In Denmark,Afghanistan is worth dying for: How public support for the war was maintained in the face of mounting casualties and elusive success

Abstract

Much to their own surprise, successive Danish governments have succeeded in maintaining the highest level of public support among the nations contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, while suffering the highest number of fatalities per capita. We explain this puzzle in a parsimonious fashion manner using a novel analytical framework derived from elite-competition theory, the event-driven school and the literature on strategic narratives. The Danish government initially built strong political and popular support by making a case for war that resonated with broadly shared pre-existing interests and values (national defence and support for democracy and human/women’s rights), and role conceptions (supporting NATO and US-led military operations as a responsible member of international society). Succeeding governments subsequently maintained a high level of political consensus on Afghanistan through a process of continuous consultation and consensus-building. The political elites supporting the mission then sustained the high level of public support by defining success in ways that did not involve ‘winning’ but focused instead on the attainment of realistic short-term, tactical objectives such as police training and building of schools, and by speaking with one voice to the media. This effectively reduced the Danish media to a conveyor belt passively transmitting the positive views of the political parties supporting the Afghanistan operation and the officers and soldiers carrying it out.

Keywords

Afghanistan casualties Denmark public opinion

In October 2011 when the latest national poll was conducted, Denmark maintained the highest level of public support among the troop-contributing nations to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Nearly half the Danish population continued to support the war even though Denmark had suffered the heaviest losses per capita in NATO. Although the number of Danish fatalities, 43, pales in comparison with those of the US (2228) and Britain (444), they exceed the total suffered in all other international operations conducted by the Danish armed forces since World War Two.¹

How a country with little martial experience could sustain an unprecedented level of casualties and still maintain the highest level of domestic support surprised Denmark’s allies, who routinely asked Danish officials, ministers and scholars to reveal the ‘secret Danish recipe’ for maintaining support for the Afghan war (evidence from the authors’ own experience and interviews with Danish officials, officers and ministers; see also MacDonald, 2010). The allies never got an answer, however, because their Danish counterparts were equally surprised themselves. According to Tim Sloth Jørgensen, then Chief of Defence, Denmark sent troops to Helmand in 2006 without any clue as to how many casualties the Danish population would be willing to accept: ‘Where was the limit? 7, 14 or 89 fatalities? We had no idea’ (Halskov and Svendsen, 2012: 486–487).

Theoretically, the Danish case also represents a puzzle because the two most relevant schools of thought have difficulty in producing a satisfactory answer. The first body of thought, which we have labelled the ‘event-driven school’, would have anticipated a far greater drop in the level of public support because the war in Afghanistan appears unwinnable, does not involve obvious Danish national interests and is losing support from Denmark’s allies who are reducing and/or withdrawing their military contributions. The other school of thought – the ‘elite competition school’ emphasizing the public’s propensity to take its cues from various political elites – would have anticipated a high level of public support due to a high level of political support, but it cannot tell us how that support was built in the first place, and it would not expect such support to survive for six years in the face of mounting casualties and international criticism.

To explain how the Danish government succeeded in mobilizing and sustaining public support for the Afghanistan operation, we develop a novel analytical framework that incorporates insights from the two bodies of thought above as well as the literature on strategic narratives. We logically deduce four conditions for success from this literature that governments must be able to meet in order to mobilize and sustain public support for military operations, and we demonstrate empirically that these conditions can explain the Danish case in a coherent and measured manner. Our analysis shows that Denmark has no secret recipe for maintaining public support for costly wars: the support resulted from continuous effort by successive Danish governments aimed at establishing and maintaining broad political and elite support for the operation. Our framework explains why these efforts were successful in keeping the level of Danish support higher than in other countries.

The article has five parts. The first describes how the Danes reacted to the rise in fatalities in Afghanistan during 2006–2011. The second section demonstrates how existing theories have difficulty in explaining the Danish case. The third section develops our new framework, which is then employed to explain the Danish case in the fourth. The final section sums up our findings and considers whether the Danish success in mobilizing and sustaining public support can be copied by others.

