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Which of these are actually new things that the US was not allowed to do before? Expanding their military presence is something the US could already do. And the presence they had was already permanent. So that is two out of three of your claimed "substantial differences" that seem not so different after all. As for the third, I am not sure that really matters. Unless it allows the US to veto foreign companies, it doesn't prevent the Danes from doing anything they would have actually done in the first place. We would need the explicit details of the deal in order to determine if there is actually anything new here.
Were all of these in writing as the official agreement? Or just de-facto true? It could be that this is Greenland giving us permission to do what we already intended to do in a way that staves off international complaints and lets them save face.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/den001.asp#art2para3M
This is the 1951 agreement. As far as I can tell, it gives America the ability to build bases on Greenland and treat them as under American jurisdiction. There seems to be no upper bound on bases or personnel, as long as the areas in question are used for military purposes only and don't interfere with the civilians.
This is why Trump's demands last year seemed so strange. There was no need for a takeover if the goal was to simply defend the place from foreign powers. He could have just sent troops there and rebuild the existing bases from the cold war, or build new bases as needed.
I'd... caution that agreement was more theoretical than practical. Look at the aftermath of the 1968 Thule crash for an example of the asterisks on it.
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As much as I'm against the Iran war, it showed there was nothing strange about that at all. Several allied countries refusing to allow American bases on their territory to participate in the assault, clearly shows that a lack sovereignty over the territory where your bases are placed is a huge strategic disadvantage.
Sovereign states have the obligation to prevent their territory being used to attack states they are not at war with. If the deal preserves Danish sovereignty (and both sides have said that it does) then it de jure requires Danish permission for the US to attack third countries out of Greenland. (As all other similar treaties with basing rights do). De facto the US could always ask for forgiveness and not permission, although that is true now anyway.
Huh? I'm pretty sure that the European countries that did permit the use of their bases didn't declare war on Iran.
Whether this deal solves the problem is another question. My point is that contrary to what many people said, there's absolutely nothing strange about Trump / the US wanting sovereign control over Greenland, and "but you're already allowed to build bases" is a terrible argument. If you're actually right about states having a positive obligation to prevent the use of bases on their territory in cases like this, it only strengthens my argument.
Nor did the United States - actual declarations of war are out of fashion nowadays.
The serious point is "Did European and Middle Eastern countries which permitted use of bases on their territory to attack Iran think that this was an act of war?" In the case of the UK, the answer is "Yes" - we didn't allow US use of our bases until we felt there was an appropriate casus belli. (Within the region, Iran considered all countries hosting US bases to be fair game even if the bases were not actively being used to attack Iran, and Starmer announced that this constituted Iran attacking neutral countries allowing the British to act in collective self-defence).
Obviously this is cant and countries were making decisions based on politics, just as a decision about whether America is able to use Greenland to attack third countries in the 2030 War of the Big Stupid will depend on politics and not the text of the treaty.
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