NATO Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT) French Adm. Pierre Vandier, center, presents the Task Force X-Baltic, a multidomain maritime military project, to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron during a NATO summit at The Hague, Netherlands, in June 2025. AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Norway has more than doubled its spending on defense in a little more than a year. Denmark has implemented mandatory conscription for women. And Sweden, the newest NATO member, also has indicated it will quicken its rearmament pace. All three Nordic countries have the same impetus: a resurgent Russia.
“We must do more to secure our country and contribute to joint security with our NATO allies,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said shortly before the June 2025 NATO summit, according to the Barents Observer, a Norwegian newspaper. “The world has become more dangerous and unpredictable, and Europe must take a bigger responsibility for its own security.”
Norway plans to meet NATO’s new requirement of 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on defense while spending 1.5% on related infrastructure, a formula agreed to by most NATO members at the summit. In March 2024, Støre announced a defense spending increase to 2% of GDP. At the time, the influx of money for defense was seen as a historic push to rearm after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. A series of sabotage incidents at Norwegian air bases and radar installations, and provocatory behavior by Russia in the demilitarized and treaty-protected Svalbard Peninsula have elevated the Norwegian pulse on Russian aggression. “The threats from Russia are significant and enduring,” Norwegian Defence Minister Tore O. Sandvik told the Observer.
Denmark began mandatory conscription on July 1, 2025, for women aged 18 and over. Women currently comprise about 10% of the nearly 17,000-person force, according to The New York Times newspaper. Copenhagen, too, has ramped up defense spending with Parliament approving another increase in January. The decision to draft women comes as Denmark seeks to raise annual recruit levels by nearly 2,000 to 6,500. “The defense needs all the fighting power we can mobilize,” Gen. Michael W. Hyldgaard, Denmark’s chief of defence, said in a March statement when the change was announced, according to the Times. “This requires that we recruit from all over society.”
Although Denmark’s borders lie far from Russia, Danish leaders are concerned by the sabotage incidents and Russian activity in the Baltic Sea. They told the Times that they fear war spreading from Ukraine to engulf more of Europe. “I don’t think Danish politicians are fearing Russian tanks in Copenhagen tomorrow or anything like that, but it’s tied to fears that Russia could be a problem,” Mikkel Runge Olesen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told the Times. Anders Puck Nielsen, a military analyst at the Royal Danish Defense College, also told the newspaper, “There is a bigger concern now that the war in Ukraine might actually lead to a bigger war in Europe — so we need this sooner rather than later.”
In Sweden, Parliament reached what was called a “historic consensus” to hike defense spending to meet the NATO threshold. “In just a few years, Swedish defence appropriations have doubled and the next parliamentary term will continue to increase sharply. However, given the exceptional security policy situation in which we find ourselves today, we need to do more and we need to do it quickly. The Government, together with the Social Democrats, the Sweden Democrats, the Left Party, the Centre Party and the Green Party, has therefore reached an agreement,” a June 19 government news release stated.