What the Epstein case is actually about does not come to light during the hearing of the foreign ministers before the Constitutional Committee.
Jonas Gahr Støre, Erik Solheim, Børge Brende, Ine Eriksen Søreide and Anniken Huitfeldt arrive at the hearing well prepared. The excuses roll off their tongues like peas from a sack. The communications strategists and information advisers have been working flat out for several months.
(This isn’t going to be cheap. I wonder how these sums are disguised in the invoices from First House and Try Råd, and who is footing the bill.)
The explanations are so similar that they come across as a diversionary tactic and a coordinated information operation: TRL’s fault, poor judgement – yes, sorry about that. Merry Christmas! No one is taking responsibility. No self-awareness. More aid. More peace diplomacy. More of the same. No one wants to talk about the networks.
The Progress Party and Rødt are merely scratching the surface. But the questioners on the committee are either unable or uninterested in getting to the bottom of what the matter is really about. The same applies to the compliant commentators at NRK and in the press. Terje Rød-Larsen, Mona Juul and Thorbjørn Jagland are the scapegoats.
NRK’s two-part series on the diplomat couple comes across as a devastating character assassination, yet it still fails to ask the difficult questions: Why are there so many Norwegian links to Epstein, and hardly any to our neighbouring countries or to other nations? What sort of system and what sort of foreign policy leadership has allowed this to go on, year after year?
This is all going to fizzle out. Those in charge are not taking responsibility. And, as usual, they are not being held to account.
The Epstein case is not primarily about individuals. Thorbjørn Jagland and the diplomatic couple Juul/Rød-Larsen have clearly acted in a manner that is highly reprehensible, if not criminal. There have probably also been breaches of the Security Act, which people are trying to sweep under the carpet. That is serious enough, but not the most important thing.
Nor is the Epstein case about a toxic culture amongst staff at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have worked at the Ministry myself for many years. There are many well-qualified, skilled and hard-working career diplomats and other staff there. This is not about the rotation scheme, the duty to obey orders or camaraderie amongst staff. That has very little to do with the case.
Nor is the Epstein case primarily about Rød-Larsen’s private archive, or about the fact that Støre, Solheim, Brende and Søreide have all shown unusually poor judgement and now appear to be expressing varying degrees of remorse. It is embarrassing, but of lesser importance. The real issue lies elsewhere.
It lies first and foremost with the politicians themselves. The Epstein affair is linked to the political leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the way the ministry has been run, in the placement of politically appointed civil servants in the ministry’s leadership and administrative department, and in the favouritism shown towards those whose party membership was in order, in the rewarding of those who are ‘adaptable’ who provide the advice the political leadership desires, without professional objections and in a systematic disregard for the meritocratic principles that a serious civil service presupposes in a democracy.
This is not primarily a matter of bad apples. Such individuals can be found in any organisation. This is about systemic irregularities that have paved the way for, and enabled, the abuses for which the diplomatic couple Juul/Rød-Larsen and former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland are now under investigation.
And it concerns the misuse and lack of control and oversight regarding the use of the enormous sums of money from the aid budget administered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which the Office of the Auditor General has regularly characterised as ‘highly reprehensible’ and which have given the select few access to red-carpet treatment and the benefits and privileges that go with it.
This can generally best be characterised as a ‘privatisation’ of foreign policy. Responsibility for this lies with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ political and administrative leadership, i.e. the foreign ministers currently in office who are dismissing the many ramifications of the Epstein case for Norway as mere individual transgressions by a few people. This runs much deeper!
The privatisation of foreign policy began in the 1980sand had its origins in a small circle centred on the Labour Party, the trade union movement and the social science research communities linked to the Power Inquiry and the Living Conditions Survey.
The aim of the initiators was to replace party- and member-led organisations with private, top-down associations led by themselves. Politisk Forum in Oslo Arbeidersamfund was one example, and the Trade Union Movement’s Research Organisation (FAFO), modelled on Per Kleppe’s ‘think tank’ in DnA and LO under Bratteli, became particularly significant.
Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul were full members of the party. So did Head of Department Geir O. Pedersen, who allocated a significant portion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ funds to the IPI. A close friend of Rød-Larsen’s, with the same background from FAFO. The current Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Torgeir Larsen, is also a member of the party, as are most of the previous Under-Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs and Heads of Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Administration Department.
What began as a ‘Labour Party privilege’ gradually became a source of international success for politicians and civil servants from several parties, primarily the Labour Party and later the Conservative Party, but also the Christian Democratic Party and the Socialist Left Party.
This reveals a system characterised by close-knit political and social networks, the circulation of elites, and political and personal horse-trading, in which promotions, positions and postings were reserved for the ‘loyal’ and ‘adaptable’ who had their party membership in order – whilst sidelining those with professional and personal integrity, qualifications and relevant expertise.
The appointment of Anniken Huitfeldt as ambassador to Washington is just one of many examples of how political and personal preferences have systematically sidelined meritocratic principles by the political leadership in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She points to the ‘bad apples’ in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and claims that her own appointment had absolutely nothing to do with her political network!?
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ‘Engasjements-Norge’, the humanitarian-political complex and the political elite in Norway are all intertwined. They have nationalised civil society with a flood of public funds and privatised the Foreign Service for their own ends. Elected representatives in civil society organisations and our politicians have become the state’s ‘parliamentary staff’. From a purely sociological perspective, we would probably have to look to the Middle East and the Saudi royal family to find a comparable phenomenon.
We can no longer allow this to continue. Today, both our immediate and wider surroundings are characterised by too many upheavals and challenges for our diplomacy to be entrusted to a sect comprising many greedy and a few well-meaning individuals, several obvious dilettantes, or people whose main focus is on their careers and their own wallets.
What we need is a serious state and a competent civil service where the professional integrity of the civil service is upheld. We do not need a foreign service that has been privatised and turned into ‘the world’s largest NGO’. The Ministry must be politically governed, but not at the expense of professional integrity. There must be clear boundaries between political leadership and the civil service. That is not the case today.
With their party membership and party network behind them, the married couple Rød-Larsen and Juul have clearly known how to adapt. The couple’s questionable financial dealings form a rather unflattering pattern, yet this does not appear to have hindered their international careers to any significant degree. This should give cause for concern.
For it lays bare particularly worrying aspects of the way Norwegian foreign policy is currently conducted, more like a private NGO seeking to safeguard the special interests of particular groups than the state’s pursuit of shared national interests in relation to the international community.
The ‘engagement policy’ was formulated by the Labour Party, reportedly to build Norway’s international reputation. It has now been revealed that the three most important institutions for Norway’s reputation abroad – the Foreign Service, the Nobel Institute and the Royal House – have been thoroughly compromised. That should give some people pause for thought.
What we lack in Norway, unlike our neighbouring countries, is a serious state. It is not enough to throw the married couple Juul/Rød-Larsen and Thorbjørn Jagland under the bus. If we are to get to the bottom of this matter, the foreign ministers, who bear parliamentary responsibility, must be held to account.
