The 21st century war on border gore has begun
And Big Cartography stands to win bigly
You have to laugh, at least nervously. What amount of ink, pixels and jaw-jaw have we seen defending the proposition that big countries do not annex little countries, as delicious as they look? A good 80 years’ worth. And in the end, all it took was some spray-tanned, balding New York real estate mogul to topple the whole thing over. Great power politics is so back, and they are determined to stamp out border gore.
There were many warning signs. In his first presidential term Donald Trump was fond of musing about territorial expansion, like a teenager locked in his bedroom playing Europa Universalis. And while Trump is unlikely to be a regular on r/MapPorn, he would surely appreciate the charms of Risk, which has an ethos not dissimilar to The Art of the Deal. With the US’s political borders stretched neatly over the whole of North America, the president could finally claim that five unit per turn bonus.
Plans are already afoot to make this happen, starting with renaming the Gulf of Mexico to a more patriotic alternative. That’s before Trump launches a low-key invasion of Mexico, ostensibly to deal with the countries’ drug cartels. (They always said he was the second coming of Andrew Jackson.) Then you have the proposal to buy Greenland, rejected by both Greenlanders and their Danish guardians. Meanwhile Canada has been designated as a potential 51st state and threatened with tariffs, much to the annoyance of the Canuck ice hockey team. It’s like the 19th century never ended!
This is all very funny to European observers, who at least have an ocean between us and Trumpland. Frankly this is the low status behaviour we’ve always expected of Americans, the kind of thing that we’ve been above for years, having voluntarily relinquished our empires out of pure heart, and not because we were powerless to resist US cajoling after feeding our economies and fighting-age men into a German meat grinder.
The humour is nonetheless rather blackened by the prospect of Russia’s 1st Guards Tank Army rolling into Paris in the coming decade. In the past you might have expected America to nuke Moscow if it attempted such a thing (probably wrongly, as the Ukrainians will tell you). But any doubt has been eliminated by the appearance of hillbilly, mascara model and US vice president JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference last week. “You suck, and you’re all cheapskates,” was the gist of his speech, which complained about mass migration, censorship, and Europe’s habit of re-running elections when the voters make a mistake.
The squiffiness of some of these details raises the awkward possibility Vance’s speech had been fed through ChatGPT, or otherwise proofed by somebody who gets their news from Twitter. (It is unclear which of these is more embarrassing.) But while Vance isn’t earning points for precision, it’s hard to argue he’s all wrong. Europe has no solution to mass migration unwanted by current residents, other that calling for more restrictions on social media. As for his most salient point, that Europe has not been paying its security bills, Vance is completely correct.
As often in politics, the finances are more important than the policy differences. The fact is that America is no longer willing to pick up the tab for our continent’s security. As Vance said, “it’s important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defence”. That would be worrying in any event, and it’s an even more acute problem given that Russia currently holds about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory.
Give it a year or two and that could be former Ukrainian territory, the US having already suggested that land concessions are on the table in its talks with Russia. Meanwhile in the Middle East, Trump is already seeding his post-presidential project of Gaz-a-Lago, which entails emptying Gaza of Palestinians for redevelopment. Clearly this is insane, though it makes the potential for further redrawing of borders in that area of the world seem much likelier. White men drawing new lines in the sand, a faux pas for decades, is back. Big Cartography and 23rd century strategy game developers are rejoicing. Like I said, it’s like the 19th century never ended.