Defenseless - When the Greatest Threat Comes From Within

For 35 years, politicians, civil servants, and top military officers assured Danes that the threat to the country had disappeared - and that the military could therefore safely be cut back, as long as there were enough soldiers for international missions. When the war in Ukraine broke out, it became clear that the very defense we had dismantled was what we now lacked.

With Donald Trump's return to the White House and his ambitions to end the war in Ukraine and take over Greenland, not just Denmark but all of Europe was unprepared. The question - how could it go so wrong - is the starting point for this lecture.

Peter Ernstved Rasmussen is a journalist and editor at the online media outlet OLFI, which covers Danish defense and security policy. In his book Defenseless - When the Greatest Threat Comes from Within (2024), he examines the decisions and power plays that have weakened the defense from within.

The lecture is organized by FOF Aarhus in collaboration with Dokk1 and takes place in the Great Hall at Hovedbiblioteket.