of Chinese have experienced massively increased prosperity and freedoms – so long as they don’t get involved in politics! This was discontinued during the covid-pandemic, which was handled clumsily. But war over Taiwan could be far more costly in terms of sanctions and a breakdown in China’s participation in the world economy. All parties therefore have a fundamental interest in not provoking changes in the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. I still firmly believe what Henry Kissinger said to me 16 years ago: ‘Taiwan’s future will probably be resolved peacefully as long as the rest of us interfere as little as possible. There are Chinese on both sides, and they have a longer time perspective than we do in the West.’

Where are we on the SDGs?

Recently, I attended the opening of a European conference with civil society on how best to contribute to more progress towards the Global Goals for Sustainability, the SDGs. The starting point was discouraging, but I was greatly encouraged by the commitment and hope of my fellow debater, a young woman from Slovenia who is one of the UN’s powerful youth ambassadors.

We agreed that without a strong civil society, nothing will succeed. If indeed, we hope to slow down global warming and avert the resulting many new and even greater disasters, we must rely on civil society to constantly highlight the urgency.

Some believe that setbacks make the SDGs irrelevant, and others want to talk only about climate. But regardless of the fact that we are  – much too – far from realizing the 2030 goals, they constitute a revolutionary new narrative that must be kept alive – moreover, a narrative that only became so powerful because global civil society participated more than ever before in the process of formulating them at the UN.

The global goals are a head-on confrontation with the neo liberal misconception that resources are unlimited, that the old growth model can just continue forever and that distribution doesn’t matter, because when the rich get richer, it will inevitably trickle down to the poor.

The SDGs state that the world’s resources are limited and that growth as we know it cannot continue. We must move away from fossil fuels, the economy must become circular, forests must be preserved and expanded, and nature must be protected much better in order to save vital biodiversity.

Right now the SDGs of poverty and inequality are headed in the wrong direction

Poverty can only be eradicated while at the same time purposefully fighting the extreme and growing inequality in the world.

All the SDGs are each other’s prerequisite. Progress in one means progress on all of them. But obviously, stronger climate action is a necessary prerequisite for popular understanding and financial resources to generate future progress on the other SDGs.

If climate change continues, as it has so far, it will trigger devastation, mass migration and conflicts on a scale beyond all else. Ultimately, it is about whether we have a globe to save.

Political agency remains weak if voters do not understand the urgency and self-interest. Civil society remains the politicians’ inevitable partner in disseminating knowledge and understanding that sustainable societies constitute an inevitable revolution that comes at a cost and is incredibly urgent.

But if we continue as before, the cost will be much higher for our children and grandchildren. Therefore, we must mobilize an unprecedented will to change, in record time, our patterns of consumption and production.

And are we to maintain social stability as we must, it is adamant that we – far more purposefully than ever before – exempt economically weak groups from footing the bill. They have not contributed anyway nearly as much to the problem as the wealthy.

A year of encouragement

2015 was an encouraging year due to the fact that no UN member state actively argued against the adoption of the SDGs, and that in Paris, we were able to enter into the most far-reaching and binding climate agreement to date. Europe was at the forefront with high ambitions, and the negotiating process was headed expertly by the French presidency.

Even more crucial, however, was that the world’s two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the US, actually cooperated beautifully in Paris to convince and nudge all doubters and naysayers into agreement. It created hope.

Six months later, Europe’s attention was diverted by the Brexit vote and the year-long negotiations on Britain’s exit from the EU.

One year on, the United States disastrously elected Donald Trump, a ferocious climate denier, for president. He withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement while initiating a systematically escalated confrontation with China (as well as made the Middle East more insecure by terminating the Iran nuclear deal).

The Covid pandemic meant an even more selfish and introverted West. Promises to help the poor global south to adapt to climate change were not kept, and vaccines were not delivered on the necessary massive scale.

On top of that came Russia’s horrific war of aggression against Ukraine, which not only destroys people’s lives in one of Europe’s most populous countries, it also carries the risk of escalating into nuclear war.

The war affects the global economy with inflation that has knocked many hundreds of millions into more extreme poverty and hunger. The prices of food, fertiliser and energy have risen the most by far.

Ultimately, it is about whether we have a globe to save 

Moreover, the alarming increase in global inequality has continued at an even faster pace during the crises. The huge corporations in IT, e-commerce, energy, food and armaments pocket most of the growth in the global economy, and ownership of these giants is mostly concentrated in the hands of a few multi-dollar billionaires.

In short: Right now it is clearly going the wrong way in relation to the SDGs of poverty and inequality.

We have not progressed nearly enough with the climate goal either, but Russia’s war of aggression and the resulting energy crisis might just accelerate the pace of sustainability. Because climate’s urgent needs has now become urgent security policy as well.

