The Frontier Mentality: Expansionism;The U.S. & Beyond
How Expansionism Shaped U.S. Global Influence
From ‘Manifest Destiny’ to modern superpower, Trumpet Edition contributor and political consultant, Daryl Montgomery, explores how America’s frontier mentality and expansionist ideals forged its enduring role as a global leader.
U.S. Realignment Elections and Expansionism
Trump wants to annex Greenland, take back the Panama Canal, even make Canada the 51st state. Many are surprised, even shocked, claiming it’s unprecedented. It turns out that they shouldn’t be…and it isn’t. Trump’s proposed actions make perfect sense in the context of U.S. political history (although the Canada proposal is more likely to be a Trumpian negotiating tactic). Trump is a realignment president, and realignments are usually when America wants to add foreign territory and expand its global footprint (and these days maybe even its outer space footprint).
The first stage of American geographic expansion was already underway when the United States government began operating in March of 1789. It continued until 1853 when the final borders of what would become the “lower 48” were established. When the country officially began, it consisted of 11 states on the East coast that had been British colonies (the remaining two colonies joined shortly thereafter). American settlers had already started crossing the Appalachian mountains by then, moving west into the lands up to the Mississippi River. Kentucky was the first “western” state to be added to the U.S. in 1792, followed by Tennessee in 1796, and Ohio in 1803.
In 1803, the U.S. bought the Louisiana Purchase from France, adding much of its current territory west of the Mississippi River. This doubled the size of the U.S. and all or parts of 15 new states would be created from it. In 1819, the U.S. purchased Florida from Spain and Spain also ceded its claims to the Oregon territory in the Northwest. The exact extent of this land was imprecise, however. The border with Canada was only finalized in 1846. Interestingly, it was only the year before this that the term ‘Manifest Destiny’ was coined to explain that America was meant to spread from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans.
Also, in 1845, the U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas (which achieved independence from Mexico in 1836). The Mexican American War followed and in 1848, in the Mexican Cession, the United States acquired almost the entire current Southwest. A small additional piece of territory was added with the Gadsen Purchase in 1853. The boundaries of the contiguous United States as we know it today were then complete.
Any future extensions of United States sovereignty would have to be beyond that and were considered to be extra-territorial. Before doing that, the U.S. had to first fight to preserve itself as a single country.
The Lincoln Realignment— Civil War Keeps America Together, Alaska is Purchased
By the time the Civil War broke out in 1861, the U.S. had 34 states. Eleven states, however, withdrew from the Union — Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee — and formed the Confederacy (two more, Kentucky and Missouri made some attempt to withdraw, but it didn’t happen).
An additionally two states would be added to the Union during the War — West Virginia in 1863 (it broke off from Confederate Virginia because it opposed secession) and Nevada in 1864. The United States reunited into a single country in 1865 when the Union won the war.
While it would seem unlikely that an attempt would be made during this period to make an extra-territorial expansion of the territory beyond the country’s continental borders, this nevertheless occurred shortly after the War. Republican Lincoln (1861-65) was elected to a second term in 1864 but was tragically assassinated in 1865. His visionary Secretary of State, William Seward, remained in his position, however. In 1867, Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million (an incredible bargain at two cents an acre). This was roundly criticized by the Eastern newspaper establishment as “Seward’s Folly.” These newspapers were clueless back then, and some would say the remaining ones are just as clueless right now.
The covetous Seward also tried to buy the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean and annex the Dominican Republic. He also had designs on Hawaii. These attempts failed, but he did lead the effort to annex Midway Island in the Pacific Ocean.
McKinley Realignment — Spanish Colonies, Hawaii and the Panama Canal Zone
The biggest extra-territorial expansion in U.S. history took place during Republican McKinley’s realignment. As happened with Lincoln, McKinley was elected to a second term but was also assassinated in the beginning of it. This term was finished by his Vice President Teddy Roosevelt, who shared McKinley’s views about global expansion of U.S. control.
