Claus Hjort Frederiksen underestimated the threat from Russia: "We were so naive, that we dismissed it."

When Claus Hjort Frederiksen (V) received the keys to the Ministry of Defense from his party colleague Peter Christensen (V), a warning followed.

"Here are the soldiers from the rainy quarters, whom you know so well. They are counting on you," it sounded from Peter Christensen to Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

As finance minister twice from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2015 to 2016, Claus Hjort Frederiksen played a decisive role in the savings that the Defense was subjected to throughout the 2010s.

But in November 2016, the stage was turned.

Now it was Claus Hjort Frederiksen who was to join the sitting finance minister in providing funding for the defense of Denmark.

And it was needed.

The world was undergoing many changes when Claus Hjort Frederiksen was appointed defense minister at the end of 2016.

Russian President Putin had annexed Crimea two years earlier, and among Denmark's closest allies in the United States, a businessman and reality TV star from New York with a strongly nationalist policy was poised to win the presidential election.

In Denmark, however, one had relied on an expeditionary defense for years, which was designed to fight wars far from Denmark's borders. At the same time, changing political majorities in the budget for the Defense were reduced to a point where in 2015 only 1.1% of GDP was spent on Defense.

After two ministerial changes in the Ministry of Defense, Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (V) sent his finance minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen to the Ministry of Defense in the hope that he could negotiate a broad defense agreement that could rearm the Danish defense to the changing world order.

Now the ambition was that Denmark would again have a defense that could defend its own borders.

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We were naive

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In a new article series, Berlingske brings together a series of prominent people in and around the Defense in the hope of better understanding the challenges that the Defense faces today.

For Claus Hjort Frederiksen's case, it was about turning the thinking of the Defense as a defense that plays best on the offensive. About a slow hunt for a NATO funding target of two percent of GDP, which seemed out of reach. And about a naive approach to the threat from Russia.

Today, Claus Hjort Frederiksen admits that they slept on the political ball when Russia took parts of Georgia in 2008.

"The big political mistake we made was that we just shrugged our shoulders when Russia took parts of Georgia in 2008. Despite the fact that one could read in Putin's speeches and writings that his goal was to restore the old Soviet Union."

"First in 2014, when he invaded Crimea, we began to understand that it was a completely different and much more dangerous game that was in play," says Claus Hjort Frederiksen, when Berlingske meets him at home in Humlebæk.

Raised for Claus Hjort Frederiksen was clear: In 2017, a defense agreement had to be reached that significantly increased investments in the Defense.

The former finance minister found indeed 12.8 billion kroner for the Defense over a five-year period, but when the account was settled at the end of Claus Hjort Frederiksen's defense agreement, it was found that the Defense was underfunded by 27 billion kroner.

A shortcoming that had accumulated over a long period of time.

Claus Hjort Frederiksen, did you allocate enough money at the time to correct the savings that you yourself implemented as finance minister?

"No, that was not done. Things would have looked very different today if we had understood the political situation as we see it today."

But was your defense agreement also underfunded in relation to what you wanted in terms of rearmament?

"We would have liked to reach the two percent of GNP, but we had to face reality, and reality in the Folketing was that it was a feat to bring it up to 1.5 percent and break the spending trend that had been in place for years," says Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

"Seen from the perspective of the past, we should have invested much more in 2018. But we went completely wrong in Putin's town. Nothing was hidden from us – he has written books about it, he has given speeches about it, that he wants to restore a Russian empire. But we were so naive that we ignored it."

Did you know it well. So it's not a matter of a lack of will to invest?

"Back then, defense and welfare were seen as opposites. We were blinded by ... well, I don't know how I should say it. When one sat and looked at NATO's combined forces, we were clearly much stronger than Russia. And Russia's economy was at the time somewhere between Holland and Spain. We had no imagination to imagine what the Russians were willing to do."

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Bramsen's negligence

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Claus Hjort Frederiksen insists that much would have looked better for the Danish defense today if more of the initiatives that he was involved in approving on paper in the defense agreement from 2018 had actually become a reality in reality.

Ground-based air defense, anti-submarine warfare, and the purchase of new combat aircraft are just a few of the initiatives from the defense agreement in 2018 that are still causing problems today.

According to Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the finger points in one direction when the talk turns to responsibility.

"What I consider the Defense's greatest disaster was that Trine Bramsen (S) fired the managing director without replacing him," he says.

It was a standing joke during Claus Hjort Frederiksen's time as finance minister that there were two places in central administration where even the sharpest auditor in the Ministry of Finance could not see how the money flowed through the organization.

One was the Police. The other was the Defense.

Therefore, Claus Hjort Frederiksen appointed Per Pugholm Olsen – today head of the Ministry of Defense's Material and Procurement Agency (FMI) – to manage the economy in the Ministry of Defense.

But on the basis of a crippling criticism from the State Auditors and the Auditor General, which had found evidence of accounting fraud in the Ministry of Defense's Real Estate Agency, Trine Bramsen rightly chose to fire Per Pugholm Olsen when she took office after Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

"We had a super competent managing director who knew 100 percent where the money was spent and where we had to find money. When one fires him, who is supposed to ensure that the economy is maintained, and does not replace him with something else, then the money disappears."

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The American planes

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Both ground-based air defense and anti-submarine warfare are also discussion topics around the negotiating table in the Ministry of Defense anno 2025, but Claus Hjort Frederiksen and his predecessor, Peter Christensen, managed to secure support for the purchase of 27 F-35 combat aircraft from American Lockheed Martin.

Planes, which, incidentally, first took to the wings on April 1 of this year.

And in the nine years that have passed since the purchase of the American combat aircraft, there has been a discussion about the wisdom of putting all one's combat aircraft in an unregulated American president's basket.

What do you think about the purchase today?

"It is an eminently excellent plane, which is more than just a flying machine that can drop bombs," says Claus Hjort Frederiksen.

If you were defense minister today, would you still buy F-35 planes?

"I would still stick with F-35, but I am not blind to the discussion about whether the Americans can close the warm water."

Do you think we should consider buying an alternative to F-35?

"Yes, if Trump continues in the way he is doing today."

Berlingske has presented Claus Hjort Frederiksen's criticism to Trine Bramsen. She cannot recognize the criticism.

"The dismissal came on top of a huge scandal, and it did not mean that the economic function was not performed. It was just performed by a very strong economic chief," says Trine Bramsen.

"If it is true that, as Claus Hjort Frederiksen says, that there is an employee who alone has responsibility for the entire implementation of the defense agreement, then it would probably look chaotic if that person was hit by a falling stone."

Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.