opinions
Arne O. Holm comments
Honesty is The Best Policy – Even in Politics
Commentary: Yet another security policy conference is drawing to a close. Outside the meeting room—which today has been filled with nearly 450 delegates, primarily from the US, Canada, and Europe—I reflect on how easily we describe a world at war. It is reminiscent of the shopping list we take with us to the store for the weekend shop.
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This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
The wars, whether fought on the battlefield in Ukraine or in the Middle East, have become part of our daily lives.
Not without a profound sense of gravity. By all means.
At a safe distance
Yet, at a safe distance from the horrors of war, in a conference room at one of Norwegian hotelier Petter Stordalen's roughly 250 hotels, war is reduced to a combination of a shopping list and an inventory of weapons stockpiles and types of weapon.
But first, to avoid a possible misunderstanding. The conference I have just attended and taken part in, the Arctic Security Conference, organised by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute (FNI), was impressively thorough and timely. It was also a necessary contribution to understanding the theatre of war, whether it unfolds on the battlefield or through hybrid threats.
The latter has long since reached us too, and has brought us into the war through the back door, if you will.
Støre opened up for a debate that we never got.
As early as 2025, when Norway's first national security strategy was presented, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre was admirably clear when he stated that we had to be prepared for war.
That was just over a year ago, a year in which hybrid attacks have become almost an everyday occurrence. They do it to create fear and uncertainty, the true purpose of hybrid threats.
The Prime Minister's statement from May 2025 opened the door to a debate that, in the end, we did not have.
What he achieved was to make war an everyday occurrence.
A gigantic arms race
What we did not get, like large parts of Europe and the United States, was an honest discussion about the consequences for our daily lives. Not least for life in the North.
The funds for the war’s shopping list have to come from somewhere. A massive arms race is to be financed with money we did not have when Russia attacked Ukraine.
In addition, our democratic principles are being put to the test. The tools intended to defend us against hybrid threats include increased surveillance and reduced freedom of movement.
In Norway, where attempts are made to conceal the costs of war within an oil fund, discussions largely revolve around everything other than the costs of war for our welfare and the democratic challenges we face.
Instead of having thorough discussions about how to strengthen civil society in the North – civil societies on which our Armed Forces, industry and oil and gas production depend – we are being whipped into a discussion about the price of electricity and petrol.
Democracy replaced by a mentally deranged president.
Or, as I admit has become my pet peeve, a ship tunnel in Western Norway.
We rightly celebrate a successful rocket launch from Andøya, as it allows us to challenge the highly problematic fact that the anti-democratic American Elon Musk holds a near-monopoly on satellites.
Yet, we seemingly overlook the fact that the host municipality, Andøya, is one of many municipalities in the north appearing on the so-called ROBEK list (Register for Governmental Approval of Financial Obligations. Red. note).
A list of municipalities placed under state administration because they are unable to govern themselves.
We celebrate
We celebrate Kongsberg Satellite Services' international success in Svalbard, but overlook the fact that it has to scale back its ambitions because it can no longer recruit sufficient expertise, partly due to the housing shortage in Longyearbyen.
We have equipped ourselves with an Arctic capital—Tromsø, Northern Norway’s largest city and a spearhead in the international narrative of the North—which today, like Andøy, is entering the ROBEK list and will have to devote its energy in the coming years to everything other than international promotion.
Instead, the resources are to be used to cut culture and leisure services for the next generation.
Elsewhere in Europe, where there is no oil fund, the price of war is far more visible. Our neighbour Finland is struggling with record-high unemployment and a deficit in its state budget.
In Germany, the Putin-friendly AfD is emerging as the election winner in one of the federal states.
In the United States, democracy has collapsed and been replaced by a severely deranged president.
Reduces the seriousness to a dance around the petrol pump.
A clear Canada
Canada is one of the countries acutely feeling the consequences of the fact that the world order we believed in for a few decades has been sidelined.
In a manner that is almost striking, the country has stood up to Donald Trump’s economic warfare in the form of massive tariffs. The country’s response will have significant economic consequences for the average Canadian—a fact clearly communicated by its political leadership.
But perhaps it is this clarity that explains why several opinion polls show an overwhelming majority supporting the countermeasures, despite the personal costs.
I understand the challenges posed by prices at the pump. Also when the explanation for the high prices is the deranged man’s attacks on Palestine and Iran.
Nor is it the voters' fault that petrol prices become more important than less visible consequences for the welfare state's survival in a war economy.
A political choice
But it is a purely political choice to help reduce the gravity of the situation to a dance around the gas pump.
To insist that it is possible to patch up every wound war inflicts upon us, rather than—in the name of honesty—tackling the major challenges we face if the wars continue.
Including the consequences that are still yet to come.
