After months of extraordinary friction with a NATO ally, the United States and Denmark have arrived at a diplomatic arrangement that expands American military access to Greenland without altering the island's sovereignty. What began as an unconventional and unsettling threat — a superpower openly contemplating the forced acquisition of a democratic partner's territory — has resolved into something more familiar: a negotiated agreement shaped by the realities of Arctic competition. The deal reflects a broader truth about this era of great power rivalry, in which geography is once again destiny,