Writings
Over a span of three decades, I have published numerous books, book chapters, academic articles, policy reports, longreads, essays, op-eds and reviews.
Explore a small selection here and find a longer list of academic publications below.
Geopolitical Amnesia: The Rise of the Right and the Crisis of Liberal Memory
McGill-Queens University Press (2021)
This collection of essays explores the rise of the New Right, the return of machismo geopolitics, and the erosion of liberalism as a public philosophy of bounded sovereignty and democratic deliberation. How, we ask, did the liberal sensitivities of doubt and introspection, which for a fleeting moment emerged out of the ruins of Total War and the Holocaust, turn into brute privatization, endless wars and the radical inequalities of neoliberal globalization? And beyond that: how did ideas of race and replacement, victimhood and vitality, become powerful weapons in reaction? In my framing chapters, I embed the new geopolitics within broader trends of identity politics, technological acceleration, and a digitalized public sphere.
Research and book funded by the Velux Foundation: World of Right
Reviews
“This is a brilliant collection”
Professor Richard Sakwa, University of Kent
“An engaging and original volume. A notable contribution to scholarship”
Professor Duncan Bell, University of Cambridge
“Teoretisk og analytisk knivskarp”
Professor Mikkel Thorup, professor, Århus Universitet
Corporate Cosmos
In this policy report, I describe the rise of Silicon Valley as a radical, even revolutionary political movement, and the myriad ways in which US space tech translate Old American myths into new commercial utopias. With its near monopoly on global digital infrastructures, the American tech and space industry now engulfs us all, and to most of it, space is the New World: both an orbital economy, with enormous potential for extraction and expansion, and a novel political frontier, much on par with the original exodus from Europe. In the words of Elon Musk: “a chance to rethink our models of political governance, much as was done in the creation of the United States”. These ambitions involve young, immature fields of science – artificial intelligence, quantum physics, robotics – whose capacity, reach, and interplay, are still deeply under-scrutinized. As I conclude, Europe must stop and ponder. Turning space into a corporate cosmos will mean tragedy, not only to established legal norms of our universe as a Global Commons, but likely also to the biosystems and climate of Earth.
Far Right Utopias and Judeo-Christian Civilization
How did Judeo-Christian Civilization, once an idiom of progressives and civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, turn into a slogan of the Western Far Right? How did visions of a future ‘Christian democracy’ or ‘the protection of Christian minorities’ come to appeal to such disparate groups as MAGA reactionaries, Silicon Valley technologists, Israeli ethno-nationalists, and the hurt or resentful anti-globalists of Central Eastern Europe? In this dense academic article, I explore the contemporary culture wars and complex intellectual past of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’. I also argue that we need a new ethnography of ideas: to view the myriad micro-utopias of our present – Left and Right – as both products and symptoms of a planet whose ecologies, economies, communities, and life-worlds are in crisis.
Trump, Tech and the Mythologies of the American Frontier
To many, the 2024 marriage between MAGA reactionaries and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs was both surprising and unlikely. This Long Read, written upon my return from a California research stay in 2019, explores the roots of American frontier mythology and the lingering role of a deep-seated animosity towards government, regulation, and institutions. From the American Founding, and its profound dislike of Kings, Popes, and convention, to the age of Darwin, science and American Westward expansion, I unpack the rhetoric and beliefs that unite Trump and Tech: notions of history as cut-throat evolution, of progress as ruthless competition, and of freedom as the endless revolt against worn-out authorities or decadent, weak, corrupt and incompetent bureaucracies.
Danmark drømmer og USA går i opløsning
Kan der trækkes en linje mellem hvor tids demokratiske og totalitære regimer? For eller imod demokratiet? Med eller imod Vesten? Eller kæmpes der, også indenfor USAs og Europas mure, mellem former for demokrati: Pluralistisk eller homogent, lokalt eller nationalt, minoritetsbeskyttende eller majoritetstyret, juridisk og proceduralt eller populistisk og etno-nationalt? En polemisk artikel i Ræson, om den farlige men selvvalgte blinded i dansk USA-politik, dengang Biden var præsident og den danske regering talte om at tilbyde permanente amerikanske baser i Danmark. Og et forskningsbaseret øjebliksbillede af et USA, hvor kongressen talte om Biden som illegitim kupmager, det republikanske parti talte om oprør og opløsning, og Silicon Valley talte om løsrivelse, udvandring og en interplanetar fremtid bygget af teknologer, milliardærer og CEOs.
Fanget for evigt i akvariet?