We must create renewable and CO2-free energy supply at record speed. This will – permanently and violently – erode the profits of Putin and the despots in the Gulf states, who sit on the largest reserves of fossil fuels.

Again, Europe was the fastest react – first with ‘Fit for 55’ a few years ago, which sets the course to a 55 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the EU in 2030, and further with bold plans from the Commission to transition away from Russian oil and gas after the invasion of Ukraine.

But Biden’s so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ will accelerate America’s energy transition (and constitutes major competitive challenges for Europe).

Crucially, the international business community is seizing the opportunities, in the realisation that long-term earnings require sustainable solutions.

In a conversation I attended last autumn, Al Gore stated that history shows that political responses to crises often drag on, but that once the political decisions are made, the technological responses, on the other hand, are developed at surprising pace.

This is where hope is kindled for serious climate action.

During the past two and a half years, as chairman of Energinet, Denmark, I have experienced a virtual explosion in demand for green power, because the direct electrification via electric cars and heat pumps etc. is now being accompanied by large and hugely energy-demanding projects, which must transform cheap green electricity into hydrogen as a raw material in green fuels for heavy vehicles, ships and aircraft.

Therefore, the development of energy islands and giant offshore wind turbines must be carried out as quickly as possible. Furthermore, CO2-free biogas has become good business, and project ideas for storing CO2 in caves underground and below sea level are teeming.

This is a translation from Danish. My original op-ed was published at Altinget on the 1st of January, 2023.

You can find more articles by me in English here

Speech at demonstration for Ukraine

Ukraine demo Enghave Plads 24. februar 2023

at Enghave Plads in Copenhagen on 24th of February, 2023, one year after Russia waged its bloody war on Ukraine.

Mogens Lykketoft
Mogens Lykketoft speaking at the manifestation at Enghave Plads in Copenhagen one year after Russia waged war on Ukraine © Mette Holm

We are gathered here tonight for a torchlight procession in anger, pain, and compassion.

We are gathered in solidarity with the people of Ukraine who are fighting so bravely and fiercely not to fall under the boots of the Kremlin dictator.

We are gathered in protest of the gigantic breach of promise by Russia, which in 1994, together with other major powers, recognised the inviolability of Ukrainian borders against Ukraine handing over its share of the old Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia.

Until the first hour of February 24, 2022, too optimistically, we thought that Putin was just bluffing.

We did so, even though we knew that he was unscrupulously indifferent to other people’s lives and welfare when it comes to expanding his own power.

We had seen that how he slaughtered Chechnya, invaded Georgia, seized Crimea and started the border war in Donbas nine years ago.

We had seen, how he murders his own countrymen, when they cross his path.

We knew that he was spending huge funds on misinformation and undermining Western democracies via support for right-wing radical movements.

We also now know that the machinations and lies manufactured in Putin’s troll factories helped bring about disasters like Brexit and Trump

But it dawned on us only gradually for how long he had been planning the attack against Ukraine, and the massive resources he spent over the years telling lies and creating a false narrative of animosity towards the Russians.

Only too late did we realise that Putin’s Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea were intended to strangle Ukraine economically and strengthen Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas.

And we didn’t believe Putin was ignorant and cruel enough to start a major war in Europe.

Ignorant, when he thought that Ukraine’s army and people would just raise their arms and surrender, and let him install a puppet government in Kyiv, only risking of a weak note of protest from the West.

Ignorant of the incompetency of his own corrupt military.

Ignorant of the fact that people in Ukraine – regardless of whether they speak Ukrainian or Russian at home – will fight with their lives to avoid to be trodden down by Putin’s boot.

Cruel in encouraging war crimes as murder, rape and abductions among Ukrainian civilians.

Cruel in waging a war that purposefully targets civilians and civilian targets with immense loss of life and property, and deprives people of access to water, heat and light in the cold of winter.

Cruel in disregarding the land war’s massive losses along the front lines and in the trenches.

People in Ukraine are fighting because they understand what awaits them if Putin gets his way.

The Ukrainians have amassed memories from the latest four or five generations of their country being the place in Europe where chance of survival was the least.

Countless millions perished at the behest of two of the twentieth century’s most insane dictators.

Stalin ordered millions of people’s death by starvation on their own land or in his slave camps, he executed the elite and used Ukrainians in particular as cannon fodder in World War II.

Hitler murdered the Jews of Ukraine and a large part of the civilian population in general. World War II rolled back and forth over Ukraine with unimaginable destruction, death, hunger, and poverty in its wake.

Putin wages war like Stalin and Hitler.

Pointless and barbaric, with no regard for civilian losses and destruction and without regard for how many of his own forcibly recruited soldiers will be sent to their graves.

With all his monumental mistakes, Putin seems intent on continuing the war through endless bloodshed and destruction that could turn Ukraine into a desert. He will not accept defeat.

