Denmark’s Ritual of Militarisation

The Copenhagen Security Summit 2025

by Jan Oberg / December 9th, 2025

On December 8, 2025, the Copenhagen Security Summit convenes at Falkoner Centret in Frederiksberg. With 35 speakers and more than 1,200 participants, it is one of Denmark’s largest gatherings on geopolitics and security. Organised by Danish Industry (DI), Ernst and Young, Poul Schmith (The Chamber Attorney), Danske Bank, and Børsen, the summit features high‑profile figures such as Yulia Navalnaya, Mike Pompeo, and Lars Løkke Rasmussen.

The agenda moves through political framing, corporate responsibility, critical infrastructure resilience, and transatlantic dialogue. Its declared purpose is to explore “the role of business in a breaking world order,” explicitly linking corporate actors to Europe’s historically unique militarisation.

MIMAC in Action
The summit exemplifies the Military‑Industrial‑Media‑Academic Complex (MIMAC):

• Military: NATO officials, Pompeo, and Danish policymakers anchor the summit in alliance politics and defence spending. (Pompeo is a former CIA director, on video for being proud of lying, cheating and stealing, the inventor of the lies about genocide in Xinjiang and a fundamentalist hater of Russia and China…).
• Industrial: CEOs of Vestas, Terma, Danske Bank, Ernest & Young, and others are cast as “frontline actors” in security, normalising the militarisation of business.
• Media: Børsen is not merely reporting but co-organising, ensuring promotional coverage rather than critical journalism.
• Academic/Expert: Analysts and compliance specialists provide intellectual legitimacy, reframing militarisation as “resilience” and “risk management.”
• Legal: Kammeradvokaten’s presence ties the summit directly to the Danish state, embedding militarisation in law and governance.

This fusion dramatises a “breaking world order” where security is equated with militarisation, and business is enlisted into NATO’s orbit.

What Is Absent
Such a large‑scale, elite‑driven event would never be arranged around other pressing European or global challenges:

• Conflict resolution and peacebuilding: No panels on mediation, dialogue, or conflict analysis – in short, a forum of conflict‑ and peace‑illiterates who can only speak in military terms.
• Civilian roles in security: The EU’s civilian conflict‑management instruments and the UN’s peacekeeping and diplomacy are completely absent.
• Global challenges: Climate change, environmental degradation, and global governance are ignored, despite being existential threats.

The summit’s anti‑Russia character is explicit: Navalnaya symbolises resistance to Moscow, while Pompeo reinforces transatlantic confrontation. Yet no space is given to exploring diplomatic solutions, common security, trust-building, or peaceful coexistence.

Denmark’s Role
This summit is also a reflection of how Denmark, under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, has spearheaded militarisation. By hosting and promoting such events, Denmark positions itself as a loyal NATO member, implicitly endorsing further arming of Ukraine and a policy that leaves little room for stability with Russia. The emphasis is on confrontation and deterrence, not dialogue or coexistence – let alone peace.

Condemnation and Call to Action
The Copenhagen Security Summit is therefore not a neutral dialogue but a ritual of militarisation, staged by elites with vested interests in weapons production, defence procurement, and the securitisation of business. It condemns itself by omission: refusing to engage with peace, conflict resolution, or the civilian role of international institutions.

It is the ritual of the kakistocrats – an alliance of military, industry, media, and academia steering without a compass toward peace.

What is needed is a counter‑summit of peace and coexistence: a gathering where conflict analysts, peace researchers, environmental voices, and civil society can articulate alternative visions. Europe must reclaim the agenda from MIMAC and insist that security is not only about weapons, but about diplomacy, sustainability, intelligent/educated conflict-management and long-term trust-building.

Without such initiatives, Denmark risks being remembered not as a bridge‑builder, but as a spearhead of militarisation in Europe.

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Jan Oberg is a peace researcher, art photographer, and Director of The Transnational (TFF) where this article first appeared. Reach him at: oberg@transnational.org. Read other articles by Jan.