In February, I visited Greenland.

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In Nuuk, people spoke to me about what they called the “psychological terror” of the preceding weeks, as Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to take control of their country.

One story has stayed with me. Shortly before I arrived, Nuuk suffered a city-wide power cut. It was caused by a transmission failure in severe weather, but that was not how many people initially experienced it. Only weeks earlier, American forces had seized Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela after Caracas was plunged into darkness. In Greenland, already subjected to weeks of threats from Washington, the resemblance was enough to cause genuine alarm.

People told me they had moved money out of their bank accounts because they feared what an invasion might mean for their savings. Denmark was preparing for contingencies that would once have seemed inconceivable between NATO allies.

It is difficult to read the agreement signed this week by the United States, Denmark and Greenland without remembering that atmosphere.

Trump has retreated a very long way from his original position. Greenland remains outside American sovereignty. Danish sovereignty, Greenlandic territorial integrity and the Greenlandic people’s right to self-determination are all expressly reaffirmed. This is not the Greenland of the maps Trump shared beneath the Stars and Stripes, or the territory he insisted America would acquire “one way or the other”.

Read alongside the 1951 Defence of Greenland Agreement, though, the new settlement is much more than diplomatic housekeeping.

America already possessed extensive military rights in Greenland. It now has an agreement explicitly linking the territory to........

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