Er Vestens politiske elite, dømt til for evigt at forblive i akvariet – døve og blinde for den modmagt og kritik, der omkring dem kun vokser? Da Joe Biden efter fire år med Donald Trump som præsident vendte tilbage til Det Hvide Hus i 2021, vendte også Bruxelles og Washington D.C. tilbage til illusionen: Alt er såre godt. I et essay skrevet og udgivet imens billeder af Trumps partisaner i storm på Kongressen stadig gled på repeat over klodens mange nyhedsskærme – våben, pelshuer, tyrehorn, Odin-tatoveringer – gjorde jeg status over en række nye bøger, der på hver deres måde satte Vestens indbyggede blind spots og årtiers liberalt hegemoni, hykleri og/eller tragedie til debat.
Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Niebuhr, Morgenthau, and the Politics of Patriotic Dissent
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
A Republic or an Empire? Written at the height of American hegemony, and long wars in the Middle East, this book explores the founding myths beneath American power. Myths of certainty, arrogance and expansion: America as the New World, a City Upon a Hill, innocent, exceptional, and chosen, with a manifest destiny and God-given mission to push onwards and upwards. And yet also myths of hesitance and restraint: America as experiment, not destiny, an imperfect project and a fallible nation, prone to excess, and as such reliant on a vibrant public sphere to correct and critique it. Albeit two decades old, this book remains a foundation for my take on Americas religious roots, ideological nuance, democratic crisis, and attraction to political utopias.
Academic publications
2024 Corporate Cosmos: How the American Space Industry Imagines Our Future and Shapes Our Present. Copenhagen: DIIS Report.
2023 Danmark i En Ny Rumalder (with H. O. Frandsen & K. L. Petersen), Copenhagen: DIIS Policy Brief.
2021 “Judeo-Christian Democracy and the Transatlantic Right: Travels of a Contested Civilizational Imaginary”, in New Perspectives, 29:4.
2021 “Brothers in Arms and Faith: The Emerging National-Conservative US-Eastern Central Europe Alliance” (with Minda Holm), Oslo: NUPI Policy Report.
2020 Geopolitical Amnesia: The Rise of the Right and the Crisis of Liberal Memory. London & Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
2019 West of Government. Copenhagen: DIIS Long Read.
2018 “One Year After: Revisiting Hochschild, Trump and American Apocalyptic Feeling”, Contemporary Sociology 47:2, pp. 250-251.
2018 “Visions of an Illiberal World Order: The National Right in Europe, Russia and the US” (with Minda Holm), Oslo: NUPI Policy Report.
2017 “Realist Exceptionalism: Philosophy, Politics and Foreign Policy in America's 'Second Modernity'” (with M. C. Williams), in American Foreign Policy: Studies in Intellectual History. Drolet, J-F. & Dunkerley, J. (eds.). Manchester University Press, Ch. 4, p. 96-116.
2017 “Rethinking Obama’s Retreat: Between Obama’s Silent Footprint and Trump’s Simulated Sovereigntism”, in New Conflict Dynamics: Between Regional Autonomy and Intervention in the Middle East and North Africa. Malmvig, H., Boserup, R., Makdisi, K. & Hazbun, W. (eds.). Copenhagen: DIIS Book Series.
2017 “En offentlig hemmelighed: Når sikkerhedspolitik går fra statsmandskunst til allemandseje” (with K. L. Petersen), in Tidsskriftet Politik, 18:3.
2017 “Intelligence Expertise in the Age of Public-Private 'Collection': Challenges to Democratic Control and Accountability” (with K. L. Petersen), in Intelligence and National Security.
2017 Zombie NATO. Copenhagen: DIIS Policy Brief.
2016 Survival of the Fittest: Trump’s Not-So-Simple Nationalism. Copenhagen: DIIS Policy Brief.
2016 “Reinhold Niebuhr: Tvivlens Teolog i Guds Eget Land”, in A. Nonbo & C. O. Christiansen, Amerikanske Tænkere: 14 Intellektuelle Der Ændrede USA. Copenhagen: Informations Forlag.
2015 “Realism, Pragmatism and the Public Sphere: Restraining Foreign Policy in an Age of Mass Politics”, International Politics 50:6, pp. 784-797.
2015 “Rethinking the Logic of Security: Liberal Realism and the Recovery of American Political Thought” (with M. C. Williams), in Telos 170:1, pp. 46-66.
2013 “US Homeland Security and the Politics of Shared Responsibility: Neo-republican Security Governance?” (with K. L. Petersen), International Political Sociology 7:1, pp. 1-18.
2013 “Selling the War: Flags, Lies and Images”, in A. Gelvik & R. Schubart, Eastwood's Iwo Jima: A Critical Engagement with Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Columbia University Press/Wallflower Press.
2012 “21st Century Risk and Security Governance: Neoliberal, neorepublican, or…?” (with K. L. Petersen), in Risk & Regulation, London School of Economics, 14:2.