Steadfast public support in the face of growing costs in unprecedented casualties

Although the first Danish troops deployed to Afghanistan in 2001, we start our analysis with the Helmand deployment in 2006. No opinion poll was conducted on Afghanistan between December 2001 and August 2006 and so it was neither relevant nor necessary to include the early period. Moreover, as is clear from Figure 1, the number of fatalities only began to increase in 2007 and it continued to rise until the Danish troops shifted from a combat to a far less dangerous training role in 2011. Since October 2011, when the 42nd Danish soldier was killed, only one additional fatality has been suffered. The initial Helmand deployment involving some 290 personnel represented a doubling of the Danish Afghanistan contribution and it was doubled again in 2007 when the Helmand contingent reached its maximum strength of 750 personnel.

Figure 1.

Danish public support and fatalities 2006–2011.

Measured per capita, Denmark has carried one of the heaviest burdens in Afghanistan in terms of both fatalities (see Table 1) and troops deployed. In late 2012, it ranked third after the United States (1) and the United Kingdom (2) when the number of troops deployed is measured per 1000 inhabitants (NATO, 2012), and it topped the ranks when the level of fatalities is measured this way (Bogers et al., 2012: 273). Using this measuring rod, the Danish armed forces have lost almost six times as many soldiers as France and almost 12 times as many as Germany (ICasualties, 2012).

Table 1.

Burdens measured in terms of fatalities (December 2012).

Country	Fatalities per million inhabitants	Number of fatalities (total)	Share of all NATO fatalities in Afghanistan
Denmark	7.64	42	1.33
United Kingdom	7.17	438	13.90
United States	7.04	2162	68.59
Estonia	6.93	9	0.29
Canada	4.72	158	5.01
Norway	2.15	10	0.32
The Netherlands	1.49	25	0.79
France	1.34	86	2.73
Latvia	1.34	3	0.10
Poland	0.91	35	1.11

Source: www.icasualties.org, CIA World Factbook, authors’ own calculations.

In spite of these costs Denmark maintained the second highest mean public support (49%) in the August 2006–December 2009 period, with the United States having the highest level (55%) (Kreps, 2010: 195): the level of public support in the United States has since fallen well below that of Denmark. Whereas the most recent Danish poll (October 2011) found 46% support for the Afghanistan operation, US polls have consistently registered less than 40% support for the Afghanistan operation since June 2011 (a useful overview is available at: http://www.pollingreport.com/afghan.htm). In their poll in May 2012, GfK Roper Public Affairs & Corporate Communications, which has conducted regular and identical polls on Afghanistan since 2006, found that US public support had plummeted to 27%, with 66% against (Gearan, 2012). CNN/ORC also found US support at an all-time low in March 2012. In their poll only 25% supported the mission; opposition, in contrast, had risen to a record 72% (CNN/ORC Poll, 2012: Question 32). How the Danish government has prevented a similar collapse in its support for the Afghan war is the puzzle we want to address.

Reviewing the theoretical literature

The belief still prevalent among decision makers and commentators that increases in the numbers of casualties almost inevitably erode public support has been laid to rest in the theoretical literature.² There is now widespread theoretical consensus that the causal link between casualties and public support is conditional and mediated by a multiplicity of variables. As Smith (2005: 507) stated in a recent survey of the literature, ‘casualty aversion varies from conflict to conflict, nation to nation, and era to era, and it depends on perceptions and beliefs that may or may not be based in fact’ (other useful surveys include those of Gelpi et al., 2009: 11–15; and Klarevas, 2002). The theoretical consensus on how the relevant variables affect or condition the linkage between casualties and public support is limited, however, and their relative importance and likely interaction remains a topic of debate.

