#1 How Putin and Trump are afraid of us - with Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen

Denmark is facing the largest rearmament in recent times, with DKK 50 billion to be invested in defense over the next two years. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's message is clear: "Buy, buy, buy" - there is no time for academic investigations.

But Sigge Winther defies this in the first episode of INVI's new podcast KOMPAS, when he and war professor Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen dive deep into the theories, history and even take a trip into the world of sci-fi to find out how we navigate in a time of Putin in the East, Trump in the West and a future characterized by unpredictability.

Never drink stagnant theories

"Theories like to describe what stands still. But the world is not standing still right now," the war professor begins his analysis. 

The world is changing fast, the threat landscape is shifting, while our understanding frameworks and public conversation lags behind.

 This is not just a media problem, but a political and cultural issue. When politicians use pseudo-politics to avoid the hard questions, and when citizens turn off the news because the world situation seems overwhelming, we end up running away from what actually demands our attention. It's a sign of a wider trend in society - where the complex gives way to the banal, and the necessary drowns in the easily communicable, the more appetizing.

Defense suffers from the same pattern. It is still structured in silos that make sense in old doctrines, but not in a world where threats are hybrid and transnational. The Danish defense cannot solve tomorrow's problems with yesterday's logic. 

More than scandals and worn-out barracks 

Of course, the condition of the barracks is important and it's fair to expect decent conditions for those who put their lives on the line. Critical bites from journalists are also to be expected and fair when previous defense procurements have been bumpy to say the least. But as Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen emphasizes, we must not let scandals and worn-out barracks become the only images of the Armed Forces.

The risk is that the debate on defense is reduced to a question of buildings and rainwater, rather than asking the necessary questions about what the Armed Forces should actually be able to do. What threats should we be prepared to counter, and how do we create a credible deterrence strategy that both friends and enemies take seriously?

Defense can't just be painted into credibility - it must be built through action, analysis and open conversation. A defense that even Putin and Trump will think twice before challenging.

Listen to KOMPAS and hear how we are building a defense that can last into the future.