Manifest Destiny 2025

Quick takes on Donald Trump's four hemispheric ambitions

John Gast’s “American Progress” (1872) from Wikimedia. Donald Trump image by R.F. Graboyes (with A.I. assist).

Donald Trump has launched the reboot of Manifest Destiny—the 19th-century notion that an expanded United States was the natural order of things. Like his predecessors, he wishes to change the map of North America. The components of his vision range from silly to sublime.

A hundred and fifty years ago, the goal of Manifest Destiny was to push the nation’s boundaries and the trappings of modernity west to the Pacific. As noted in Wikipedia, the idea was “rooted in American exceptionalism and Romantic nationalism” and believed to be “both obvious (‘manifest’) and certain (‘destiny’).” Some harbored the broader ambition of annexing the entire Western Hemisphere. As my Inauguration Day post this month will discuss, that hemispheric vision still lingered at William McKinley’s 1901 Inauguration, along with some curious and amusing parallels with 2025.

Manifest Destiny’s iconic representation in art was John Gast’s 1872 allegorical painting “American Progress,” shown above (with one slight alteration). The principal personage in the original painting is “Columbia,” I can’t help but notice that she fits Donald Trump’s “type”—beautiful, blonde, outfitted in fashionable poolside attire, deeply interested in real estate and border control, and reeeeally tall.

Let’s take a quick look at the four pieces (so far) of Manifest Destiny 2025.

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NO, CANADA

In several social media posts, President-elect Trump referred to “the Great State of Canada” (or “the 51st state”) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau. It’s a nonsensical idea, and I suspect Trump knows it’s a nonsensical idea. The president-elect likely raised the idea for four reasons:

• To give the nettlesome prime minister a diplomatic swirly. If doing so contributed to Trudeau’s downfall, then Trump’s trolling constituted a Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.

• To distract the legacy media, for whom the absurdity of annexing Canada is an irresistible shiny, rotating object. If they’re focused on Canada, journalists lack sufficient bandwidth and attention span to focus, as well, on Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, or Tulsi Gabbard.

• To intimidate and disorient Canadian authorities prior to tariff negotiations. These functionaries haven’t sufficient bandwidth or attention span to deal with tariff minutiae while journalists badger them about Trump’s irredentist impulses.

• Because he can.

For the foreseeable future, Canada should never become part of the United States for the following reasons:

• Canada’s voting-age population is about as large as California’s (and just as statist), and its per capita income is almost exactly as small as Mississippi’s. Erase the border, and welfare dollars would rush northward with the hydrological power of the tide rushing into the Bay of Fundy.

• However much you like Canadians—and they are likeable—they did elect Justin Trudeau as prime minister for nine years.

• Canada’s 10 provinces and 3 territories have some splendid flags, and it would be a shame to discard them in favor of the Great State of Canada’s lone Maple Leaf flag (which is a nice flag, however).

• Canada has a really fine national anthem, and it would be sorely missed at sporting events. I have repetitively hummed it involuntarily for most of my life. Here’s a version I’ve always liked (in French and English); and the video also shows those nice provincial flags.

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THE GULF OF MEXICO

Trump would also like to replace the name, “Gulf of Mexico,” with “Gulf of America.” Bad idea for several reasons:

• This would be one of those transitory name-changes, destined for reversal at the earliest opportune moment—like Cape Kennedy, Leningrad, and Zaire. The name “Gulf of Mexico” has been around for around four centuries—before anyone ever imagined a country called “Mexico.”

• “The Gulf of Mexico” has a poetic quality about it—iambic trimeter, to be specific. the-GULF of-MEX i-CO. (Well, some purists might question the stress on the last syllable, but I don’t care about such people.) “The Gulf of America” has a rhythm that sounds as if it suffers a flat tire at the end. the-GULF of-a-MER-i-ca. BLUMP-bluh-BLUMP-BLUMP-BLUMP.

• Changing the name would screw up a lot of songs and other literary works, including “The Gulf of Mexico,” by Clint Black. (A trip to Spotify shows LOADS of songs about the Gulf of Mexico.) … Oh, and Clint Black was a 2009 contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

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A MAN, A PLAN, A CANAL—PANAMA!

