Anders Wivel and Rasmus Mariager can finally take a deep breath.

Since they released their analysis of the causes of the Danish involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, in the beginning of February, they have been at the centre of a veritable media vortex. They have been practically everywhere on every platform.

And all the words that they have voiced and stated have been scrutinised and pulled into agendas pushed by Danish politicians in parliament.

When they presented the analysis at the University of Copenhagen, they could explain that “surprisingly” few people since the end of the Cold War had been in on the decision-making on whether Denmark should go to war. That Denmark to a remarkable degree simply followed all US decisions in this area. And that Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s VK governing coalition , in particular, had inflated the importance of information from the United States and the Danish defence intelligence service FE to the Danish parliament when a narrow majority then decided to enter the Iraq war.

Several politicians on the left were, on the basis of the results of the investigation in the report, quick to speak out on the 2003 Iraq war decision: “It is a scandal,” said Nikolaj Villumsen of the Red/Green Alliance to TV 2 News and demanded that a discontinued Iraq commission was reinstated.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Party’s foreign policy spokesman Michael Aastrup Jensen said on the Danish TV programme Deadline that the former Liberal-Conservative government had only lost their footing on singular occasions.

Rasmus Mariager and Anders Wivel present in the report several proposals on how to improve the decision-making process before Denmark goes to war. They suggest, for example, an analysis office that stores the experience from past wars, and a catalogue of critical questions that politicians and officials need to ask before they commit the forces.

But the researchers did not make moral judgments, even though the attending journalists fished for them at the report presentation.

“I remember that one of the journalists said that the investigation was exciting, but that it seemed a bit clinical. Did we not have any moral messages? But this was not our job,” says Anders Wivel, who is professor of political science and deputy research director of the war analysis.

“It is important that you put away your moral indignation when you as a researcher have an assignment like this. For us, it was about clarifying the decision-making processes (prior to Denmark’s military commitments, ed.), so that we can improve the quality in the decision-making in the future.”

Is it not difficult to put away your moral indignation?

“I don’t find it difficult,” says Rasmus Mariager, associate professor in history and research director of the war report. “It is crucial that we are open and transparent, so that anyone can form their own opinion.”

Controversial right from the start

The researchers were well aware that the investigation would become a part of an intense political struggle in the centre of power. It fact it was even before the first word was written.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s Liberal Party government set up the Iraq and Afghanistan commission in 2015 with the task of investigating what the basis of the Danish participation in the war was, and the issue of the rendering of prisoners in the two wars. The work was to ultimately result in a legal assessment, and the commission had the option of subpoenaing key players to give evidence. But it did not get far before it was shut down.