Make America Greater Than Ever!

A "modest proposal" for quickly getting to 1 Billion Americans -- with room for more!

In America today, the real divide isn’t between left and right, liberals and conservatives, Trumpists and Never-Trumpists. Trump has scrambled all our historic divides—by race, by class, by ideology—picking up the support of RFK Jr. and Kanye West while the Democrats pick up the Cheney family. The most important divide isn’t even between rural and urban, or between more-educated and less-educated—nor between the Democrats and the GOP who are positioned on opposite sides of those divides.

No, the real divide in America today is between those who are see the future as a threat they fear and those who see it as an opportunity to seize—between those who think we need to hoard and protect what we’ve got and those who want MOAR.

And that divide runs not so much between the two parties as within both. We’ve seen the first scraps within the Trump coalition over H-1B visas and skilled immigration more generally, but there are further fights coming that will divide both parties internally more than separate them: fights over building more housing, fights over expanding the deployment of renewable energy—and, quite possibly, fights over acquiring more territory.

That’s right: we’re going back to the 19th century. After all, if we want more people, more and better housing, more energy (especially renewables with their big footprint)—if we just want MOAR of everything, then by gum we were also going to need more room.

Some are already thinking that way—but they aren’t thinking nearly big enough. Acquiring Greenland or Canada is only a start. If America is going to be great again—greater than ever, in fact—we need to expand the map considerably.

So, in the spirit of moving fast and breaking things, here’s my modest proposal for how to get from where we are to 1 billion Americans while actually reducing our overall density, making America greater than it’s ever been before.

We start with the America we know and love: 340 Million Americans, 3.8 million square miles, an average density of 89 people/square mile.

Phase 1: Monroe Doctrine 2.0

In this first phase of territorial expansion, we acquire Greenland, the Bahamas, the major islands of the Caribbean—Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola—plus a few key mainland Caribbean territories: Panama, Belize, Guyana and Suriname. Throw in various small Anglophone island nations and UK overseas territories for good measure.

Some of these territories can undoubtedly be purchased at a reasonable price. Others will surely willingly join America when given the chance. And of course some may require some . . . persuasion to convince of the value of joining the U.S.A. But all should be readily assimilable given that the ones with significant populations already have large diasporic communities here. And the strategic value of this phase is clear.

When complete, we would control the entrance to the Northwest Passage as well as the Panama Canal, as well as all entry to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico America from the Atlantic. We would control Greenland’s valuable mineral resources and would plant the American flag on a new continent—South America. Finally, acquiring Cuba would eliminate a persistent foreign irritant and fulfill a dream shared not only by Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams but also by the designers of the Cuban flag.

Phase 1 brings us to 385 Million Americans and 4.8 million square miles, for an average density of 80 people/square mile.

Phase 2: The Idea of North

Forget what I said last month. There has never been a more opportune time to acquire Canada than in the wake of Justin Trudeau’s decade of decline. Though this is a single phase, acquisition would most like proceed in sub-stages. First, encourage Quebec in its ambitions for independence. That accomplished, encourage Alberta to follow, and to transfer its allegiance to the United States. Next, offer to take the Maritimes, Labrador and Newfoundland off Canada’s hands in exchange for being allowed to purchase the territories of Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Finally, invite British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario to accede to the inevitable.

Once they get used to fighting endless losing battles with their insurance companies instead of waiting forever for necessary surgery, Canadians should be readily assimilable to America. And with the acquisition of Anglophone Canada, America would vastly expand both our Lebensraum and our natural resources portfolio—particularly an almost inexhaustible supply of fresh water. We would also significantly increase our climate resiliency, since Canada’s arable land and habitable territory are only going to expand as the climate warms—and we would vast expanded our navigational and resource-extraction claims to the Arctic to boot.

Phase 2 brings us to 415 Million Americans and 8.6 million square miles, for an average density of 48 people/square mile.