Following Berinsky (2007) we divide the field into two principal schools of thought. The ‘elite competition school’ believes that elite discourse plays a key role in shaping public opinion. The common denominator of this body of thought, drawing on theories of political communication, framing (Entman, 2004), indexing (Bennett, 1990, 2007; Hallin, 1986) and elite competition/cues (Berinsky, 2007; Larson, 1996; Larson and Savych, 2005; Zaller, 1992), is the belief that the public takes its cue from various elite actors when deciding to support or oppose a given military mission. It suggests that the executive can sustain public support as long as it is able to build and maintain broad elite support for a war, frame the content of news reports and silence dissenting elite voices. If a high degree of elite consensus is created and maintained, the general public, taking its cues from the politicians, parties or opinion leaders it trusts, is expected to continue to support a war even in the face of mounting casualties. The executive’s ability to build and maintain such support is expected to be highest in the initial phase of a conflict but, if the conflict drags on, casualties mount and elite groups begin to question and criticize official policy, then the media coverage will begin to reflect this and polarization of public opinion will follow (Baum and Groeling, 2010; Baum and Potter, 2008; Bennett, 1990; Berinsky, 2007; Entman, 2004; Hallin, 1986; Larson, 1996; Larson and Savych, 2005; Zaller, 1992).

Elite competition school argument:

Rise in casualties →+/÷ executive ability to maintain broad political support, frame the news, avoid elite criticism of the war effort and calls for withdrawal/ceasefire → +/÷ effect on public support for the war

The other major school of thought focuses on events outside of government control that affect public reactions to rising numbers of casualties. In this perspective public tolerance of casualties is determined by cost–benefit calculations that are influenced by the extent of vital interests involved (Klarevas, 2002; Larson, 1996; Larson and Savych, 2005; Smith, 2005), the war’s objectives (Eichenberg, 2005; Jentleson, 1992; Jentleson and Britton, 1998), international support (Kull and Destler, 1999; Kull and Ramsay, 2000), and (the prospects of) success (Gelpi et al., 2009; Larson, 1996; Larson and Savych, 2005).

Event-driven school argument:

Rise in casualties →+/÷ degree of national vital interests, international support, war objectives, and (perceived) prospects of success → +/÷ declining public support

For our purposes, the two schools suffer from two principal weaknesses. While the elite competition school does a good job of demonstrating that public reaction to casualties depends to a large extent on the executive’s ability to establish and maintain a high degree of elite support and to frame how the mainstream press reports on a war, it is not very helpful in terms of specifying when and how the government actually succeeds in doing so. Most studies in this school conduct contents analyses of war reporting to establish the degree to which the government succeeds in establishing ‘frame dominance’ or how war reporting merely ‘indexes’ the views of the government and key oppositional figures (e.g. Bennett et al., 2006; Entman, 2003; Hallin, 1986). How the government goes about establishing broad political and elite support and frame dominance in media reports is not considered in detail in most of these studies. Similarly, the event-driven school focuses on documenting the extent to which events affect public reactions to casualties and has comparatively little to say on how governments can influence the impact of combat fatalities so that it does not affect public opinion adversely.

The need for a new model

To answer our puzzle we also need a better understanding of how a government can build and maintain broad political support and frame media coverage so that public support for a war is maintained when casualties occur. Governments use strategic narratives to this end, which is why we have turned to this literature to understand better how they can do so successfully. Strategic narratives are deliberately designed by governments and political elites to justify and explain decisions to go to war. Successful narratives provide an answer to the ‘why this mission?’ question that resonates with national interests, values and role conceptions already held by the targeted elites and general public (Antoniades et al., 2010; Freedman, 2006; Ringsmose and Børgesen, 2011; Simpson, 2012).

Strategic narrative argument:

Governments/elites base case for war (why, what and how) on pre-existing broadly shared national interests, values and role conceptions → broad support for war

Each of the three sets of literature provides us with an insight that we need in order to produce a satisfactory answer to our research question. The school of elite competition informs us that elite consensus will translate into strong public support, and the event-driven school adds that the probability of establishing and maintaining such consensus is affected by national interests, war objectives, international support and the chances of success. The literature on strategic narratives completes the picture by telling us that policy-makers must package the explanatory factors identified by the event-driven school in a coherent strategic narrative linking them to pre-existing ideas and interests in order to build and maintain the elite support that the elite competition school regards as the key determinant of public support.

