This is the script for my video posted on August 25, 2026. Watch it on TikTok.
The average person’s only real connection with Denmark is a LEGO set, a medication they take, or a fish they bought from the supermarket. But while Denmark is small, it wields outsized geopolitical influence. So why is Denmark disproportionately important?
Denmark has been populated since prehistoric times and it's been a unified kingdom since the 10th century CE. In fact, its monarchy is one of the oldest in Europe, tracing back to Viking kings like Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth.
See, before the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark and Norway were joined together under a single crown.
But Denmark-Norway had allied with France, and when France lost, Britain and Russia backed Sweden’s claim to Norway as a reward for Sweden’s support and as compensation for Sweden losing Finland to Russia. This was the first amputation of Danish territory. But did hold onto Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands.
Then in 1864, Denmark fought Prussia and Austria over the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg, and yet again Denmark lost, this time forced to hand over two-fifths of its territory.
The consequence of these two events is that Denmark basically abandoned any ambition of being a great power, and they turned inward instead, focusing on industrialization, education, the cooperative movement to share amongst themselves, and from this eventually the social democratic welfare state the country is famous for.
Denmark maintained its neutrality in the Second World War and even signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, but they were occupied by Germany the following year with almost no resistance. The conclusion that many Danish elites drew was that there was no benefit in such a small state being neutral when they had such powerful neighbors.
After the war though, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway talked about forming a Scandinavian Defense Union. Sweden wanted neutrality, while Denmark and Norway, which had both been occupied by Germany, wanted more cohesive ties with the West. This is how Denmark became a founding member of NATO.
In 1957, Denmark declared that no nuclear weapons would be hosted on Danish soil in peacetime, but they secretly gave the US tacit consent to store them in Greenland. This didn’t come out for another 38 years, despite the 1968 crash of a nuclear-armed B-52 in Greenland that scattered plutonium. Greenland itself was not aware despite being self-governing, and the revelation of this in the 1990s is a root cause of Greenland’s distrust of the Danish government and the US. I highly recommend watching my previous videos on Greenland for more detail.
During the Cold War, Denmark stayed firmly in NATO but broke with the alliance’s nuclear line so often that the practice got its own name. The footnote policy saw Denmark add dissenting footnotes to official NATO communiques to signal formal disagreement without actually vetoing. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Denmark shifted to a new strategy of active military support to the alliance, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in 1992, Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty that laid the foundation for the European Union. In response, the Edinburgh Agreement was formed to give Denmark four specific opt-outs from the treaty. They would not be obligated to participate in EU military operations or defense policy decisions, they would keep the Danish krone instead of using the euro, they would stay out of EU rules on policing, asylum, and immigration, and Danish citizens would get EU citizenship supplemental to Danish citizenship rather than replacing it. Denmark approved the treaty on a second vote in 1993.
Of course, the Danish krone has been pegged to the euro since 1999, and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the country decided to abolish the defense opt-out. Denmark is investing heavily into European defense, investing directly into Ukrainian defense manufacturing and pushing its own military spending over 3% of its GDP, driven by the fact that Denmark itself is incredibly vulnerable.
Denmark is a critical chokepoint because the Great Belt, the Oresund, and the Little Belt are the only maritime exits from the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic, excluding the Kiel Canal controlled by Germany. Under the 1857 Treaty of Copenhagen, Denmark charges no transit tolls, and international law bars it from closing the passages outright.
Russia is extremely reliant on the straits because they transit about 60b dollars worth of crude oil and petroleum products across them every year, roughly 40% of Russia’s total seaborne oil exports and about 1.6m barrels per day, much of it on shadow fleet tankers under non-Russian flags. So Denmark has turned to environmental and insurance inspections instead.
In 2022, someone sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines in the Danish and Swedish exclusive economic zones near Bornholm. Denmark and Sweden closed their investigations without accusing anyone, but Germany’s investigation is still open, and it has charged Ukrainian nationals with sabotage. The pipelines were, after all, majority-owned by Russia. Bornholm is strategically pivotal because it’s so close to Russian Kaliningrad, so Denmark is reinforcing its military posture there.
Large drones also overflew major Danish airports and military sites in 2025, and though Denmark didn’t shoot them down for safety reasons and stopped short of formally blaming anyone, they triggered EU and NATO alerts, a ban on civilian drone flights during a major summit, and NATO reinforcements via an air defense frigate. The Danish Prime Minister called the incursions the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date, and it has not ruled out Russia as the culprit.
The Danish economy is itself heavily reliant on shipping. Maersk is the second-largest container carrier in the world, responsible for about 14% of global container capacity. As a result, Denmark is unusually exposed to disruption in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks out of Yemen, though the rerouting of maritime traffic around Africa spiked freight rates and made Maersk a fortune.
Denmark’s pharmaceutical industry has also driven an outsized amount of the country’s growth, thanks in large part to Novo Nordisk’s GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic. Competition from companies like Eli Lilly has hit the Danish economy hard, as well as US tariff pressure on branded and patented pharmaceuticals.
Meanwhile, domestic Danish politics have rapidly evolved in the last few years as geopolitical dynamics have shifted. In 2022, the Social Democrats, their center-right Venstre rivals, and the centrist Moderaterne party formed an unusual cross-bloc majority coalition now commonly called the SVM government. This ended with a snap election in March 2026 when the Social Democrats, who have long dominated Danish politics, experienced their worst result since 1903. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held on better than expected though, in large part because of her hard stance on Greenland against the US.
Denmark, like so many small states, remains principally self-interested. Two centuries of territorial loss produced a doctrine of accommodating great powers to avoid confrontation, first and foremost the US, which has guaranteed security for NATO and Greenland for decades. With the US now transformed from a clear guarantor to a predator and Russia probing for opportunities to undermine European interests, Denmark is now trapped between great powers. To survive, it will need to lean even harder on its close neighbors and look after itself.
Keep reading
- Why would the US want to take Greenland when it already operates freely there?
- Why is Iceland a NATO member if it lacks a military?
- Why does the EU exist?
I’m writing a book called Groundwork about the buried history beneath geopolitics. Join the waitlist to hear when it has a publisher, a cover, and a release date.