Heading south from Canada and sailing out of the Gulf of Mexico into the Caribbean, we finally get into a serious policy discussion. Panama and Jimmy Carter’s administration renegotiated the terms of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, which gave control of the Panama Canal to the U.S. As a result, the 1903 treaty was superseded by the Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977. The Canal Zone was eliminated, and control over the Panama Canal was transferred to Panama.

Nearly half a century later, one can still debate whether a turnover was or was not a good idea. But one can also argue that, as in so many things, the Carter Administration negotiated poorly, and that the U.S. today has grounds for renegotiating once again. Among other issues, China’s ambitions with respect to the Canal pose potentially serious risks for American commerce and defense.

I don’t imagine the U.S. will resume control of the Canal, but a new treaty may be in order. I presume that Trump’s arguably over-the-top bluster on the subject is an opening volley toward a defensible goal.

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FROM CALIFORNIA, TO THE GREENLAND ISLAND

Greenland map from Wikimedia.

Greenland is the most serious component of Trump’s flirtation with Manifest Destiny. I’m not arguing here that the United States should purchase Greenland. I will suggest that there are compelling reasons to at least consider the possibility. It’s a long discussion for another day, so I’ll simply offer some basic thoughts here:

The island’s geographic location gives it immense strategic importance in any future military conflicts—hot or cold—between the West and Russia or China. The island is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which has no capacity to defend the island militarily. Greenland’s population is a little over 50,000 and, similarly, has no capability of self-defense. The U.S. has had a military presence on the island since World War II—to the benefit of Greenland and of the West in general.

The idea of absorbing Greenland into the United States goes back at least as far as 1867, when Secretary of State William Seward investigated the possibility of purchasing the island from Denmark at the same time he was negotiating with Russia to purchase Alaska. After World War II, the Truman Administration quietly floated the possibility again with the Danish government. (Thirty years earlier, the U.S. had purchased the western Virgin Islands from Denmark.) Since the early 1950s, Greenland has edged away, step by step, from its ancient connections with Denmark.

After Trump restated his interest in the island, the Premier of Greenland, Múte B. Egede, called for outright independence of Greenland from Denmark. He stated that he opposed the idea of joining the United States, but apparently, a considerable number of his constituents feel otherwise. I can easily imagine a vote among Greenlanders at some point in the future. Certainly, the United States has model legal structures for Greenlanders to contemplate: the territorial governments of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Marianas, and American Samoa; Native American reservations; Alaskan Native Corporations.

If these discussions go any farther, it’s easy to imagine monetary arrangements. Depending on how you count it, Greenland’s total annual GDP is somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion. Imagine offering the citizens of an independent Greenland, say, 10 or 15 times that amount—the equivalent of 10 to 15 years of income to every man, woman, and child on the island. That would cost the U.S. between $20 billion and $45 billion. Big numbers to Greenlanders, but fairly modest numbers for the U.S. government. Not quite as good a deal for the U.S. as William Seward’s purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million (around $120 million in today’s money). But, most likely, still a rather good deal.

And for the still-independent Canadians in a contentious world, an American Alaska combined with an American Greenland would constitute a nice, warm pair of earmuffs in the frozen North.

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ANINGAAQ

In Alfredo Cuarón’s 2013 science fiction thriller, Gravity, astronaut Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) anticipates the likelihood of imminent death as her spaceship begins a troubled re-entry into the atmosphere. Alone in space, she calls for help on her radio, but the only voice she finds is that of a Greenlandic fisherman named Aningaaq (Orto Ignatiussen)—speaking in his own language. The two have a sweet, intimate conversation, though neither one has the slightest idea what the other is saying. (He thinks her name is “Mayday.”) Over Aningaaq’s voice, she hears the howls of his sled dogs and the cooing of his infant child—sounds that give Stone comfort in what she assumes are the final minutes of her life. That same year, Cuarón’s son Jonás made a short film, Aningaaq, showing the other side of the conversation—the fisherman and his family and dogs in the snow 100 miles below Stone. The landscape is frigid, but the conversation is warm and gentle. That seven-minute video is what you see above.

BASTIAT’S WINDOW publisher Robert F. Graboyes is an economist, journalist, and musician whose five degrees include a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, he received the Reason Foundation’s 2014 Bastiat Prize for Journalism. His musical compositions are on YouTube.