Abstract
Similar to other European countries, Denmark has been forced to look critically at its national security strategies and the military and civilian capabilities serving those strategies because of the concerns about the war in Ukraine, a more aggressive Russia and its partnership with China, and a general perception of living in a new era defined by a tougher geopolitical and economic landscape worldwide. This chapter explores the Danish attempts to restructure national security and territorial defence, spurred by an initiated major increase in defence spending and a growing public consciousness of crises in everyday life and discourse. It shows how societal security and total defence have evolved along two distinct development tracks, resulting in the absence of a unified concept of comprehensive national defence that integrates both military and non-military means. While societal security and total defence concepts have co-existed and interacted in other Scandinavian countries, their interrelationship in the Danish context remains unclear. Instead, there is a co-existence of various security and defence concepts and a ‘foggy’ conceptual battlefield where different actors and agendas fight for meaning-making as highlighted in this chapter.