The U.S. fought the Spanish American War in 1898. Spain had long since lost any significant military power and geopolitical influence and was no match for an incipient superpower. The war was short. The peace agreement ceded Cuba (as a protectorate lasting until 1909) and Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines (as territories) to the United States. American Samoa was also subsequently annexed in 1900 by agreement with the local chiefs (its strategic value became evident because of the War). This War also indirectly led to the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
Hawaii was an independent kingdom until 1893. Early in that year, American planters staged an uprising and U.S. marines stormed the islands (without presidential approval — the Deep State trying to work around a president didn’t start with Trump). Shortly thereafter, Democrat Grover Cleveland (an avowed anti-imperialist) took office. He thought the coup was a shameful act, ordered an investigation and wanted to restore the Hawaiian queen to her throne. Opposition from Congress caused the matter to languish without resolution. When the Spanish America War broke out, the strategic importance of Hawaii as a way station to the Philippines became obvious and then president, Republican William McKinley (an avowed imperialist), signed a joint resolution to annex the islands.
It was also the Spanish American War that would be the impetus for the U.S. to obtain the Panama Canal Zone in 1904 under Teddy Roosevelt. Once again, defense implications were important considerations. Warships had to sail around South America to get to the Pacific, and building a canal through Panama would considerably shorten the time involved. Attempts had been made for many years to build such a canal, a difficult task because of the risk of disease. Moreover, Panama did not exist as a country, but its land was part of Columbia, and Columbia was hostile to U.S. demands. A revolution broke out in 1903, and the United States intervened to help the rebels (the playbook was similar to what happened in Hawaii, although the president was directly involved this time around). Not surprisingly, the new Panamanian government was amenable to the U.S. creating the Canal Zone. It would take 10 more years before the Canal, one of the greatest construction projects in world history, was completed and opened to commercial traffic.
Only one other piece of territory was acquired before the next realignment era, and that was the 1917 purchase of the U.S. Virgin Islands (originally coveted by Lincoln’s William Seward) from Denmark. Woodrow Wilson was president at the time and the U.S. entered WWI the same year. Despite the U.S. contribution being instrumental in winning the War, Democrat President Wilson was left empty handed when the spoils were divvied up. Germany had substantial overseas possessions and Great Britain and France took them for themselves.
The FDR Realignment – The Switch from Territory to Military Presence
The period of the U.S. annexing overseas territorial, with minor exceptions, was over from the Franklin Roosevelt realignment onward. The strategy for control would switch from direct acquisition of land to indirect control through military presence and this would encompass much of the world.
The first two terms of FDRs presidency were dominated by dealing with the Great Depression. Only in his third term did the U.S. become involved in WWII, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941. A two-front war in Europe and the Pacific than lasted until May 1945 and August 1945, respectively.
The Pacific territories of the United States would bear the brunt of war with Japan. Three territories would be wholly occupied by Japan— Guam, the Philippines, and Wake Atoll (uninhabited when the U.S. claimed it in 1899). Kiska and Attu in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska would also be taken over (it must be remembered that Alaska and Hawaii were not yet U.S. states). American Samoa was bombed but never occupied. Strategically important Midway Island (acquired 75 years earlier thanks to William Seward) successfully repulsed an attempted Japanese takeover in June 1942, and this battle is considered the major turning point of the War in the Pacific.
After the war, the U.S got little territory for its efforts, while the Soviet Union got a substantial amount (Democrat FDR was roundly criticized at the time for not adequately pursuing U.S. interests). The U.S. obtained control of Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI) from the United Nations. From this, only the Northern Mariana Islands became a U.S. territory. The other parts, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau became independent nations later on.
In contrast, the Soviet Union annexed substantial land. In Europe alone, it got a little bit of Finland, a little bit of Germany, a large slice of Poland, a bit of Czechoslovakia, the Moldavian part of Romania, and it annexed the three Baltic Republics — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In Asia, the Soviet Union got South Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands (there is still a dispute over this). While the Soviet Union declared War on Japan on August 8, 1945, only days before Japan surrendered to the U.S, there was never a peace treaty signed between it, nor with its successor state Russia, and Japan.