Phase 3: The Unfinished Business of 1848

Having avenged the insult of 1846, it’s now time to finish the job begun in 1848. Mexico is already our partner in NAFTA USMCA, and you might think that the simplest thing would just be to invite Mexico to join us in full political union. But just as there were advantages to acquiring Canada piece by piece (and letting Quebec go its own way), there are advantages to not gobbling up all of Mexico in one bite. Among other things, its population is nearly one third even of the new Greater American population. At this point in our plan to Make America Greater Than Ever, we’re still primarily looking for room. And we could acquire a lot of valuable Mexican territory without taking on the bulk of Mexico’s population.

Say we add only the northern Mexican states of Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Durango, Nayarit, Zacatecas, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas and both parts of Baja California. Thereby, the United States would acquire much of Mexico’s mineral wealth and much of its most productive manufacturing, and the parts of the country that are already most economically and culturally integrated with the United States. And while this expansion doesn’t further reduce our population density, it doesn’t materially increase it either.

Yes, acquiring this territory would mean tackling the problem of Mexico’s cartels. But don’t you think America would do a better job of that than the federales? With burgeoning enthusiasm for American military action to tackle the problem, maybe we should remember that the only way to win a war like that is to clear and hold. And the promise of liberation from criminal rule might be just the thing to convince the norteños to agree to go American.

Phase 3 brings us to 445 Million Americans and 9.1 million square miles, for an average density of 49 people/square mile.

Phase 4: The Land Down Under

In many ways, Australia is a kind of alt-America, a British settler state blessed with abundant natural resources and separated from the world’s troubles by vast oceans. But with the rise of China the world’s troubles are growing closer—and Australia has been growing closer to America in response. Why not take the next logical step? Now that we’ve expanded dramatically across the North American continent, it’s time to spread our wings across the Pacific.

Acquiring Australia—and let’s throw in New Zealand and a bunch of smaller Pacific island territories and countries while we’re shopping, just so the Chinese can’t ever sneak around behind us—would give the United States plenty of room to grow, and establish a vastly larger American footprint in the western Pacific. It would also give us the largest territorial claims to Antarctica—pretty cool!

Phase 4 brings us to 475 Million Americans and 12.2 million square miles, for an average density of 39 people/square mile.

Phase 5: Ampliando la Selección

Javier Milei won his historic election on what amounted to a promise to remake Argentina in the American image, including dollarization. Why not go all the way? Joining the United States would assure Argentines the kind of financial stability that they have never been able to achieve on their own, and give them a role in world affairs that they have never even aspired to. Like America, Argentina is a nation of immigrants and a big agricultural exporter. And it’s got plenty of room to grow. Why not grow together?

Throw in Chile and Uruguay for good measure—why would they want to stand aloof from Manifest Destiny?—and in one fell swoop we’ve acquired vast amounts of arable land, valuable natural resources, most of the remaining claims in Antarctica, and control of the sea passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, all while barely increasing our population density.

Phase 5 brings us to 545 Million Americans and 13.6 million square miles, for an average density of 40 people/square mile.

Phase 6: Back to Africa

I know: this one takes me out on a bit of a limb. It’s one thing to propose buying Greenland, dismembering Canada and Mexico, gobbling up Australia and Argentina. Who hasn’t dreamed about such exciting ventures? It’s quite another thing to suggest taking parts of Africa. If you thought Haiti was going to be tough to swallow, this’ll absolutely choke you.

But honestly, this whole thing about settler colonialism is so much woke whining. The reality is that there are only so many mostly-empty spaces left on earth, and by the time we reach this phase we’ll have acquired most of them. But not all. We aren’t going to be able to take over Siberia, Mongolia or Kazakhstan—at least not yet. But Southern Africa boasts some remarkably empty spaces, as well as the most economically developed country on the continent.

Adding South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia to Greater America would bring in a vast store of mineral resources along with a lot of land. It would establish us on the other side of the Atlantic and on the shores of the Indian Ocean, in both cases for the first time. Yes, these countries have enormous problems—poverty, illness, corruption—but they also present enormous opportunities if managed properly. The people who’d be joining the American family are largely Anglophone (at least the best-educated portion), and overwhelmingly Christian. And it’s not settler colonialism if you offer the inhabitants citizenship, right? America was substantially built by African labor. Now it’s time for us to build up southern Africa as part of America. Plus we get lions! Elephants! Rhinos! Cape buffalo!