2012 Krig i Øjenhøjde: Tilskuerdemokratiet og den Superviserede Krig. Copenhagen: DIIS Policy Report.
2012 “Rights, Religion, Security: Christian Realism from Lincoln to Obama”, in Helle Porsdam, Civil Religion and Human Rights: A Possible Security Discourse. London: Edward Elgar Publishers.
2011 “Designing (De)Security: European Exceptionalism, Atlantic Republicanism, and the Public Sphere”, in Security Dialogue, 42:4-5, pp. 441-452.
2011 “Gik alle konger frem på rad: om tro, offentlighed og afsikkerhedsliggørelse”, in Tidsskriftet Politik, 43:2, pp. 229-247.
2008 “Realism and the Politics of (Dis)Enchantment”, in Duncan Bell, Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2008 Realist Strategies of Republican Peace: Morgenthau, Niebuhr and the Politics of Patriotism as Dissent. New York: Palgrave.
2008 “Efter Bush: Stadig Multinationalisme ‘American Style’?”, in Internasjonal Politikk, 66:2-3, pp. 287-318.
2008 Vi taler jo ikke om politik på den måde: Regeringen, Folketinget og Sikkerhedspolitikken (med Anders Henriksen). Copenhagen: Policy Report, Danish Institute for Military Studies.
2007 “Introduktion til særnummer om krigens etik”, Militært Tidsskrift 136:3.
2007 “Kan et etisk dilemma formidles? Om krig, tvivl og mindesmærker”, in Militært Tidsskrift 136:3, pp. 233-244.
2005 American Jeremiahs. PhD monograph. Copenhagen: Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen.
2004 “Amerikas ny fundamentalisme: En flygtning, der krydser sit spor?”, in Kenneth Møller Johansen & Terkel Kunding (red.), Atlantiske Afstande: Samfund, sikkerhed og samarbejde i bevægelse. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
2003 “In Search of Monsters to Destroy? The Liberal American Security Paradox and a Republican Way Out”, in International Relations 17:2, pp. 213-232.
2003 “Sikkerhedsparadokset”, in Tidsskriftet Politica 35:1, pp. 5-21.
2000 “At overlade sandheden til poesien: Introduktion til Richard Rortys anti-Filosofi”, in Tidsskriftet Politik, 8:1.
1999 “The American Sound: National Identitet og Sikkerhed i USA”, in Tidsskriftet Politica, 31:4, pp. 400-415.
Selected Op-Eds, Interviews & Commentary
2022 “På den anden side af et kupforsøg, ligger anarki”, interview in Føljeton, 6. Januar.
2022 “Danmark drømmer, mens USA går i opløsning”, in Ræson, 23. Februar.
2021 “Imod liberalismen” (with Tobias Havmand and Louise Riis Andersen), Copenhagen: DIIS Essay.
2021 “USAs udenrigspolitiske elite kommer snart tilbage fra bænken, men kan de komme ud af blindgyden?”, book review / essay in Information, 16. Januar.
2021 “Man kan frygte at Biden overser læren fra Trump”, in Mandag Morgen.
2020 “Trump blev det kristne højres håndgranat”, in Jyllands-Posten, 2. November.
2020 “Frihedskysten”, in Weekendavisen, 2. Januar.
2017 “Det er voldsomt at erkende, men Vesten er i opløsning”, interview in Ræson, 22. April.
2015 “Nu Skal Danmark Tænke Selv”, in Clement Kjærsgaard, Hvor Står Danmark Nu? Copenhagen: Ræsons Forlag.
2014 “Sikkerhed og Tvivl”, in Clement Kjærsgaard, I Krig og Tvivl. Copenhagen: Ræsons Forlag.
2014 “Mere opsyn løser ikke overvågningens problem”, in Kristeligt Dagblad, 6. Marts.
2012 “Forskning kan ikke længere opdeles i krigseksperter og fredsforskere” (med Rens Van Munster), in Information, 5. November.
2012 “Obamas Paradoks”, in Ræson, 27. September.
2012 “Irak-kommissionen skygger for substansen”, in Information, 1. Oktober.
2013 “Krigens etiske dannelsesspil”, in Information, 18. April.
2008 “Kampen om Hjerterne”, in Weekendavisen, 2. Marts.
2007 “De villiges koalitioner”, in Information, 28. August.
2007 “Sikkerhed og Solidaritet”, in Information, 11. December.
2007 “Hvem vil være med?” (med Jens Ringsmose), in Weekendavisen, 15. Juni.
2007 “Til minde om: Krig og mindesmærker i USA”, in Weekendavisen, 12. Oktober.