Interfax-Ukraine reported that the Danish ambassador to Ukraine paid a two-day visit to the front line of his host country’s war in the Donbass region. The press report phrased its account of the event like this: “On July 19-20, a delegation of the Kingdom of Denmark, led by Ambassador Ole Egberg Mikkelsen, visited the area of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), and also met with representatives of Luhansk Regional Military-Civil Administration.” On the latter score, that is the part of Lugansk still under control of the Ukrainian government.
The Danish delegation, for all the world as though its members were military attachés, or military advisors, met with Deputy Commander of the Joint Forces Eduard Moskaliov and toured an observation post of a Ukrainian armed forces unit that is assigned to the Joint Forces Operation, until recently the Anti-Terrorist Operation. (National Anti-Terrorist Operation would have provided a more accurate acronym.)
Somehow it’s difficult to imagine, say, ambassadors to Moscow being taken to the eastern border of the Donbass to meet with Russian commanders and inspect Russian military units. Four days earlier the top American envoy in Ukraine led a similar delegation to the war zone. That’s generally not the way things are done in what were formerly known as diplomatic circles.
The press office of the Joint Forces Operation quoted the head of the delegation of loyal subjects of Queen Margrethe II stating:
“I am very happy to visit the contact line and see everything with my own eyes. This is the front line of peaceful life, the front line of democracy. You protect the security of Europe, so if you are in danger, then we cannot be safe either. I am very glad to meet all of you commanders and soldiers. My sincere gratitude to you for what you are doing.”
He might have engaged in a rare moment of candor and acknowledged that plebeian youth drafted into the Ukrainian army to kill and be killed in a fratricidal war with their fellow citizens are in fact preserving the prerogatives, human and divine, of the Transatlantic elites who recognize no sense of obligation to any nation or any people. Self-isolated cosmopolites who only acknowledge other deracinated parasites as their kin and compatriots. The names adopted by the targets of the NATO-supported war, the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Lugansk, are doubly anathema to Western monarchists.
When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established in 1949 seven of its twelve members were – and remain – constitutional monarchies: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom. The monarchy Spain joined in 1992 and monarchical Sweden, which has recently become a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner, might as well be a full member as it’s supplied troops for NATO’s war in Afghanistan and warplanes for its war against Libya. In furtherance of the global geopolitical objectives of what could be called the NATO (Nordic Aryan Teutonic Order) new Wholly Roamin’ Empire.
The current secretary general of the military bloc, Jens Stoltenberg, is a subject of King Harald V of Norway. His immediate predecessor, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, was a subject of Queen Margrethe II. The other living former leaders of NATO were also subjects of their respective monarchs: Jaap de Hoop Scheffer of Queen Beatrix, George Robertson (Baron Robertson of Port Ellen) of Queen Elizabeth II, Javier Solana of Juan Carlos I and Willy Claes of King Albert II.
What the cannon fodder on the Donbass front line have really been dragooned into laying down their lives for is to protect the right of unearned privilege of all sorts, including hereditary rule. To maintain the right to pass down power and privilege through bloodlines. To marry and breed solely within their own ranks. To annually have the lifetime incomes of several of their subjects lavished upon them, in the words of the poet, simply for taking the trouble to be born.
The system, in short, which NATO and the European Union were founded to protect and perpetuate. Oh, yes, and of course something or other about democracy and freedom and diversity and equality. And peace.
Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of Stop NATO. This originally appeared at Anti-Bellum.
Wholly Roamin’ Empire? WhoRE of the Nutjob A$$hole Treaty Ogres.
This seems really overblown, and misses the point. NATO should not be interfering in the Ukraine. That is the point. NOT that some NATO members are monarchies. Ukrainian conscripts kill their kin to protect and defend the Kiev regime. That regime, in turn, is loosely and informally allied with NATO, some of whose members (aside from the UK, mostly third to fourth rate powers, if even that) happen to be constitutional monarchies, including militarily insignficant Denmark.. But, it is engaging in pretty absurd hyperbole, not to mention spurious Six Degrees of Separation, thigh bone’s connected to the shin bone, type reasoning, to say that those conscripts are killing their kin of the sake of the Queen of Denmark.
I would also add that the monarchy in Denmark, as in the other NATO constitional monarchies, seems to be reasonably popular among the residents of those nations. Really, the Queen of Denmark does not need Ukrainian conscripts killing their kin to retain her nominal title. Again, the NATO policy is wrong. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the so called monarchichal nature of the Danish regime, nor with preserving it, nor the constitutional monarchies in the UK, Spain, Sweeden, Belgium, Holland, etc. Indeed, one of the reasons why NATO interference is so morally bankrupt is that it is completely unnecessary for the survival of any of the NATO members, or their regimes, and that is particularly so of Denmark, which is far, far away from the Ukraine, with NATO stalwart (and republican) Germany, among others, between it and the fighting.
Don’t dilute valid arguments for non intervention by bringing in concerns that are not related to it. NATO intervention in Ukraine is wrong. And it is just as wrong when done by the republican NATO powers (USA, France, Germany, Italy, etc) as when done by constitutional monarchy NATO members. That just has nothing to do with it.