Rearmament, war and gold

How do you prepare yourself? And do you have something to pay with if your Dankort, VISA card or mobilepay doesn’t work?

Wars and crises have in a short time come much closer to us. Since Russia’s large-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022, there has been a major war in Europe, not too far from our borders. It has already cost up to half a million killed and injured. Denmark has taken in a large number of war refugees from Ukraine who live among us today.

In our immediate area, major historical changes are also taking place.

The entire Nordic region are now in NATO

The Swedes are on their way into NATO. They have been neutral since 1809, but now it is over. Finland, which narrowly avoided being conquered by the Soviets during World War II and remained strictly neutral during the Cold War, joined NATO in April 2023.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has said that it is the first time that the Nordic countries have a common defense since the collapse of the Kalmar Union back in the 1520s.

Strongly increasing defense spending

The defense also costs more money.

In 2022, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the parties in the Danish Parliament entered into a national compromise on Danish security policy. In May 2023, the parties in the Danish Parliament from Socialistisk Folkeparti to Nye Borgerlige, entered into an agreement on the financing of Danish defense until 2033.

The agreement means that 143 billion kroner will be spent on defence. Concretely, this means that from 2030 Denmark will fulfill NATO’s recommendation to spend 2.0% of GDP on defence. In 2022, the number was only 1.38%.

Finland, Sweden and Norway spend significantly more on defense than Denmark, even after the Danish agreement from 2023. Sweden increases its defense spending dramatically and is already up to 2% of GDP in 2024. Finland has reserves of up to 800,000 men of a population , which is largely the same as in Denmark.

It is therefore realistic that Denmark may end up spending even more on defence.

Unique political agreement on defence

The political agreements on Danish defense also mean that there is a political agreement on defense that we have largely never seen before. At the end of the 19th century, defense was one of the most important areas of conflict between the Right-wing government under Estrup and the opposition in the Left. The background was that Denmark was close to disappearing as an independent country during the war in 1864. Two of our most important political parties, the Social Democrats and the Radicals, originally believed that Denmark should not have a military at all.

After Denmark gave up its neutrality in 1949 and became a member of NATO, there was still conflict over defence. The Radicals were against NATO together with the Soviet communists in the DKP and the other left wing, which was strong back in the 1960s. Today, SF, which broke away from DKP in 1958, is involved in the defense agreements, as are the former pacifist parties the Social Democrats and the Radicals.

We are preparing for war

We are also ideologically prepared for the fact that war is a possibility. A few weeks ago, the Swedish Civil Defense Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin gave a speech at a conference that “there may be war in Sweden“. The rest of the speech was a long wake-up call to the Swedes to prepare for war in every possible way, followed by the military expression: “Get started!”

Sweden’s chief of defense Micael Bydén delivered the same message in all news broadcasts. Already in 2018, a small book was sent out in Sweden to all households in Sweden about preparing for war or crisis.

That’s not how the authorities talk to us in Denmark. Not yet, anyway. It was back in January 1962 that Prime Minister Viggo Kampmann was the sender of the brochure distributed to households “If the war comes”. There has not been a new one, as in Sweden.

Hackers and green men

But isn’t it really quite reasonable to prepare for what might happen if the war or crisis comes?

Because the enemy will probably not come with paratroopers and landing craft, but with little green men or men behind screens trying to destabilize our society.

Recently, Copenhagen Airport’s website was taken down by a Russian hacker group. The same was, for example, Thisted Municipality, Movia, Your Public Transport (DOT) and Bornholm Airport. In Sweden, IT systems in store chains such as Coop has been hijacked by hackers, so stores have been closed for weeks.

Can you pay if the crisis comes?

One of the societal functions that is exposed is our payment systems. A society without electronic payment is not a functioning society in the year 2024.

We could see that this is something that also worries the authorities in Denmark in the autumn, when the National Bank came out with its new policy for cash called “The cash of the future”. Before the Ukraine war, most people expected that Denmark would become virtually cashless, the sooner better. But that did not happen. “There is a need for cash in Denmark – also in the future,” the National Bank now states.

Gold: historically safe in war and crisis

One way to make sure that you always have the ability to pay yourself in case of war or crisis is to have access to physical gold. Physical gold does not depend on payment systems, the internet or electricity. Physical gold cannot be copied. Physical gold has a high price per gram, so large values do not add up to much. Physical gold is easily tradable as everyone knows the value of gold.

And gold has always been used in times of unrest. When the enemy was on the way, they buried their gold. It has been like this for well over 1,000 years here in Denmark. Even up to our time, gold has been used. Many of the Danish Jews who saved their lives in October 1943 by fleeing in boats across the Øresund and Kattegat to Sweden paid for the journey in gold.

Gold has worked before. Now there is reason to consider acquiring enough gold to get by in a crisis situation.
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