Here in Denmark all parties in parliament besides the demsoc Red-Greens, from fascists to “socialists”, are in agreement to throw money at the military like drunk sailors. We’re told it happens to fulfill “NATO obligations”. We hear a lot of talk about how necessary it is to splurge on war stuff and we get a constant stream of news about undermanned warships and dilapidated barracks.

When it came into office in late 2022 the succdem-led right-wing government tried to raise what they called “crisis awareness”. Instead of politicians telling us that everything is going to be five with them at the helm, like they usually do, we were told how the world was a dangerous place and how the economy or Russia or the big bad bogeyman could come every moment. They used “need to secure funding for the military” to meet the imagined Russian threat as the official excuse to abolish a public holiday. The real reason was different though, as finance ministry ghouls had been salivating over the idea for years before the Ukraine war.

The “crisis awareness” thing didn’t work as a PR strategy and just made people dislike the government even more so they have dialed it down over the last year.

To solve the military’s alleged staffing crisis the politicians plan to expand already existing conscription. Today conscription is male-only and they get so many volunteers that forced military service is practically non-existing. They want to change this so more young people serve in the military for lo ger periods of time. They also want to impose forced military service on women, something that is framed by the government media as a huge advance for gender equality and women’s rights.

The official reason for the increased use of conscription is that they hope that a fraction of the conscripts will like it and sign contracts.