Denmark

Denmark: Low Debt, High Defense Spending Ratio, Top-Tier Governance Scores

Denmark's economy totaled $424.52 billion in 2024, per the World Bank's WDI figures, with GDP per capita of $71,026 — the highest in this briefing series — and a population of 5.98 million the same year, the smallest population in this set. Government debt is projected at 27.4 percent of GDP in 2026, per the IMF's World Economic Outlook, among the lowest debt ratios reviewed here. Reserves stood at $100.9 billion in 2025, per the IMF's International Financial Statistics, close to a quarter of the country's 2024 GDP figure.

Military Capacity

Military spending reached $14.95 billion in 2025, equal to 3.253 percent of GDP, per SIPRI's 2025 figures — the highest spending-to-GDP ratio of any country in this briefing series. SIPRI's ratio is calculated against its own GDP series, not the World Bank's $424.52 billion figure cited above, and the two should not be combined. Active personnel numbered just 15,000 in 2022, per the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset, giving Denmark a composite index of national capability (CINC) of 0.0009 for that year — the smallest force size and capability index in this series despite the high spending ratio, underscoring that Denmark's defense spending is weighted toward a well-funded but numerically small force rather than mass personnel.

Governance

V-Dem's 2025 figures (v15) score Denmark's electoral democracy at 0.913 and liberal democracy at 0.884, with a state-capacity score of 0.997 — the highest governance scores of any country in this briefing series across all three measures, with only a narrow 0.03-point gap between the electoral and liberal democracy indices.

Energy

Denmark consumed 0.71 exajoules of primary energy in 2024 and generated 33.3 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, per Our World in Data — the smallest energy-consumption figure among the European states in this series. Oil production was 34.4 TWh and gas production 18.4 TWh, both for 2024, together roughly 1.6 times the country's own electricity generation figure. The supplied figures do not indicate how much of that output is consumed domestically versus exported, and no data on renewable generation was included despite Denmark's high per-capita income and top governance scores noted above.

Sources: World Bank WDI; IMF WEO; IMF IFS; SIPRI Milex; COW NMC; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy)