The interplay of geopolitics and historical lessons in foreign policy: Denmark facing German post-war rearmament

Realist theory can no longer afford to neglect cases where policy-makers’ ‘lessons of the past’ play a role in foreign policy decisions. The case of Denmark confronting the prospect of German post-war rearmament should illustrate an interplay between the state’s geopolitical necessity — acquiescence in German NATO membership and rearmament due to Soviet military proximity — and policy-makers’ lessons from the recent German occupation of Denmark (that led to Danish inclinations to reject such membership). In other words, this is a case of strong and countervailing pressures. The article examines how the interplay unfolded, including the tactics politicians used to counterbalance and overrule any ‘inconvenient’ lessons. Whereas geopolitical pressures clearly dominated the ‘competition’, one historical lesson could be used as a negotiation asset to bluff foreign powers on the related Schleswig issue. The general thesis articulated in this article is that the state’s external freedom of action, as a gate-keeper, may allow or forbid lessons to play a role. Studying only situations characterized by wide freedom of action gives us a biased picture of foreign policy, implying that policy-makers are free to enact whatever peculiarities or constructions — in the case of this article, historical lessons — are available to them. However, such situations remain only special cases of foreign policy.