New model argument:

Government bases it case for (continued) war on a narrative appealing to pre-existing broadly shared national interests, values and role conceptions as well as international support and a promise of success → high political and elite support → media transmits elite cues to public with little comment or criticism → high public support

Four requirements for building and maintaining public support for costly war

To operationalize our model we now derive four requirements that logically must hold if the model is to explain our case. The first requirement that follows from our model is the need to build strong domestic elite support for the initial decision to go to war. The model suggests that a government must base its case for war and the proposed military contributions on a coherent narrative that links the success conditions proposed by the event driven school (national interest, right cause/objectives, international support, and promise of success) with pre-existing commonly accepted ideas about the nation’s proper role in security and defence. The factors to seek in our empirical analysis are hence whether the Danish government’s case for the Afghan war fitted with broadly shared pre-existing Danish policy and role conceptions, and whether the success conditions identified by the event-driven school were met.

The second requirement is the need to maintain broad political support for a war once the costs in blood and treasure become higher than expected initially. Keeping the opposition on board is the sine qua non that can be derived from elite competition theory because it is a prerequisite for maintaining a high level of public support. We therefore examine empirically how Danish governments succeeded in doing so. What did they do in concrete terms, in addition to making persuasive arguments, to prevent the opposition from defecting as the casualties and economic costs kept rising?

The third requirement that can be derived from our model is the need to promise success. As pointed out by the event-driven school, it is necessary to convince the public that money and lives are not being wasted in vain. To what extent did the Danish governments manage to adjust their definitions of success so that they continued to be seen as credible and feasible by the public, despite the rising numbers of casualties?

The final requirement is the need highlighted by elite competition theory for the relevant elites to speak with one voice, thereby reducing the media to the role of a conveyor belt transmitting elite cues to the public. We will investigate whether this was the case by examining whether the political and military elites spoke with one voice, whether the Danish media reflected the views expressed by these elites, and whether it framed its coverage of Afghanistan in neutral or positive terms.

How Danish support for Afghanistan was mobilized and sustained

Appealing to broadly shared national interests, ideas, and role conceptions?

Denmark’s two principal security objectives have remained the same since 1945: (1) preserving Denmark’s security, territorial integrity and prosperity; and (2) strengthening democracy, human rights, development, disarmament and a rule-based international society where might does not equal right. The instruments employed in pursuit of these objectives changed fundamentally with the end of the Cold War, however. During the Cold War Denmark sought to promote its ideals by non-military means only. The military instrument was reserved for national defence and Denmark kept a low profile in NATO, refusing to accept the deployment of foreign troops and nuclear weapons on Danish soil in peacetime. Danish strategic culture was, in the words of Krasner and Petersen (1986: 172): ‘dovish’ with a ‘preference for non-provocative, low-posture, detente-oriented defence policies’.

This is no longer the case. Denmark’s considerable military engagement in the Balkans altered the Danish perception of the military instrument in the course of the 1990s. Although the military deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya cemented this change further, by the turn of the century NATO’s 1999 air war over Kosovo demonstrated that most Danes had come to view the military instrument as a legitimate tool of statecraft. Opinion polls showed that the war enjoyed more support in Denmark than anywhere else, and news late in the campaign that Danish F-16 aircraft had dropped bombs on Serbian targets was widely greeted with pride and joy. The armed forces had by then become the flagship in Denmark’s new activist foreign policy and military contributions to US-led NATO operations the norm. A large majority of Danish decision makers now believed that Denmark, as a responsible member of the international community, had an obligation to use all its instruments, including force if necessary, to protect its interests and to promote its values (Jakobsen, 2000, 2009).