Therefore, we in the West have two tasks:

First, we must do everything in our power to cement the hitherto unseen unity in NATO and the EU, which Putin has unleashed with his war of aggression, and which is now also bringing Finland and Sweden into NATO. We must continue and increase the aid with money and arms for Ukraine’s self-defense and deprive Putin of any illusion that we will tire before he does.

Second, we must wage a much more massive war of information against Putin’s lies and machinations, both directed towards our own public and to the sadly deluded Russians. People in Russia need to know that in no way do we want to destroy their country – we only want to prevent their dictator from destroying life for people in Ukraine. We hope to welcome a post-putinist age soon, where Europe can restart a mutually beneficial cooperation with a new and peaceful Russia.

Palestine must be saved from Netanyahu, and Israel from itself

Most of us in my generation grew up with enormous sympathy for Israel as the home country of the survivors of the worst genocide in history. When it came to the consequences for the Palestinians, for a long time, we were myopic. Israel became known as the only democracy in the Middle East, constantly threatened by hordes of hostile Arab states. But in the 1967 war, Israel conquered all of historic Palestine, and since then democracy only serves one half of the people who live under Israeli control.

Benjamin Netanyahu is one of this world’s most repulsive and unscrupulous elected leaders. He will stop at nothing to maintain power, and avoid the looming conviction for corruption. His return as head of government in coalition with the worst racists and fascists in Israel is a deadly threat to the rule of law and peace in the country. The new government wants to undermine judicial independence by giving parliament the authority to override the Supreme Court’s decisions and replace independent judges and prosecutors with its own henchmen. It is the same course as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary – only Netanyahu’s dismantling of the rule of law is described as Orbán on steroids. The judicial reforms have sparked mass protests in the Jewish population.

Disempowered ‘home rule’

Sadly, these Israeli mass protests do not yet address the fact that Israel/Palestine has been transformed into an apartheid state with no prospect of peace and reconciliation: The Palestinian ‘home rule’ is more powerless than the ‘home rule’ of the blacks in the so-called Bantustans of apartheid era South Africa. The settlers have good roads, but the Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the occupied territories is hampered by poor infrastructure and incessant harassment at Israeli checkpoints. They are squeezed together and walled off in small enclaves with no real opportunities for development. They are unjustly governed by the Israeli military, which conduct arbitrary house searches and detentions day and night. Jewish residents in the illegal settlements on occupied land, on the other hand, enjoy full Israeli civil rights and military protection: the latter also applies when the most extreme of the settlers attack their Palestinian neighbours with impunity and destroy their property – e.g., by cutting down thousands of their olive trees. Civil society organisations – such as are supported by Denmark – are attacked and punished with unfounded accusations of terrorism when they criticise human rights violations.

The Palestinian state that UN member states have overwhelmingly demanded for decades has effectively become impossible. The world community has only responded with critical resolutions, while Israel’s offensive settler policy has pierced the Palestinian territories like a Swiss cheese. With the most radical right-wing ministers in the driver’s seat, the expansion of the settlements and the formal annexation of Palestinian territories are now even more accelerated. The annexation is taking place more subtly, but equally contrary to International Law as Vladimir Putin’s attempts to move borders by force in his annexation of the eastern provinces of Ukraine.

Disproportional Israeli retaliation

Israel justifies any violation against Palestinians as an effort against terrorism. Terror against civilians on both sides of the conflict must be unconditionally condemned. Terror is a vicious circle of mutual retaliation, where one side is a state power with one of the world’s strongest militaries, while the other is an occupied civilian population. When Palestinians react to the hopelessness of 55 years of occupation with violence, murder of Israeli civilians and rockets from Gaza, it is the path deeper and deeper into hell. Each time it gives Israel an opportunity to strike back even harder and bloodier against the Palestinian civilian population. Not least does it unfold in the shape of the always brutal rain of bombs against the over 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza, who live in deplorable conditions, locked up in an area the size of the Danish island of Langeland (with 14.000 inhabitants). People in Gaza have no possibilities of supporting themselves: they live the world’s largest open prison, and survive only on UN emergency aid. 

The US must exert friendly pressure 

Hope for peace and justice can only be rekindled from outside. It will not happen unless the United States as Israel’s friend, sponsor and military ally takes the lead. Fortunately, there are signs that many in the powerful Jewish-American community are demanding pressure on Israel to change course. The Biden administration has also reacted critically. But the risk is always that the tragedy of the Palestinians will be overshadowed by larger wars, crises, and tragedies elsewhere.

Europe has a key role in – also by appealing to the USA – preventing it from happening again.

We have a moral obligation to save the Palestinians from even worse oppression – and, if at all possible, to save Israel from itself.

