Opinion | Greenland Navigates the New World Order

It’s hard to avoid America these days in Greenland.In downtown Nuuk, the capital, an electronic news ticker streams near-constant updates on the Trump administration’s fixation on acquiring this Danish territory.

Even before retaking office in January, Donald Trump called owning the island “an absolute necessity” for U.S.security, and the push has steadily intensified.

A few days before Vice President JD Vance made a hasty visit last month, two American Hercules airplanes emerged over the city.The pair droned across a nearby mountain and over a neighborhood in the commercial port.

Then, just as quickly, they were gone.For decades, Greenland’s primary political goal has been greater independence from Denmark, which colonized the island for over 200 years.Most Greenlanders have no interest in being American, but that doesn’t mean Mr.

Trump’s volley of threats to take over the territory is easy to ignore.Greenland, which has largely governed itself since 2009, still relies on Denmark for security, foreign policy and a substantial chunk of money, among other things.

That helps with the expensive task of caring for a population of over 56,000 scattered around the perimeter of the world’s largest island.Since World War II, the free world has organized itself around American leadership and all that entails, including free trade, a nuclear security umbrella and the occasional ill-considered war.The sudden changes wrought by President Trump, notably his gamble that America’s economic and military might is more powerful than its position atop a globalized world, has forced many countries to reconsider their bedrock alliances.

Do they want to stay allied with an unpredictable America? A resource-hungry China? Or build something entirely new?How the global reassessment plays out will go a long way toward telling us, as the unipolar 20th century slips away, who will be the dominant power — or powers — of the 21st century.So far, the portents aren’t...