Russia’s Flares and Denmark’s Nerves: A Textbook Lesson in Managed Fear

A warship does not fire flares “within a matter of metres” of a foreign helicopter by accident. When Denmark’s defence minister calls it “deeply unprofessional seamanship,” he speaks as one must for his public and his allies, but the act itself is professional in a different register: the register of intimidation. The Danish side says the helicopter was on a routine photographic mission over a Russian frigate in international waters off Gedser. The Russian side answers that Danish helicopters have carried out “dangerous maneuvers” and “provocative actions” near their ships before. Strip away the adjectives and you are left with the effectual truth: two militaries dancing at the edge of acceptable risk to defend incompatible stories about who commands this piece of sea and sky.

In my day the Venetians and the papal armies did the same thing with galleys and cavalry patrols. No one wanted an open war every week, but each wanted the other to feel a hand near the throat. As I argued in *The Prince* (in W. K. Marriott’s translation), men “judge more by the eye than by the hand,” so these powers understood that how closely you rode past an enemy standard could matter more than how often you actually struck. Here, Russia’s survival interest is to keep Western eyes and instruments at a respectful distance from its ships and from the war it is waging elsewhere; Denmark’s is to prove to itself, to its people, and to its allies that no Russian hull, however bristling, dictates terms in international waters. Once you see these interests, the flares and the photographs cease to be puzzling. They are messages written in fire and pixels.

Notice how both sides immediately contest not the fact of the incident but its narrative. Denmark speaks of routine operations, unprofessional behaviour, and a “gradual shifting of the boundary for what they consider acceptable behaviour.” The Russian ambassador promises to investigate, but accuses the helicopter of provocation and recalls earlier complaints about low hovering over another warship. Each is building dykes against hatred and blame. Each wants the wider public to see the other as the reckless one, while they themselves appear forced, reluctant, almost weary. In such games, appearances are not decoration; they are half the defence budget. A misstep in words can undo the prudence of the pilots. The first battlefield is always the report of what happened.

The wider theatre is anything but calm. On the same day, Russian forces are reported to have shot down 222 Ukrainian drones. Poland speaks of “aviation operations” in its airspace due to Russian jet-powered drones striking Ukraine. NATO jets have shot down a drone in Lithuanian airspace. A Russian drone strike hits a rail line minutes after a train carrying former leaders passes, and a Russian spokeswoman warns Western politicians to “soberly” assess the risks of travelling to Ukraine. Fortuna rages through the region like the flooded river I described in *The Prince*: drones, misfires, and near misses buffet all the banks at once. When the river runs this high, even a single flare near a rotor blade can become the stone that diverts the current toward catastrophe.

The question, then, is whether this was virtù or folly. To my eye, the Russian commander and his superiors seek to be feared yet not to trigger the consultations that Denmark hints at when it says “we are not there” on invoking common defence. Two flares, one close pass, no casualties: this is calibrated. It says, “We can hurt you if we choose,” while leaving enough air for later claims of warning or miscommunication. When I wrote that it is “much safer to be feared than loved” (again, Marriott’s translation), I added that a prince must avoid hatred, which arises from injuries to property, honour, and life that appear needless or treacherous. A near miss is not an injury, but repeat them and custom will convert fear into hatred, and hatred into collective resolve.

Denmark’s answer shows a different kind of skill. Its ministers speak strongly of unacceptable behaviour and boundary-shifting, yet the defence minister explicitly says the threshold for alliance-wide response has not been crossed. The state takes the incident “seriously,” but keeps its sword in the scabbard, only a few fingers lower on the hilt. This is good republican prudence: the people are warned of danger, allies are reassured of firmness, but the state refuses to be hustled by a single flare into decisions that belong to parliaments and councils. In the *Discourses on Livy* I wrote, in Ninian Hill Thomson’s translation, that one must assume men will “give loose to their evil inclinations” when free to do so; the art of free states is to bind even their own indignation with procedures, so that hot blood does not overthrow cold interest.

Some will say all this is too neat, that a flare can misfire or a pilot misjudge distance without grand design. They are right to remind us that fortune commands “perhaps a little more” than half, as I once conceded. But notice what follows: both sides instantly embed this accident, if accident it was, inside larger patterns they control—prior complaints of dangerous fly-bys, talk of shifting norms, hints about alliance articles, warnings about travel to a nearby war. Even when fortune supplies the spark, men choose whether to pour oil or sand on it. To live free and secure in such a world, republics must cultivate citizens who can distinguish real injuries from theatrical ones, and leaders who know how close you can fly to another man’s ship without mistaking bravado for strength.

The uncertainty for me is how far each side is willing to keep testing the edge before some pilot, minister, or public finally loses the taste for this careful game and demands something cruder than flares in reply.