By David Williams
The morning on arrival at the summit began with coffee and a curious feeling that something was missing.
I couldn't put my finger on it at first. The annual gathering of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation at the Royal Danish Playhouse still carried all the outward signs of importance. There were police everywhere just outside the venue. Vans. Armed officers. Security barriers. One entered the summit through two layers of checks and watchful eyes, as if stepping into a fortified zone rather than a conference on democratic values.
But once inside, the atmosphere felt thinner than in previous years.
Maybe it was imagination. Conferences are strange things and memory romanticises them. Still, the crowd seemed less distinguished somehow, less energetic, less convinced of its own importance. I stood next to a high-ranking European military officer at security last year. This year it was a fellow journalist.
Even the little things hinted at contraction. The robust ecosystem of free conference merchandise had withered. The robust notebooks were there, but only just, scattered sparsely across tables in side rooms. The pens had practically disappeared. Rumour had it you could still get one from the service centre if you asked, though by midday the pens themselves had begun to feel symbolic.
There was less of everything, apart from the food, which was gourmet-excellent... decadent even!
The guest list remained impressive on paper. Acting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen appeared animated during her appearances, relaxed almost to the point of theatrical lounging at times, though there was also something weary about her whole performance. Not faint exactly. More like the stale air of permanent crisis management.
Elsewhere, later in the day, in one of the side meetings, was John Bolton, a man whose political era has clearly passed. Yet the strange thing about 2026 is that Bolton, once seen as the embodiment of American hawkishness, now comes across as almost measured when compared with the Trumpist forces he would describe, which made his audience laugh, albeit, nervously. He still seemed every inch the dyed-in-the-wool warmonger, but beside the newer breed of political extremism, he sounded oddly sensible.
Then came the familiar procession of international names. Chrystia Freeland. Taro Kono. Tobias Billström. Veterans of governments, foreign ministries and policy circles, all moving through the building with that particular air former politicians possess, half-influential and half-ghostly.
At one point during the day, a rather cruel thought entered my mind. The summit had begun to resemble an elephant’s graveyard for political careers. A dignified resting place where yesterday’s important people gathered to continue speaking the language of relevance long after the centre of gravity had moved elsewhere.
Perhaps that is unfair.
Still, one could not shake the feeling that everyone was performing certainty rather than possessing it. Was Mette Frederiksen herself signalling something about her future? Maybe I was imagining it. Politics now encourages overinterpretation.
Meanwhile, Greenland's Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen looked secure enough in office, as he spoke from the stage, though whether that translated into genuine influence was another matter entirely.
And throughout the day, there was war. Endless war talk.
Not war discussed as failure or horror, but war discussed administratively. Panels about defence spending. Rearmament. Strategic readiness. Procurement. The language was polished and managerial, but the message underneath remained the same. More weapons. More military investment. More preparation.
It could hardly have been said to a more receptive audience. Defence industry people moved comfortably through the summit alongside strategists, security experts and Atlanticist policy professionals. The entire thing carried a faintly sinister undertone by afternoon.
There were many, many Ukrainians present. Some appeared to be wearing traditional national dress, though perhaps that is simply what goes for modern fashion in Ukraine now. I genuinely could not tell. At least two attendees wore battle dress.
Everywhere one looked, there were symbols, colours, flags, gestures of identity and belonging, not just Ukrainian, Taiwanese, Iranian, I found myself longing for a Danish flag ...and I'm British
Then came the final film screening.
The summit concluded with “SHE”, a documentary novel from the VARTA Project. WARNING: Now I should be careful here. Years ago, I studied Nazi propaganda films for an academic thesis, specifically the use of symbolism, nationalist imagery, costumes, spiritual mythmaking and the creation of imagined communities through cinema. Once you study propaganda seriously, certain visual languages become impossible not to notice.
And unfortunately, this film touched many of those same nerves. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, ALL OF THEM!
There were archetypes everywhere. National suffering elevated into something sacred. Identity recast as moral purity. Beneath it all lay the familiar suggestion of a noble collective self standing against a darkened and dehumanised other. I say this carefully and without malice. I grew up alongside the Ukrainian diaspora in Britain, and my closest friend since childhood is Ukrainian. This is not an attack on the people or their suffering. But propaganda techniques belong to no single ideology or nation. The emotional language of mythmaking, martyrdom and collective identity reappears throughout history whenever nationalism turns itself into theatre.
What made it even worse was that the film simply was not very good.
Yet when the lights came on, the audience applauded dutifully as though we had just witnessed the premiere of Gone with the Wind. We had not.
Afterwards, our host, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, came onto the stage before an auditorium now marked by noticeable empty seats. To give a final address and announce that his longtime associate at the Alliance, smartly dressed in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, would be departing.
A career move, perhaps. Or maybe something else. One could not entirely avoid the image of people quietly leaving a ship once they sense the water rising.
But conferences make cynics of everyone by the end of the day.
I stayed for dinner. Even there, the mood felt off. Previous summits had carried a kind of forced cosmopolitan energy. People mingled across tables, eager to network, eager to perform international fellowship. This time, the room felt strangely fragmented. Small cliques stayed together. Conversations remained sealed off from one another.
Eventually, I finished my final black coffee beside the remains of an uncomplicated chocolate dessert and decided to leave.
Outside the venue, the police were still standing guard in Copenhagen in the early evening.
As I passed one officer, I thanked him as I always have done each year that I have attended. He smiled back with obvious pride. It was probably the warmest interaction of the entire day.
But as I walked away, one final thought strayed across my mind.
Was he guarding us from the people outside?
Or guarding the people outside from us?