Between 1945 and 1960 a major global period of decolonization began. The two major European colonizers, France and Great Britain granted independence (not necessarily without a struggle) to a large number of their possessions. France’s struggle to keep Indo-China, which failed, eventually morphed into the U.S. Vietnam War. For its part, the U.S. gave independence to the Philippines on July 4, 1946. Alaska and Hawaii would become states in 1959.
Until 1940, the U.S. essentially had no military bases outside the country and its territories. During the WWII, the U.S. established military bases all over the world, but especially throughout the Pacific islands, in the Caribbean, in MENA (Middle East North Africa), in Greenland, and as the war progressed and ended, in Europe. By the 1960s, there had been over a thousand U.S. military bases (some only occupied temporarily) that had been established globally. NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was created in 1949, to establish a permanent military presence and cooperation among the U.S. and Western and Northern European countries.
It wasn’t on earth, though, that plans for the ultimate territorial expansion were made. It was beyond the planet itself. The project to land a man on moon was set in motion during the administration of Democrat President John F. Kennedy. It ultimately came to fruition in 1969 during the beginning of Republican President Richard Nixon’s first term. Nixon killed the manned space program, and the U.S. has not returned to the moon since his presidency.
Reagan Realignment – Expansion Through Military Alliance
The U.S. controlled Panama Canal Zone was returned to Panama in 1979, under Democrat Jimmy Carter. The final cession of control came in 1999, under Democrat Bill Clinton. Ceding control of the Panama Canal Zone was controversial and seen as a sign of U.S. weakness and this helped elect Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980. It was during Reagan’s administration that the TTPI created after WWII was finally dissolved with the Northern Marianas becoming a territory of the United States.
There was a huge military buildup under Reagan. He expanded the U.S. military budget 43 percent higher than the peak spending during the Vietnam War. This is credited with causing the collapse of the Soviet-dominated communism (the USSR itself dissolved in 1991). While the U.S. didn’t directly gain territory from this, it did allow NATO to expand into Eastern Europe (despite promises made by the U.S. not to do this). The U.S. did extend its military control just as was the case with its program of mass expansion of military bases globally after WWII.
One thing that Reagan attempted, but failed to achieve, was getting more control of space, specifically the space immediately around the planet. His “Star Wars” program (officially, the SDI or Strategic Defense Initiative) was meant to be an anti-missile system stationed in outer space that would vaporize enemy missiles with a laser guidance system (this idea originated with Nikola Tesla). The ability to implement it was still beyond the technology of the time in the 1980s.
The Trump Realignment — From Greenland to Mars
Trump is likely to reach back into the past and forward into the future in his territorial policies. He wants to take back the Panama Canal Zone, which the U.S. previously owned. He wants to annex Greenland, one of the first lands to have U.S. military bases that was not part of the U.S. or one of its territories. A key advisor of his, Elon Musk, is intent on going to Mars, a major step forward in conquering outer space (although this is likely to be a government-private enterprise joint effort and not exclusively government as was NASA under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson).
The vital significance of having control of the Panama Canal is indisputable. It is one of the two major conduits for global shipping (the Suez Canal being the other one). For the U.S. to have given up as much control as it did was unwise. How Trump will reassert it, remains to be seen. There are multiple options.
If the U.S. wishes to obtain more physical territory, Greenland is the most logical choice. The Greenlanders want independence from Denmark. Both Texas and Hawaii achieved independence before the U.S. annexed them. Additionally, the U.S. has a history of buying territory from Denmark, as is did with the Virgin Islands in 1917. Greenland has few people, but substantial mineral deposits and is of significant strategic importance in relationship to Russia.
As for outer space, what is a more significant addition of territory other than a lunar or planetary body? Trump already created Space Force One in his first administration extending Reagan’s efforts to extend the military to outer space. While it is highly unlikely that there will be a manned mission to Mars during Trump’s final term, the plans are likely to be put in motion and it will take place in some administration in the years after he is out of office. U.S. expansionism will then “boldly go where no man has gone before.”