Six months ago this writer spent a week in Greenland.

Greenlanders were predictably opposed to becoming part of the US. They did not discount President Donald Trump’s adventurism. They hoped that the American leadership would drop its ambition to take them over. On that, the jury is still out.

While the immediate crisis on Greenland has been tempered, the issues around American ambitions there, and hence its leadership and values more generally, remain.

Greenland is about as far from Australia as it is possible to be. It is not in our strategic orbit. The world is not waiting for our policy perspective.

But on leaving Greenland last year, one niggling thought remained.

If American coercion of Greenlanders, Danes and the rest of NATO, continued – particularly if that coercion involved force – the position Australia took would reflect the sort of people we are.

We could not duck and weave. We would have to speak truth to power – and publicly. The issues are too big for discreet admonishment. Would we have the mettle?

Because if we did display mettle, we might be given the........

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