مطالب

  Extreme measures to reduce the number and cost of refugees and immigrants belong among the recent examples of the Kingdom of Denmark’s illiberal responses to crises in the wake of third party armed conflict. Politically, the process of tightening the law and having a transparently unwelcoming attitude towards foreigners began in 2001, at least according to some experts on Danish foreign policy, e.g. Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen. While the causes are controversial, the effects are clear. Denmark is undercutting its own history. However popular the current VLAK-coalition government’s Minister of Immigration, Integration and Housingmay be among the Danes, the ongoing series of restrictive policies cannot but result in Red Flags. Irrespective of any motivationally deeper or underlying reasons for their adoption, the relevant legal and other measures constitute international relations events and changes; and, as such, they affect the order among states. In terms of regional and global politics, the question is whether there is an analogy between post-2013 Qatar and post-2001 Denmark? More precisely, the question is whether Denmark should be listed under past as opposed to present “small and influential states”? By using Mehran Kamrava’s work on Qatar as a platform for a role reversal claim, the authors present a muted subtle power argument for the need to downgrade Denmark, too. Furthermore, a tension between the official Danish image and the climate of cultural values in Denmark creates a complex us versus them disconnect which, in turn, makes it possible to provide or, more to the point, explain some aspects of the evidence for the state’s precarious human rights capacity. Part of the argument derives from pre-2001 literary whistleblowing concerning Danishness – a strategy that accords with the popular Danish Minister’s own use of satire as a truth-recognition methodology. 

There is an emerging hierarchical order in the Middle East that is both unstable and is also a source of instability. In the current regional setting, the inherent instability of this order is the result of a confluence of four mutually reinforcing developments. First, the global context has entailed a steady departure, or weakening, of the United States as an active interested power in the Middle East, opening up space among local aspirants for regional hegemony. A second factor is the competition among regional powers not only for the expansion of regional influence but also their power and position in the larger global order. Israel and Saudi Arabia seek to maintain the global status quo, while Turkey and Iran perceive of themselves as counter-hegemonic powers and seek to undermine the Western-engineered global order and hierarchy. Third, while some regional middle powers are more pragmatic in their foreign policy choices (i.e. “pragmatic” middle powers), some form alliances on the bases of ideological or identity affinity (i.e. “allied” middle powers), further deepening and prolonging tensions. Fourth and finally, the collapse of central authority in several Arab states following the 2011 uprisings—in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen—has provided the perfect opportunity for the regional powers, and even some of the secondary regional states, to expand their influence through local proxies and non-state actors. The combined features of the regional order in the Middle East are likely to inhere instability and tensions for the foreseeable future.