This is a translation of my column in the Danish national newspaper Berlingske on 21st of February, 2023.

Illustration: Demonstrating against PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister for Justice Yariv Levin’s plans to suppress the Supreme Court, 13 Feb, 2023. Photo: Oren Rozen via Wikimedia Commons

The Paths to Peace are Few, Narrow and Uncertain

Sadly, peace and justice for Ukraine require ever more weapons from the West to liberate the occupied territories. And the ultimate horror scenario is that Putin’s response to being pushed back along the front lines becomes a desperate decision to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Ukraine’s military. This would multiply the loss of both military and civilian lives in one fell swoop and lead directly to NATO’s participation in the war, which may lead to war and arms races spiraling completely out of control.

Therefore, all hope rests on a change of heart and perhaps a change of power in the Russian leadership, in order for peace negotiations to start – and thus paving the way for rebuilding life in Ukraine.

We must also sincerely hope that a peace in Ukraine will lead to the West being able to negotiate once more with Russia to restore agreements on controlled limitations of missile and nuclear weapons systems and the prohibition of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which contributed crucially to ending the old Cold War.

Only renewed cooperation between the West and Russia, expanded to include China, can slow down the ongoing arms race and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons to more and more states. Dare we believe in such cooperation?

Doubtful promises

Nuclear proliferation can hardly be avoided without very tangible guarantees for and alliances with the countries that must renounce nuclear weapons, that they will not be exposed to military attacks from other countries.. However, deep distrust in the long-term sustainability of such guarantees will prevail. Remember that in 1994 Russia helped to guarantee Ukraine’s borders in exchange for handing over Ukraine’s share of the old Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles.

North Korea’s seemingly insane drive to massively stockpile nuclear weapons and long-range missiles is hardly based on the delusion that the country and its regime would exist only minutes after a nuclear attack on the United States. But the dictator Kim Jong-un’s logic is simple: Would Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi have been removed by military force, had they possessed nuclear weapons to respond with?

The same logic led Iran’s clergy to toy with developing nuclear weapons. It was a particularly risky project because, in the conflict-torn Middle Eastern region, it could quickly lead to a preemptive attack by Israel and a nuclear race with Saudi Arabia and other neighboring countries. The non-proliferation agreements could be completely blown up.

Trump’s brutal deal-breaking

Therefore, up until 2015, a brilliant diplomatic offensive to lift economic sanctions against Iran and so as to let the country experience not being under threat of attack – while Iran, in return, had to renounce plans to develop the bomb. An agreement, the JCPOA, was concluded not only between the US and Iran, but including Russia, China, Great Britain, France, Germany and the EU as well, and furthermore confirmed in the UN Security Council.

Against the backdrop of many decades of conflict between the United States and Iran, this agreement was historic, and it served to strengthen the more moderate forces in Iran that had brought about the agreement. This is why it was terrible and idiotic that three years later Trump tore up the deal and re-imposed an even harsher sanctions regime on Iran. It is tragic that as the new president Joe Biden did not manage to move swiftly to restore the nuclear deal. This have prevented the return to power of the radical clerics , nurturing their strong doubts about whether guarantees from the West were trustworthy, and thus nuclear force could be dispensed with. Now the Iranian regime may be so cornered by domestic problems that it might still want an agreement. But the opportunity is definitely missed.

Iran out of reach

At this point in time, no Western power or organisation can make deals with a regime that massacres participants of huge popular protests, and executes countless young men for petty offenses, in order to scare people from joining the mass movement that threatens the regime’s very survival. A regime which, by the way, also supplies hideous drone weapons for Putin’s war of aggression against the Ukrainian civilian population.

In Iran as in Russia, we must now cling to the narrow hope of regime change from within.

But there may be dramatic interludes, with Israel’s new right-wing Netanyahu government trying to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities before a nuclear bomb is ready for use. This might delay the bomb, but hardly prevent it. And it will convince the clergy even more of its necessity. In addition, Iran has many opportunities to – with the help of allied forces in Israel’s vicinity – trigger a new and larger conflict in the war-torn Middle Eastern region.

The paths to peace are few, narrow and uncertain.

This is a translation of a piece published in Danish in Berlingske on 23rd of January, 2023

Election time in Denmark and the US

Shanelle Hall & Jean Ahlefeldt-Laurvig

I had the undivided pleasure of participating in we need to talk about this, the podcast on current and important issues in Denmark and the USA – and globally – by Shanelle Hall and Jean Ahlefeldt-Laurvig.

We talked about the elections ahead of us in Denmark and the US, not about specific candidates or policies – but about the political systems themselves. And they are hugely different.

Listen here to episode 1

Episode 2

Podcasts published on 21st of October 2022, ahead of the parliamentary election in Denmark on 1st of November and the mid-terms in the US on the 8th of November.