Against this background the government’s case for Afghanistan can be characterized as ‘business as usual’ with a terrorist twist. The national security objective dominated the initial case for sending special forces and F-16s to Afghanistan, in the wake of 9/11, which, in accordance with the right to self-defence expressed in the UN Charter, were tasked to help the United States, honour Denmark’s NATO’s article 5 commitment, and prevent additional terrorist attacks against the West (B37, 2001). The main opposition parties (the Social Democrats and the Liberal Left Party) were uncomfortable with the proposal to send special forces and F-16’s, which they considered to be too hard and aggressive: sending special forces on a combat mission was a first for Denmark (Halskov and Svendsen, 2012: 84–91). However, it helped to ease the concerns of the Social Democrats and the Liberal Left Party that the government at the same time also proposed to make a ‘soft’ value-promoting contribution composed of a Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team, humanitarian assistance and development aid to the UN stabilization force that would be deployed once the Taliban had been defeated, to assist the Afghan government in establishing peace, democracy and good governance in the country (B45, 2002).

The fit between the existing Danish role conceptions and the case for the initial Afghanistan commitment was near perfect. While the government pushed the envelope by insisting on the need for a combat contribution that the two main opposition parties found difficult to accept, the special circumstances of 9/11 and the otherwise close fit with past practice and the simultaneous use of development assistance, humanitarian relief and support to the UN effectively turned the government proposals into Mafia-style offers that the two opposition parties could not refuse. While two small left-wing parties (the Socialist People’s Party and the Red–Green Alliance) opposed the decision to send special forces and F-16s, support for the UN proposal was unanimous.

The Danish government used the same standard operating procedure to make its case for the Helmand deployment. The operation was presented as a logical extension of past practice serving national security (preventing the return of terrorists) and Danish values (helping the Afghan government to build democracy, deliver humanitarian assistance and promote women’s rights) and as a duty that Denmark as a responsible member of the UN and NATO had to undertake (B161, 2007; B64, 2006). The operation was presented as a balanced civil–military contribution in order to make it more acceptable to the opposition. While the risk of combat was acknowledged, the troops were not tasked to fight a war but to support development and reconstruction. The manoeuvre was successful because the proposal was supported by all parties in parliament except the Socialist People’s Party and the Red–Green Alliance.

Maintaining support from the opposition in the face of mounting casualties?

The Danish government is constitutionally obliged to consult with Parliament before sending Danish troops abroad on operations involving the use of force beyond self-defence, and since the end of the Cold War all major troop contributions regardless of mission type have been submitted to a vote in parliament. Danish governments usually sound out the main opposition parties before submitting their bills to parliament and deployments usually enjoy broad parliamentary support. The only exceptions to this rule since World War Two have been the 2003 decision to go to war in Iraq and the extension of the Iraq deployment in May 2006. The government task of maintaining support is therefore facilitated by a strong norm of consensus and consultation.

This norm was also very visible during the Afghanistan deployment. Danish governments invited all the parties supporting the Afghan operation to consultations prior to each mission adjustment and mandate renewal, and the process of consultation was institutionalized further when the government complied with an opposition request to formulate a Helmand plan in December 2007. Annual renewals and evaluations of the Afghanistan and Helmand strategies subsequently served as a platform for consultations and negotiations that helped maintain the high level of parliamentary support by allowing each party to include its preferred instruments and objectives in the evolving strategy. While the Social Democrats and the Liberal Left Party emphasized soft instruments such as humanitarian assistance and reconstruction, the Danish People’s Party consistently prioritized hard military instruments and the targeting of the Taliban and Al Qaida.

The cooptive strategy process gave the opposition a strong sense of co-ownership and responsibility for the Afghanistan policy, perhaps best illustrated by the way in which the government and opposition representatives took turns in representing the political level at military funerals in order to signal that they were united in their support for the troops (Jakobsen, 2012: 195).

