Has the past few weeks’ dispute between the United States and its (former?) European allies over Greenland now been settled by the 21 January “Davos deal,” rapidly agreed after President Trump’s unhinged speech earlier that day? And does this mean that NATO is still alive, if not exactly hale and hearty? And by retreating on the threat to seize Greenland by force and forgoing additional tariffs on Europe, has Trump backed down—TACOed again, as many of Trump’s opponents are now gloating? Or is a more patient assessment in order?

In the days before the deal was struck, the general assessment of the upper American commentariat was that the president’s brain had finally broken. On Monday, Anne Applebaum wrote this from Warsaw: “Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him.” The same day, former US Secretary of Labor and UC Berkeley professor Robert Reich declared, “Trump is truly, tragically, frighteningly out of his mind.” On Tuesday, Tina Brown remarked, “[Trump’s] surreal gift is the ability to force the entire world to enter his mad, magical thinking and give it serious credence.”

All of which may tempt these observers and others to assume that the Davos deal has settled this particular crisis and that Trump’s manias will now be redirected elsewhere. In actuality, the Greenland issue is not remotely settled, but this fact is eluding most observers due to an incomplete accounting of the dramatis personae involved.

Why Greenland?