–Analysis–
BERLIN — Sometimes, maps speak louder than words.
It happened just last week. On his platform Truth Social, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump posted a map of North America, draped in stars and stripes, commenting with a political exclamation point: “Oh Canada!”
Similar maps have been circulating in Trump’s circle for weeks, with the exact borders of this imagined Greater America remaining unclear. Republican politician Mike Collins, for instance, shared a map in November of the United States with Greenland as a U.S. state in Republican red under the title “Project 2029.”
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For the Trump fan account on X, End Wokeness, which has 3.4 million followers, Canada and Greenland, along with Mexico, Iceland, the Philippines, the Panama Canal, Cuba, parts of Mexico, and curiously the German cities of Bremen and Bremerhaven, are included among the future super-states of America. Even if on that particular account, the Gulf of Mexico retains its name, others in the MAGA movement want to rename it “Gulf of America” as soon as possible.
The geopolitical impact of this flood of maps is enormous: do they illustrate a new American imperialism? This question has been met with incredulity and concern not only in Canada and Denmark, to which Greenland belongs as an autonomous territory.
If those are indeed his ambitions, what kind of lawfulness underpins Trump’s neo-imperialism? He has added to the uncertainty through cryptic short comments on X and Truth Social as well as at a press conference. Sometimes he wants to economically force annexation into the U.S. (Canada), while at other times he does not rule out military force (Greenland and Panama).
And the world wonders: “Really, Mister President-elect?”
The uncertainty is deliberate. This is how it goes when politics is made with maps. “Maps are worth a thousand words,” writes German historian Karl Schlögel in his 2006 book In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics. “But they also conceal more than can be said in a thousand words.”
For whenever one world ends and another begins, Schlögel says, it is time for maps.
Making history
Schlögel mainly refers to political maps here — maps that show states, confederations of states, already existing or desired or feared spheres of influence — not so much maps that merely attempt to reflect geographical realities.
But even the latter are mirrors of political conditions. They usually contain borders and city names so that they can be read like a large colorful history book with some background knowledge; everyone who has stumbled upon the name Karl-Marx-Stadt in an old world atlas knows this well.
What’s geopolitically more interesting than these are the maps that not only depict geographical and historical conditions, but are themselves expressions of political will or utopia, writes Schlögel. Like the Cantino Planisphere from 1502. This map not only shows the known world after the (re)discovery of America but also includes the demarcation line established by Spain and Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494).
It is the archetype of made-up, artificial space.
At that time, these two small and rather insignificant maritime powers divided the world — of which they had only a vague idea — into two halves and claims to possession. The Cantino Planisphere is an expression of an imperial aspiration in formation. At the time it was created, its mapped superiority must have seemed like madness to contemporaries. Yet this madness soon became a sad colonial reality that continues to resonate today.
Another example: the Jefferson-Hartley Map from 1783 shows how the 13 founding states of the U.S. intended to expand westward after gaining independence from Britain. “The lines drawn with a ruler,” writes Schlögel, “that run parallel to latitude and longitude are the borders. They do not take into account natural reliefs, rivers, or mountain ranges. It is the archetype of made-up, artificial space.”
In short: It is total madness. Yet today’s political map of the United States looks exactly like this.
Mapped utopias become real
This is what makes political maps like these powerful and dangerous: They can create a virtual world that reshapes reality according to their will. As mapped utopias, however, they are less an expression of an individual’s desire for power than of an era, a society or even just the part of a society that has become powerful.
Therefore, while the maps from Trump’s circle differ in details, they do not differ in direction. Each interprets the Republican Make-America-Great-Again credo less economically than geographically, which is disturbingly new.
Perhaps even Donald Trump himself may not fully envision what besides money and violence could hold together a Greater America that includes not only Greenland and Canada but also Bremen and Bremerhaven.
But that’s not what’s at stake (yet): it’s about the feeling conveyed in the map legend — the self-confidence of being part of a movement that continues its expansion into eternity and vastness. Utopian maps first work inwardly; they create community and claim allegiance before eventually — or perhaps never — exerting power outwardly.
Putin loves maps
This distinguishes MAGA’s maps from those used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to legitimize his war of aggression in Ukraine: In May 2023, Putin dramatically leaned over a 17th-century French map with Constitutional Court President Valery Sorkin and had it explained why there was a “historical Russia,” but never a historical Ukraine.
Putin wants to restore what in his eyes has always been Russia. This is not utopian but historically clear-sighted and reactionary.
The entire world should become American — this is their claim.
In contrast to MAGA: the maps circulated by Donald Trump and his supporters aim to take America where it has never been before. In their arbitrariness, they are without borders. The entire world should become American — this is their claim.
How seriously this claim should be taken will be revealed by time. But just having this claim poses a danger — even for Trump himself who continues to spread these maps.
Utopian maps tend to emancipate themselves from the circumstances of their creation. Then they create not only their own reality but also their own following. Who remembers today Johann II of Portugal who signed the Treaty of Tordesillas? His name appears as little more than a historical footnote next to that geopolitical line on the Cantino Planisphere — a name among many on a long dark list of conquistadores — not insignificant but overshadowed historically by willing enforcers like Hernán Cortés or Francisco Pizarro. Like Johann II, Trump could also face such fate should his worldview become reality.
Musk’s grandfather
Who knows what Trump really wants. And what does Elon Musk want? The mega-billionaire famously is pursuing his dream to expand American influence towards Mars; this is not just cartographically challenging but requires actual effort too. Donald Trump should help with that. What might a world look like where Elon Musk does not just launch rockets into space but actually reaches for the stars?
This utopia also has its map. It originates from the 1930s and depicts North American Technate — an imaginary political entity that unites Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Greenland, all Central America, and parts of South America into one space — much like MAGA‘s maps do. The map was developed by Technocracy Incorporated — a group better known in Germany as the technocratic movement — a social revolutionary group during interwar times aiming to replace political elites with a caste consisting of entrepreneurs, technocrats and experts to prevent what they perceived as civilization’s collapse.
In this world, nothing is sacred
One key thinker within this movement was Joshua N. Haldeman, Elon Musk’s grandfather, who sympathized with Nazi Germany during World War II before emigrating to South Africa in the 1950s due to his fondness for its apartheid regime.
Musk himself feels connected to this technocratic movement; as U.S. historian Jill Lepore explains inThe New Yorker, Musk’s preference for using X — a letter popular among technocrats — or number-symbol combinations instead of names reflects this connection (for example naming one son X Æ A-12).
Similar fanciful designations were adopted internally by members of Technocracy Incorporated — including Elon Musk’s grandfather.
Purpose of borders
All this seems eccentric until it begins to become real. This is why today we look at North American Technate’s map with different eyes — not amused by its utopian absurdity but alarmed at how closely it resembles how today’s most powerful man envisions his world.
And in this world, nothing is sacred — not even borders — which is disturbing because post-colonial, post-war order relies on recognizing borders as more than mere lines that can be shifted at will; borders delineate cultural spaces and identities that must be protected if one wishes to prevent everything from descending into despotism.
Either Trump does not understand this or he understands it very well, and is ready to seek expansion without boundaries — that would be the worst-case scenario.
