Ice Ice Baby: Why Donald Trump Should Annex Antarctica

From Revolver.news (Jan. 8):

One of the zanier moments of Donald Trump’s memorable presidency came when he broached the idea of becoming the first U.S. president to meaningfully expand U.S. territory since William McKinley annexed Hawaii in 1898. Why, Trump asked his advisers in 2019, shouldn’t the U.S. pony up to take Greenland off Denmark’s hands? Like so many of Trump’s off-the-wall notions, the idea was mocked in the papers and ridiculed on late-night TV, but it was actually brilliant. In Denmark’s hands, Greenland is a sad relic of a former overseas empire, occupied by about 50,000 Inuit who suffer from the world’s highest suicide rate and are largely dependent on Denmark’s welfare state for survival. In America’s hands, Greenland would greatly increase America’s strategic presence in the Arctic region while also giving it new, largely unexploited reserves of important natural resources, which the U.S. has far more capacity to develop than Denmark.

Sadly, the Danes aren’t selling. Too bad.

But the dream of a new, greater America need not die there. Because, in fact, there is a vast piece of strategic real estate ripe for the taking that need not be bought or conquered by anyone. Yes, you’re thinking correctly: After he successfully reclaims the White House, one of Donald Trump’s objectives should be to expand America’s borders and her economic might by annexing Antarctica.

No, we’re serious.

Is this some wacky meme idea? Well, obviously, yeah. But at the same time, we are quite sincere. The list of reasons to colonize Antarctica is long, and the reasons not to do it are surprisingly thin.

Antarctica Is Full of Unexploited Natural Resources

At the risk of stating the incredibly obvious, Antarctica is a fully-sized continent. At 5.5 million square miles, it’s larger than both Australia and Europe. It’s 88% as large as Russia. That means a continent’s worth of untapped natural resources—oil, gas, gold, copper, uranium, you name it—plus even more in the continent’s almost totally unexploited coastal waters.

Right now, these resources are not economical to seek out and develop, so the continent appears useless. But one day, that will change.

In fact, there’s even precedent for such a change in a current U.S. state: Alaska. When William Seward masterminded the territory’s purchase in 1867, support for it was grounded mostly in Manifest Destiny and the potential for increased U.S. trade with Asia. Only thirty years after the purchase, with the Klondike Gold Rush, did Alaska become attractive for economic exploitation in its own right, and it took 110 years for the Prudhoe Bay oil field (the largest in North America) to enter development. The payoff on Seward’s purchase was long, but it indisputably has been to America’s gargantuan benefit.

Antarctica Is Neutral Because of an Obsolete Treaty

So, more than a century after the race to the South Pole, why does almost ten percent of the Earth’s land area remain the exclusive domain of a few thousand science nerds? The answer is the Antarctic Treaty and its many follow-up agreements.

The Antarctic Treaty dates back to 1959, when it was negotiated among 12 nations with existing or potential claims to the Antarctic landmass. The treaty banned territorial claims, military operations, nuclear testing, and economic exploitation below 60°S latitude—in essence, for the entirety of Antarctica and its outlying islands.

At the time, the treaty was motivated by recurring conflicts between potential Antarctic powers and by the fear that the Soviet Union would muscle its way into the Antarctic theater.

If Donald Trump has a pet peeve as a politician, it’s bad deals—and worst of all, bad deals that stick around for no discernible reason. When the U.S. proposed making Antarctica a neutral zone, it was by far the country with the greatest ability to develop Antarctica. America remains as such today, but in a far less dominant position than 60 years ago. Today, the Cold War is over, and both China and Russia flagrantly lay the groundwork for economic expansion in Antarctica, while the U.S. does nothing. [read more]

Not sure if Trump should annex or not, but the author does make rather interesting points.