WGA 2020 | Denmark | Main Actors

Main Actors

Question:
Who are the main actors that cooperate in WGA-like fashion in your country? At what levels do you see cooperation and coordination, whether in a formal or informal manner, taking place in your country’s dealings with external crises and conflicts?

Denmark Expert

Peter Viggo Jakobsen

Professor, Institute for Strategy, Royal Danish Defence College, Copenhagen

Peter Viggo Jakobsen is Professor at the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College, and Professor (part time) at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark. He has acted as an advisor and consultant for several governments and international organizations, is frequently used by the Danish and international media as a commentator on defence and security issues, has won awards for his teaching and public dissemination skills and has written extensively on civil-military cooperation and the integrated approach, coercive diplomacy, Danish and Nordic foreign and security policy, NATO, peace and stabilization operations, UN, and use of military force. He holds a PhD from University of Aarhus, Denmark, in International relations.

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At the strategic level, the main actors cooperating in a WGA-like fashion are the ministries involved in the WGA Steering Committee: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Justice, and the Prime Minister’s Office. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence are the most important of these four actors. They provide the funds for the Peace and Stabilisation Fund (PSF), chair the meetings in the steering committee, provide the personnel supporting the steering committee, and manage the projects funded by the PSF in addition to providing most of the personnel deployed in the field. Furthermore, they translate the political guidance provided in the multi-party defence agreements, agreements on development assistance and humanitarian assistance, and the annual foreign and security policy strategies published by the Danish government into specific programmes and objectives that can be funded by the PSF. These programmes and objectives, in turn, form the basis for the plans developed by the relevant offices in the ministries of Defence, Foreign Affairs and Justice, which task their organisations and agencies to formulate programmes and projects and to provide the personnel contributions required for the PSF-funded activities.

The Defence Command, the Home Guard, the Danish National Police and the Stabilisation Office in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are the principal actors responsible for finding the required personnel. In addition to providing personnel and implementing projects, they are also tasked with coming up with ideas for new ones that can be funded by the PSF. Besides military personnel, the PSF also finances the deployment of Danish police and police instructors to international missions led by the EU or other organisations. The civilian personnel provided through the Peace and Stabilisation Response (PSR) roster is also part of the WGA framework. The PSR is a Danish stand-by roster comprising approximately 490 civilian experts with a wide range of skills relevant to international missions in support of peace and stability in fragile and conflict-affected regions as well as to observing democratic elections in fragile democracies (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2017b).

The major Danish humanitarian and development NGOs are also part of the WGA system, as they play a key role in implementing PSFfunded projects and activities. Institutionalised cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the NGOs takes place within the Humanitarian Contact Group (HCG). The HCG is a forum for exchanging information regarding ongoing and upcoming humanitarian, preventive and follow-up efforts. When a disaster strikes, the group helps to ensure that there is an effective and coordinated humanitarian response.

Thus, together, the WGA institutions form what might be called a formal chain of collaboration and coordination stretching from the political/strategic level through the operational level to the tactical level. The political ambitions expressed by politicians are translated into programmes and plans, which in turn are translated into specific contributions of funds and personnel at the tactical level. Most contributions are provided in support of activities undertaken by international partners, NGOs, international organisations (notably the EU, NATO and the UN), the Nordic states (Finland, Norway and Sweden), and the countries in the Stabilization Leaders Forum (Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States).

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