Denmark to Pascal: Bad Bet
Denmark isn't as worried as its neighbors about the prospects of war. Is that rational?
All of Denmark’s neighbors are ramping up for war: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Norway.
EU leaders at a summit in Brussels just this afternoon approved a four-year, €50 billion aid package for Ukraine—unanimously.
I plucked the articles for those country links at random. I wasn’t even going to bother with links, since European media are all awash in this sort of stuff—we’re soaking in it—but I know at least half my readers are American and may not be aware just how seriously the countries of northern and eastern Europe have begun to take the threat of a war within the next few years.
A lot of them have gone from if to when.
In case you didn’t click through to any of those links, most of them feature defense chiefs, generals, heads of state, or all of the above expressing the need for their nations to prepare for war. They describe things that aren’t just being discussed, but actually happening: deep and immediate investments in defense, hardening infrastructure, the organization and execution of cooperative defense exercises, public awareness campaigns, the whole shebang.
Most of the stories also feature the same people lamenting how unprepared their countries are and how much work there is to be done. They’re out of ammunition. A lot of their vehicles are outdated. Those that aren’t lack trained personnel to operate them. It’s a shitshow all the way around.
I don’t know how much of this is bullshit. Our governments have gotten very good at leveraging our fears. Frightened people make for a pliant electorate.
But I’m not sure what’s the nuttier conspiracy theory: that war will ravage northern Europe within the next few years, or that our governments are knowingly and deliberately overplaying that prospect to make us more receptive to their political whims.
Of course we should be preparing for war: we should always be preparing for war, because that’s the best way to avoid it. The historical record suggests it’s the only way, at least for countries without formidable natural barriers (looking at you, Switzerland).
And of course our governments will always lie to us to get what they want from us. That’s how the pending ice age and the population bomb morphed into global warming—thence into climate change and finally into climate emergency.
I opened up by saying all of Denmark’s neighbors are preparing for war, and they are. But Denmark is not.
To some extent I can imagine someone looking at that map and concluding that as long as those red countries are toughening up, that little yellow country has a pretty good buffer against the Blue Meanies.
Except that little yellow country is the gateway between the big watery bit in the middle and the wider world beyond—and everyone with a navy knows it.
So I’m unsure how to interpret the Danish government’s laid-back approach to war prep. (Yeah, yeah, they upped the defense budget in recognition of the “escalated threat environment,” but not by much—and only over a ten year period.)
It certainly can’t be out of any principled refusal to gaslight us, but how can a country whose every neighbor is girding up for war shrug it off? Are our neighbors overreacting, or are we underreacting?
Whether or not the fears of imminent war are justified, a renewed vigor in Europe’s military footing is a favorable and long overdue development. It’s a military variant of Pascal’s wager.
He argued that people can choose to believe in God or can choose to not believe in God, and that God either exists or he does not. Under these conditions, if a person believes in the Christian God and this God actually exists, they gain infinite happiness; if a person does not believe in the Christian God and God exists, they receive infinite suffering. On the other hand, if a person believes in the Christian God and God does not exist, then they receive some finite disadvantages from a life of Christian living; and if a person does not believe in this God and God does not exist, then they receive some finite pleasure from a life lived unhindered by Christian morality*. As Pascal states, “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”
So let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that war is imminent. Let us estimate these two chances. If you are prepared, you survive; if you are not, game over. Wager, then, without hesitation that war is imminent.
Doesn’t seem that complicated.
* The phrase “unhindered by Christian morality” shows such a want of understanding, particularly as part of an attempt to paraphrase the life-long Catholic Blaise Pascal, that I’m surprised Britannica didn’t fire the article’s author on the spot.