Governments employed a variety of measures to defuse the political crises that did occur. The first serious crisis among the parties supporting the operation erupted when the Danish contingent became involved in heavy combat immediately upon its arrival in Helmand. An Army Operational Command estimate that Danish troops had killed up to 70 Taliban fighters alarmed the Social Democrats, who demanded a meeting with the minister of defence to obtain an update on the situation on the ground (Frederiksen, 2006). The minister complied and convinced the opposition parties to continue their support for the mission. To placate the Social Democrats he stated several times in the aftermath of the crisis that Denmark was not in Afghanistan to fight a war and that reconstruction and development remained the key to long-term success (Jalving, 2006; Lauritzen, 2006). Because the political crisis had been aggravated by incomplete information and misunderstandings, he subsequently asked the Army Operational Command to improve the level of information provided to the politicians and the public (Brøndum, 2006). In addition, the minister also began taking members of the opposition on visits to the troops in Helmand on a regular basis. This practice reportedly converted quite a few critics to the ‘cause’ (Halskov and Svendsen, 2012; Rasmussen, 2011: 132).

Subsequent disagreements among the parties supporting the Afghan mission were handled in a similar way. For instance, the annual formulations and evaluations of strategy papers as well as the adoption of an exit strategy were the results of demands from opposition parties (Rasmussen, 2011: 111–116, 129–130). Most disagreements were a question of timing rather than substance and they usually arose because the Danish government had to take the views and policies of its international partners into account when formulating national strategies. Since all Danish parties primarily took their cues from debates in the United States and the United Kingdom, these problems never proved insurmountable (Jakobsen, 2012: 197).

Finally, it is important to note that the task of maintaining the political consensus on Afghanistan was facilitated by the deep domestic disagreements triggered by the war in Iraq. They gave both government and opposition an extra incentive to agree on the conduct of the ‘good’ war in Afghanistan. The government was keen to avoid the difficulties generated by the constant criticism that its Iraq deployments – passed with slight majorities – had given rise to, whereas the opposition wanted to avoid the charge of irresponsibility that the government had levelled at it in defence of its Iraq policy. Maintaining the consensus on Afghanistan became an objective in its own right for the Social Democrats and the Social People’s Party in the years preceding the 2011 general election in order to avoid charges that they could not be trusted to govern the country at a time of war. To demonstrate its ability to govern, the Socialist People’s Party also abandoned its opposition to NATO and became part of a defence agreement for the first time ever in 2009.

Credible promises of success?

‘We are not supposed to win a war in Afghanistan…You cannot win an old fashioned conventional war with so few soldiers in such a large country… We are there to help the Afghan government, train their soldiers and police officers, show our presence and establish security in some of the areas’, the words of Søren Gade, Minister of Defence (in Lauritzen, 2006).

The Danish politicians supporting the Afghan mission took great care to avoid words like ‘victory’ and ‘winning’ in their definition of success. They emphasized repeatedly that the war in Afghanistan could not be won militarily and that it would take a combination of civilian and military instruments to create peace (Bech et al., 2010; Lund, 2013; Møller and Gade, 2005; Møller and Tørnæs, 2005, 2008; Ritzau, 2010). A content analysis of the Danish Afghanistan bills presented since 2006 and the Afghanistan strategies and plans presented since 2007 underlines this. The words victory and winning (militarily) do not appear once. Winning is only mentioned five times and always in the context of winning the support of the local population.³

The second recurring theme was acknowledgement of the difficulties and challenges facing the campaign, warnings that the Helmand operation could last a long time – 10 years or more (Gade, 2006) – coupled with examples of progress and promises of eventual success (Gade, 2006; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, 2010; Møller, 2008; Pedersen, 2009; and the Afghanistan and Helmand strategy documents published since 2008).

The third recurring theme in the Danish narrative of success was the positive (tactical) difference made by the Danish contributions. On the civilian side, the Danish support for women and education, and in particular the growing number of girls attending school, was highlighted time and again. On the military side, the Danish soldiers were credited with enhancing the level of security in their area of operations, thus facilitating development and reconstruction, and politicians constantly used statements from the soldiers themselves to back up their narrative of progress and to reject claims that the soldiers were dying in vain (Bech, 2010a, 2010b, 2011a; Gade, 2006; Khader, 2011; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, 2010; Møller, 2008; Rasmussen, 2011; and the related relevant plans and strategy documents).

