Denmark announces massive and urgent rearmament in the face of the threat from Putin and Trump

BarcelonaDenmark has stepped on the gas in the race to rearm Europe and has announced a short-term investment of billions to increase and improve its military capabilities. Over the next two years, the Scandinavian country will spend an additional 50 billion Danish kroner (more than 6.7 billion euros) on military equipment. This will mean spending more than 3% of Denmark's GDP on defence, a percentage that was 2.4% last year, and 1.4% in 2022, when the current government took office.

"It is the highest level in more than half a century," said Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. The Danish leader justified the creation of the so-called "acceleration fund" by Vladimir Putin's imperialist ambitions. "Because of the threat from Russia, in order to defend Denmark and avoid war, we launched a new rearmament," she said at a press conference accompanied by the Ministers of Defense and Foreign Affairs. The message was clear: the situation is extraordinary and requires an extraordinary and, above all, rapid response.

The announcement comes amid moves for future peace negotiations in Ukraine - in which the United States and Russia want to leave Kiev and the European Union aside - and the unpredictability of Donald Trump's second term, which requires Europe to stop depending on the United States to defend itself, while at the same time threatens the sovereignty of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Frederiksen had already made the announcement in Parliament on Tuesday and, although she did not give details, she outlined her reasons: "We must rearm massively to avoid war," she said, and assured that the situation "is worse than during the Cold War." The Prime Minister conveyed a sense of urgency that she reiterated today: "Now there is only one thing that counts, speed." "If we cannot get the best equipment, we will buy the second best," she said.

The Social Democrat leader —in coalition with two centre-right parties— already hinted on Tuesday that he would give the head of the armed forces more power to decide what material to buy, so that it can be done more quickly, thereby eliminating the usual time-consuming bidding processes. At Wednesday's press conference he said: "The government has a message for the head of defence: buy, buy, buy."

Where will the money come from?

The government has said that the fund will be financed by "relaxing fiscal policy and taking advantage of the underlying improvement in public finances." This means that exceptional or unpopular measures such as raising taxes or cutting public services will not be necessary. At least for the time being. Michael Svarer, professor of economics at Aarhus University, told the Ritzau news agency that Denmark has enough economic capacity to bear this cost over the next two years: "The Danish state is relatively wealthy. Specifically, it has an account at the National Bank with 200 billion euros out of 2 billion euros." Therefore, according to the expert, the financing of the new defense fund is realistic. "Right now, politicians have the luxury, so to speak, of having money in the account and they can prioritize what they spend it on without having to make cuts in the short term," he said. But he stressed that a permanent increase in defense spending would be a different matter.

Several analysts have told Danish media that the government is avoiding a deeper debate for now, but that it will have to be addressed sooner or later, as the government has made it clear that it wants this defence build-up to be permanent.

"I expect that in the coming years we will see more defence spending than ever before in Denmark. This will require a new, comprehensive economic plan that involves many difficult choices and priorities," admitted Frederiksen. Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen has specified that the intention is to spend an additional 120 billion kroner on defence by 2033 (more than 16 billion euros).

Trump's threat

Although Frederiksen has mainly referred to the Russian threat, it cannot be overlooked that this change of stance also responds to the uncertainty generated by Trump's second term. Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has said that the announcement sends a message to the rest of the world: "In a situation where we risk being more alone than we have ever been, we must be able to do something more. And Denmark is showing the way."

"Europe has realised that the new US administration will actually do many of the things that Trump threatened during the campaign. And this has a particularly strong impact on Denmark, on the Greenland issue", points out to ARA Niels Byrjalsen, expert in security and defense at the Center for Military Studies at the University of Copenhagen. "The Danish government is still unclear on how to reposition itself, and the message remains that the US is Denmark's main ally," he adds, although the situation is changing. He believes that Denmark wants to "put pressure on other European states" to also invest more in defense.

"Today's announcement is not related to Greenland, but it is indirectly linked to the US, which expects the Europeans to take more responsibility for their security," agrees Jakob Linnet Schmidt, an analyst at the Danish Institute for International Studies. "Denmark has responded to this agenda decisively in recent years," he adds.

Both say that this move by the Danish government is also in response to a Danish intelligence report published a few days ago, which warns that the Russian threat will increase when a peace agreement or ceasefire is signed in Ukraine, a scenario that now seems closer.

Air defense systems

The announcement on Wednesday did not set out any concrete priorities for the military equipment Denmark wants to acquire. But several analysts, including Byrjalsen, suggest that one of the priorities will be to establish an air defence system, because the Scandinavian country does not have one. The expert from the Centre for Military Studies points out that there has also been discussion recently about whether it is necessary to buy more fighter planes, but there is no specifics. "The key to today's announcement is that much more needs to be done and much more quickly. The important thing is the money and the idea that the government is giving the defence chief much greater power to buy the equipment he sees fit, bypassing the usual process," he concludes.