How did the Western Alliance come to a crisis over Greenland, of all places — and, more important, how can it end productively?

President Trump has learned perhaps too well that Europe’s political elites — the current governments in Britain and France, the dominant forces in the European Union and the left-leaning establishments across the continent — won’t do a damned thing when it comes to hard power unless their noses are rubbed in the need.

It took him nearly a decade of threatening to abandon NATO to get most member nations to start ponying up for defense at anything like necessary levels.

It took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to make them even think of reconsidering their Moscow-dependent (and economically suicidal) energy policies — don’t forget how the Germans literally laughed off Trump’s 2018 UN warning of the utter foolishness of becoming “totally dependent on Russian energy.”

Even now, they’re continuing to sell out their countries to China on a host of fronts.

And they (as well as America’s left-leaning political and policy elites) have been utterly oblivious to Beijing and Moscow’s buildup of influence in Greenland — which is of huge strategic importance in controlling the Arctic and North Atlantic, in space-related defense issues, and in the competition to secure access to rare-earth minerals key to high-tech advances.

It’s thus understandable that he’s come to think the only certain way to secure the island for vital US interests is for it to become an American territory: Whatever promises the Europeans make now, they might quietly renege on just a few years later — and some future Democrat in the White House might let it pass.

Don’t forget how readily the Europeans and President Barack Obama acquiesced to Vladimir Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine, seizing Crimea and other territories in the east in 2014. (Again: The Germans laughed at Trump four years after that.)

And no matter that Denmark’s claim to Greenland rests on the ur-colonialist exploits of Erik the Red a millennium ago.

None of this makes Trump’s talk of invasion and imposition of tariffs wise: It’s plainly gotten many European backs up — furious at the reminders of how impotent they’ve chosen to become.

Left-wing elected leaders, meanwhile, see how their Canadian comrades jiu-jitsued public resentment of Trumpian bombast to win yet another election last year despite the decade-long stagnation produced by Justin Trudeau.

Most of their media already routinely paint him as a fascist buffoon day in and day out; his apocalyptic-seeming talk on Greenland plays right into that lazy narrative, which helps secure the elites’ continued power.

Yet the fact remains: Nothing is more suicidal for Europe now than to allow ever more investment and economic control from China, which will happily turn the continent into a de-facto satrapy by playing to its elites’ self-regarding delusions until it’s too late.

What’s needed now is for Washington and Europe to cut some deal — for example, recognition of US predominance in Greenland in exchange for extension of the Golden Dome defense system to cover all EU territory, or perhaps a share in the mining profits over 50 years.

Let the Europeans save face and strengthen the alliance while securing Greenland, in other words.

It needn’t center on Golden Dome or mining, of course: The point is that leaders of allied nations should be putting their own countries’ best interests first, and finding a win-win compromise — not posturing for some trivial short-term win that means long-term victory for the enemies of freedom.