If we’re going to Make America Greater Than Ever, we have to think big. Africa is big!

Phase 6 brings us to 645 Million Americans and 15.0 million square miles, for an average density of 43 people/square mile.

Phase 7: The Sprint to 1 Billion

With the completion of the previous six phases, we’ve just about doubled our population while quadrupling our land area, growing massively while cutting our average population density to less than half its current level. Now that we’ve unequivocally got the room for them, it's time to sprint the rest of the way to 1 billion Americans.

We could do this through immigration, of course—but why acquire people without acquiring territory? That’s just leaving value on the table. So let’s look at some possible strategic acquisition targets that could get us to the magic nine zero figure fast.

• Philippines: it’s a former colony, it’s strategically placed near China, they’re overwhelmingly Christian and they speak English (and Spanish). There’s already a large and growing Filipino population in the United States. What’s not to like? We could have granted them statehood long ago. Now’s the chance to rectify that failure. If we’re going to race to 1 billion, this is for sure the first lap.

• Korea: we saved South Korea in the 1950s, and look at it now! It’s one of the most technologically-advanced countries in the world, with a strategically-crucial world-class shipbuilding industry to boot. If we don’t take it over, it’ll inevitably become part of China’s sphere of influence. Yes, it’s got a catastrophically collapsing birth rate—but maybe immersion in a not-at-all-decadent America is the perfect cure for that? They seem to have already gotten the hang of serial impeachments. They’d fit right in. Heck, let’s extend the offer to North Korea as well—unification through Americanization!

• Vietnam: yes, there was that unpleasantness back in the 1960s and 1970s, but they’re our new best friends now, and by this point we’ll have already acquired Cuba (and perhaps North Korea as well), so acquiring another Communist country will be a piece of cake. They’re threatened by China, but are also an obvious locale for China to offshore its own manufacturing and thereby evade American tariffs. Making Vietnam part of America will protect both them and us. It already happened in Watchmen—let life imitate art!

• Great Britain: let’s be honest, they haven’t been doing a great job running Blighty lately. As with Canada, this is bargain-hunting territory. Assimilation might be tricky—there’s the language barrier, for one thing—but by this point we’ll have acquired most of the British Commonwealth, so joining America might feel like coming home. Meanwhile, Brexit taught Brits the hard way that you have more influence on the inside looking out than you do on the outside looking in. Who wouldn’t rather be part of Greater America than of the senescent European Union?

And with that, we’re there: a population of 1 Billion Americans, and a land area of 15.4 million square miles, for an average population density of 65 people/square mile.

Phase 8: Open Call

By this point, every country on earth would understand that there was no way to beat us, so if they want to be on the winning team they might as well join us. China and India, Europe and Russia—those other great powers are of course going to try going their own ways, and best of luck to them. But everyone else will be clamoring for entry. So now we’re the ones who get to be choosey. Does Ghana want to rocket ahead of its West African neighbors? Does Sri Lanka want to become a real tiger? We’re ready to talk—show us an offer.

After all, we’ve already achieved all our goals. We’ve tripled our population but we’ve also quadrupled our land area, such that even though we have 1 billion Americans, our average population density has gone down. We’ve added piles of natural resources and territories with strategic value. We’ve planted our flag on all six inhabited contents, plus we control claims to nearly all of Antarctica, and we have major territories on all of Earth’s oceans. Most of the population we’ve added is either Anglophone or Spanish-speaking, and the bulk of it is Christian. We could keep going—and we’re willing to. But now, if you want to join the club, you’ll have to pay.

And they will. They’ll pay so much, when you add it to the value of the resources and trade routes and everything else, in the end building Greater America will have paid for itself, and for a colony on Mars as well. And you, the ordinary American citizen, what you get is the glory. You get to be a part it, just by being an American.

It’s a beautiful thing isn’t it? So what are we waiting for? Let’s Make America Greater Than Ever!