Think about it. Heads of government do not normally reveal the texts of private communications from other heads of state. Yet that is what Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway did Sunday, on the first weekend of the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the international press would have no difficulty finding appalled foreign leaders to comment.

You could think of this as a hostile act of a statesman appalled that the American head of government does not know that the government of Norway does not decide who gets the Nobel Peace Prize. It is probably better to think of it as an intervention, by a sympathetic observer who has noticed that Donald Trump backs down from untenable positions in response to ructions in political and financial markets.

Which is what Trump has done between the publication of his letter on Sunday and his speech at Davos on Wednesday. On Sunday, he seemed to be threatening war with Denmark, and European commentators, not without reason, lamented that he was risking breaking up the NATO alliance out of pique of not being awarded a prize by a committee that was never going to honor a non-leftist American president.

Proof of which was the granting of that prize to Barack Obama in 2009 for what even Obama himself admitted was for no tangible accomplishment. And Trump has never forgotten the ridicule heaped on him by Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, ridicule that led directly to that ride down the Trump Tower escalator four years later.

Actually, Trump has some valid points on Greenland. It sits astride missile, drone and air transport routes between North America and western Russia and eastern Europe. The United States would have even more flexibility than it does under current agreements with Denmark if it were to become U.S. territory. That’s one reason the U.S. holds on to Guam in the west Pacific and has spent billions upgrading military facilities there.

All that said, Trump’s usual negotiating technique of starting off with extravagant demands was, in the careful words of social scientist Charles Murray, “next-level crazy.” Denmark has been an active ally of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq, has increased its rate of defense spending above levels Trump demanded, and has adopted immigration policies in line with Trump’s advocacy.

With Denmark as with Canada, as with fellow Republicans in Georgia and other states, Trump’s obnoxious maximalist demands have alienated him from sympathy and empowered the forces against him. Other leaders have figured out that he requires gushers of praise to permeate every dialogue, and they’re probably ready with encomiums for his avowals in his Davos speech that he won’t use violence to obtain Greenland.