Wha Sae Base as Be a Slave?

There was a time when we Scots could safely have styled our liberated nation on our independent Scandinavian neighbours.

They had enlightened social policies, investment in infrastructure, solidarity with decolonised states. Internationally, nations of the wider Nordic Council were respected for their honesty and impartiality. And the Swedish-Finnish region was perceived as an oasis of neutrality, and not least, fiercely independent and non-aligned. That time is in the past. 

A new Cold War has been manufactured and sold to the political classes throughout the Nordic region. Leaders from Helsinki to Copenhagen have, as the Danes say, ‘swallowed it raw’. In other words, accepted it uncritically, hook, line, and sinker. 

In recent years, not one Nordic leader has been a voice for peace. Not one of them backed the Russian-Ukrainian peace deal worked out in March 2022. 

A swathe of Russophobic BBC documentaries, fictional Russian baddies on Netflix, and the media demonisation of all things Moscow, has left us in no doubt that Putin is the new Stalin – well, apart from President Xi, who is also the new Stalin. 

The tired propaganda of the pre-1990s Cold War has been re-heated and served as a TV dinner for a new, dumbed-down political generation. Instead of dialogue, the key word is ‘confrontation’. 

Here in Denmark, Friday 22 December was one of the busiest days of the year. Against a backdrop of Christmas shopping and the traditional ‘julefrokoster’ a controversial military cooperation agreement was signed by Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken.

Conveniently, the news headlines were all about Storm Pia, and the highest tidal surges in 20 years. I’m guessing few Danes were remotely aware that their nation had just signed away another slice of its national sovereignty. 

US troops will now be allowed on Danish territory for the next 10 years – and they will be largely exempt from Danish domestic law. Even the authorities in Norway baulked at that.

“There went that sovereignty”, was one of the more terse comments on TwitterX (from ‘Mathias’). Another poster (‘Allan’) suggested that Christiansborg didn’t have the courage to put it to a referendum. There were some supportive reactions but there is huge scepticism, summed up by TwitterX user, ‘Anders’:

“That the Americans will now have a better opportunity to be militarily present in Europe” is exactly what it is about for the imperialist USA, which is constantly expanding its military presence everywhere in the world.” 

And @stemblankt_dk wrote: “You have now openly renounced Danish sovereignty, with American soldiers placed outwith Danish law, without asking the Danes“

The busiest time of the year really was a good day to bury bad news.

Further east, Finland has gone from having the best relations with Moscow to having none. The thriving tourist industry along the eastern border is practically gone. Thirty years after the Berlin Wall was dismantled, a new east-west fortification is being constructed by this NATO new boy. Up to 15 US bases are planned – a provocation unthinkable even by the most hawkish leaders during the Cold War.

Across the Gulf of Bothnia, Sweden will join Finland as NATO’s latest convert, a born-again believer, convinced by the Gospel of Blinken. Denmark now joins these new disciples of US militarism, along with true-believer Norway, as a forward base for US forces.

Danish PM Mette Frederiksen, is all-in with NATO and von der Leyen’s militarised EU. She joins the other Nordic nodding-dog politicians in thrall to Washington’s foreign policy. A foreign policy which has brought countless military interventions and caused tens of millions of deaths across the globe.

Projection, propaganda, and the media agenda of the Western ‘rules-based order’, has convinced my beloved Scandinavia to get on board the Titanic of US militarism. The same militarism warned about by US Major General Smedley Butler in his 1930s book ‘War is a Racket’, and by President Dwight D Eisenhower in his farewell address.

Unfortunately, Frederiksen is a symptom of the decline in quality of the political classes. Once thoughtful, educated heavy-weight leaders have been replaced by careerist light-weights. Gone are the days of Olof Palme’s public opposition to the Vietnam War, not to mention Sweden’s mediation between Iraq and Iran. And who can forget Norway’s sincere efforts to bring about a just settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue? These days there’s not a single statesman or stateswoman in sight.

On 23 of December Frederiksen stated that the past 30 years had been a ‘peaceful parenthesis in world history’. It’s doubtful that the peoples of Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Syria, and Libya would agree about a ‘peaceful parenthesis’. Neither would the victims of the decades-long settler violence upon Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Frederiksen’s statement is inexplicable. Denmark has been a willing participant in NATO’s wars during her ‘peaceful parenthesis in world history’. These are the same wars that have sent floods of refugees towards Europe, many of whom Denmark treats with less than kindness. Either Frederiksen is badly advised, or she and her spin doctor inhabit a parallel reality.

The failed proxy war in Ukraine has left that country exhausted, bankrupt, and partially sold off to US ‘investors’. More than half a million young Ukrainian men have either been killed or wounded. Totally avoidable deaths had Kiev not been told by London and Washington to abandon the March 2022 peace settlement with Russia. This happened to the resounding silence of Nordic leaders.

However, as one proxy war against Russia reaches its inevitable conclusion, a new Russophobia is being fostered in the Nordic region. We should perhaps be keeping a look out for the kind of right wing neo-Nazi groups that were a precurser to the Ukrainian Maidan coup, and Kiev’s subsequent attacks on the Russian-speaking people of the Donbass. After all, as in Ukraine, there was a great deal of pro-Nazi sentiment in the Nordics during the 1930s. 

When it comes to post-independence international relations, we Scots will need to look outwith Scandinavia for a role model. On the other hand, we could just be ourselves. After all, who are Scotland’s historic enemies? If you exclude the Vikings, there is only one nation. 

Within the Union we inherited England’s enemies. We were press-ganged to fight against countries and peoples we had no quarrel with. For England, though, the deaths of our soldiers served a dual purpose, according to General Wolfe during the War with France in Canada. He said of the Scottish Highlanders: “No great mischief if they fall. How can you better employ a secret enemy than by making his end conducive to the common good?” 

England has always considered we Scots as a secret enemy. That is why such efforts have been made to colonise our country and suppress our native culture. By stealing our territorial resources, London has kept us in generational poverty and despair.

Much as I love ‘Scots Wha Hae’, I can’t help feeling that ‘Freedom Come All Ye’ would be the most suitable anthem for our liberated nation, post-Union.

“Nae mair will the bonnie callants

Mairch tae war when oor braggarts crousely craw,

Nor wee weans frae pit-heid and clachan

Mourn the ships sailin’ doon the Broomielaw.

Broken faimlies in lands we’ve herriet,

Will curse Scotland the Brave nae mair, nae mair;

Black and white, ane til ither mairriet,

Mak the vile barracks o’ their maisters bare.”

Instead of emulating our Nordic neighbours by ‘mairching tae war when braggarts crousely craw’, we can choose another path.

Scots did enough damage as part of the British empire in the ‘Greater England’ project. So let’s be wiser than our Scandinavian neighbours. After all, like Ukraine, our Nordic friends are in danger of being sleep-walked into a totally unnecessary regional conflict with Russia. If the current level of Russophobia is anything to go by, a new Ukraine-style conflict may be less than a decade away. There are any number of ‘Gulf of Tonkin’ scenarios that could kick it off.

But by that time, a Scotland reborn as a neutral, non-aligned nation, will be able to work for peace. The role abdicated by our Scandinavian neighbours can be ours to fulfil.