While these three themes constituted the constant core in the narrative of success, the meaning of success changed in the course of the campaign, reflecting the changing situation on the ground – precisely as the event-driven school would expect. The initial anti-terrorist focus emphasizing the need to defeat Al Qaida and the Taliban in order to keep Denmark safe and show solidarity with the United States (B37, 2001) was quickly replaced by a focus on stability, development and human rights (B43, 2004; B57, 2003; B64, 2006). The anti-terrorist objectives and the references to national security then made a comeback in response to the fighting triggered by the Helmand deployment (Gade, 2006, 2007a; see also B161, 2007; Rasmussen, 2006, 2007). The deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan and seven Danish fatalities suffered in the October 2007–April 2008 induced the parties behind the mission to put even greater emphasis on national security. While democracy, education, women’s rights and reconstruction remained part of the criteria for success, the purpose was now first and foremost to keep Denmark safe from terrorism (Bech, 2011b; Bech et al., 2010; Gade, 2008a, 2008b; Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, 2010: 4; Møller, 2008; see also the elaborate discourse analyses carried out by Dommersnes, 2011 and Salquist, 2009).

A final shift in the Danish definition of success occurred in 2009 when ISAF and Danish strategy shifted its emphasis from combat to training. The three T’s – (anti)-terror, training and transition – then became the dominant criteria of success for Denmark’s military contribution (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, 2010: 1–4). The civilian criteria for success emphasizing democracy, human and women’s rights, reconstruction and development remained unaltered.

Reducing the media to a transmitter of elite cues?

The Danish politicians supporting the Afghanistan mission succeeded in speaking with one voice to a remarkably large extent. While they, as mentioned above, had their differences on issues such as the balance between the civilian and military means employed and exit dates, they all came out in strong support for the mission when fatalities occurred (Hjorth et al., 2012).

The principal factor explaining this state of affairs is politics, not strategic communications. Strategic communications were not a priority for the Afghanistan Task Force established in 2008 to enhance coordination among the various governmental actors involved, and the efforts undertaken to achieve a greater unity in communications were ad hoc and personality driven (Kjærgaard, 2010: 64; author interviews with Task Force members from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Defence, 2012). It is equally clear that the Danish narrative was not ‘strategic’ since it was predominantly reactive and event-driven and not consciously formulated proactively as part of the overall strategy for Afghanistan. Communications were an afterthought to the extent that they were consciously considered at all (evidence from background interviews with officials and officers involved in the process during 2006–2013). For instance, no easy-to-read document explaining to the public why Denmark was in Afghanistan was produced until 2010 (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defence, 2010).

The communication effort was first and foremost driven by the political leaders who had been involved in the formulation of the strategy and the military leaders charged with its implementation. The existing studies of the Danish media coverage of Afghanistan document a heavy reliance on Danish political and military sources, and that most newspaper articles transmitted the views of these sources uncritically (Hjorth et al., 2012; Hussain, 2010; Kryger, 2011). The failure of the Danish media to act as a watchdog and to question the Danish involvement is highlighted in most studies (Hussain, 2010; Jørgensen, 2012; Kryger, 2011). Newspaper articles on Afghanistan generally employ neutral or positive frames and refrain from blaming the Danish military or Danish politicians for the deaths of Danish soldiers (Hjorth et al., 2012; Hussain, 2010; Kryger, 2011; Larsen, 2010). This stands in contrast to the coverage in the United Kingdom which framed more negatively and was, and is, highly critical of the British government’s failure to support its troops (Larsen, 2010).

