The Danes have done it again: Mette Frederiksen, that steely matriarch of Scandinavian social democracy, has patched together a coalition government just as the Baltic Sea begins to resemble a pre-1914 powder keg. And who should come calling but our own Foreign Office, clutching a bouquet of defence pacts and wistful glances toward the Viking age? One might almost suspect London sees in Copenhagen a kindred spirit: a small, hardy nation that once ruled the waves and now finds itself peering nervously at Russian submarines.
Let us not mince words: the Baltic security crisis is no abstraction. It is a real, grinding confrontation playing out in a region where geography is destiny. For Denmark, the calculation is brutally simple: the Øresund strait is a chokepoint for NATO shipping, and every naval exercise by the Baltic Fleet is a reminder that Russia’s revanchist ambitions do not stop at Ukraine. Frederiksen’s new coalition of Social Democrats, Venstre, and the Moderates is therefore a wartime cabinet in all but name. She has brought in former prime minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen as foreign minister, a man who once likened Russian aggression to a “creeping annexation”. The message is clear: Denmark will not be caught napping.
Enter Britain, stage left. The government’s renewed push for Nordic ties is part of a broader strategy that reeks of the old “balancing” game. We have already signed a joint declaration with Sweden and Finland, and now we are deepening defence cooperation with Copenhagen. The headline is joint patrols of the Baltic airspace and a shared intention to protect underwater cables from sabotage. But the subtext is more interesting: after Brexit, Britain must find new constellations of influence. The Nordic-Baltic Eight, the Joint Expeditionary Force, any acronym will do as long as it keeps us relevant.
Yet there is a whiff of intellectual decadence in all this. We speak of “historical cycles” as if the present were merely a rerun of the Thirty Years’ War. The Victorians would have understood: they built empires on clear strategic interests, not sentimental appeals to shared Viking blood. Frederiksen’s coalition is a pragmatic necessity, not a romance. The UK’s embrace of Denmark is likewise a matter of cold arithmetic: we need Scandinavian ports, overflight rights, and intelligence sharing. But let us not pretend this is a meeting of equals. Denmark’s population is one-tenth of ours, its economy a fraction. We are the senior partner, and we should act like it rather than gushing about “Nordic values”.
National identity, I hear you mutter? Indeed, the crisis is forcing a reckoning for Denmark. For decades, the country prided itself on being a humanitarian superpower, a place of generous welfare and green energy. Now it must be a frontline state, spending 2% of GDP on defence and hosting NATO troops. Frederiksen’s coalition will test whether the Danish soul can accommodate both hygge and hard power. My bet is it can, but only if Britain and others do not treat it as a client state.
The danger is that we mistake tactical cooperation for a deeper bond. The Baltic crisis will not be solved by joint air patrols alone. It requires a coherent European deterrent, something that has eluded us since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The UK’s Nordic tilt is a welcome corrective to decades of Atlanticist neglect, but it must be backed by real resources: more destroyers, more submarines, more boots on the ground in Estonia. Otherwise, Frederiksen’s government will be the belle of the ball one season and a lonely sentinel the next.
I write this with a certain rueful admiration. The Danes have always been canny: they survived the Napoleonic Wars, the Bismarckian seizure of Schleswig-Holstein, and the Nazi occupation by a mixture of diplomacy and stubbornness. Frederiksen’s coalition is in that tradition. But Britain’s role is less noble. We are fishing for influence in a sea of troubles, using history as a lure. Let us hope we do not hook ourselves.