This lack of criticism is also reflected in Børgesen’s analysis of editorials from the three leading Danish newspapers (Jyllands-Posten, Politiken and Berlingske Tidende) published between March 2002 and November 2009. Out of a total of 60 editorials, only five (all brought in Politiken) were critical of the government’s depiction of the efforts in Afghanistan (Børgesen, 2010: 36–39). Only one consistently critical Danish newspaper can be found – Ekstra-Bladet – which has reacted to every fatality since 2007 by calling for a withdrawal, but it has remained a lone dissenting voice against the chorus of support (Jakobsen, 2012: 195).

Can the Danish experience travel?

This analysis has explained Denmark’s ability to maintain the highest level of public support for its Afghanistan operation in the face of unprecedented casualties by means of four explanatory factors. These explanatory factors were logically deduced from elite-competition theory, the event-driven school and the literature on strategic narratives, and they allowed us to produce a measured and yet satisfactory explanation of the Danish case.

The Danish government initially built strong political and public support by making a case for war that resonated with broadly shared pre-existing interests and values (national defence and support for democracy and human/women’s rights), and role conceptions (supporting NATO and US-led military operations as a responsible member of international society). Succeeding governments maintained a high level of political consensus by engaging the opposition parties in parliament in a continuous process of consultation and consensus-building, by defining success in way that did not involving ‘winning’ but instead focused on the attainment of realistic short-term, tactical objectives such as police training and building of schools and, finally, by reducing the Danish media to the role of a conveyor belt passively transmitting the positive views of the political parties supporting the Afghanistan operation and the officers and soldiers carrying it out.

Our analytical framework was tailor-made to explain our research puzzle: why the level of support for the Afghanistan mission had remained in Denmark even though Danish forces suffered unprecedented and disproportionate casualties. Because we were not trying to test or develop new theory, we identified the most relevant explanatory factors from existing theories in order to produce a measured explanation. Given that we chose the most powerful explanatory factors identified by these theories to produce a model that is logically and internally coherent and consistent, we expect the model to be applicable to other cases as well. It can certainly explain the inability of the Danish government to sustain a high level of public support for its stabilization in Iraq (2003–2007) even though that resulted in only eight fatalities. By autumn 2006 some 60% of the Danish population wanted the troops out of Iraq (Ritzau, 2006; TV2, 2006), and this induced the government to withdraw earlier than it would have liked in order to prevent Iraq from becoming an issue in the 2007 general election.⁴ This outcome is predicted by our model because of the government’s failure to obtain broad parliamentary support for the decision to extend the Iraq deployment in May 2006.

While the framework should obviously be applied to other cases and countries in order to determine its full potential, our result is sufficiently strong to warrant further empirical testing in additional cases. It certainly passes the threshold for a plausibility probe as defined by Eckstein (1975). Our analysis provides empirical support for the claim that our four factors need to be present if other states are to copy Denmark’s success with respect to sustaining public support for a costly war of choice with little hope of short-term success.

It is also clear that two features will make Denmark’s act hard to follow. The first is the high degree of consensus concerning Denmark’s role in combination with the consultative style of decision-making that characterizes Danish foreign and security policy. This makes it much easier for the Danish government to create and maintain the broad political support that is a sine qua non for maintaining public support for costly wars. This will be much harder for countries where the degree of consensus is lower ab initio, and where the government is not constitutionally obliged or culturally inclined to engage with the opposition parties to the same extent.

The second feature is Denmark’s small power status, which makes it much easier to promise and deliver success. Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom or France, Denmark is not expected to win when it goes to war. The Danish armed forces merely have to make a positive difference at the tactical level in their area of operations. This has enabled Denmark to promise and deliver success in operations that failed strategically – such as the UN operation in Bosnia, which produced the Srebrenica massacre in 1995, as well as the more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In each case Danish governments successfully promised and claimed success at the tactical level while receiving no blame for failures at the strategic level. A great power would rarely be able to pull off such a feat.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Peter Viggo Jakobsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen. His articles have appeared in journals such as Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, and European Security.

Jens Ringsmose is an Associate Professor at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark. His articles have appeared in journals such as International Politics, European Security, Contemporary Security Policy, Global Society, International Journal and Politica.

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