First the Gulf of Mexico, then Lake Ontario, and on to the oceans. US foreign policy seems to have discovered a new tool for exerting international pressure.
And if this approach were to take hold, the problem would no longer be determining where America ends. It would be finding something that isn’t called America.

For centuries, we have needlessly complicated international politics. Embassies, treaties, bilateral summits, conferences, sanctions, embargoes, aircraft carriers. Generations of diplomats have devoted their lives to working out how to persuade another country to do something it does not want to do.

Donald Trump seems to have found a much simpler solution: a felt-tip pen.

If a country gets on your nerves, you change its name to something else.

The first experiment was the Gulf of Mexico, which was renamed the Gulf of America in 2025. Now comes the next step: Lake Ontario has become, at least in US federal nomenclature, Lake America.

And this is where things start to get interesting.

Because Lake Ontario isn’t some artificial pond where very American catfish splash about in the garden at Mar-a-Lago.
It is one of the Great Lakes and is shared between the United States and Canada.
Trump has therefore found a particularly cost-effective form of territorial expansion: there is no need to conquer the territory; one need only conquer the noun.

No Marines, no aircraft carriers, no annexations. A signature, a new map, and off we go: it’s imperialism by way of place-naming.

On the other hand, Trump is rather annoyed with Canada. Mark Carney’s government has not been sufficiently impressed by the American trade threats; negotiations on tariffs have become increasingly acrimonious, and Ottawa stubbornly continues to behave as if Canada were a sovereign state rather than a snow-covered outpost of the United States.

So then, Lake America.

But Canada is certainly not the only country that has been imprudent enough to contradict Donald Trump.

There is Mexico, of course, which has already been nominally stripped of its Gulf. There is Denmark, which inexplicably continues to refuse to cede Greenland.
Then there is Panama, which actually claims that the Panama Canal belongs to Panama.

Then there are the Europeans, who every now and then insist on that curious custom known as national sovereignty. And there is half the world which, sooner or later, has found itself threatened with a tariff for not doing exactly as Washington wished.

At this stage, we might as well make the system official.

The new American doctrine could be very simple: every diplomatic row is met with a geographical adjustment.

Is Mexico protesting? The Gulf is already sorted.

If you insist, we’ll move on to the Sierra Madre: the Sierra Madre of America.

Another protest? ‘Mexico’ is being removed from New Mexico: New America.

With Greenland, the method would be even more effective.

Trump wants to buy it“one way oranother”; Greenland says it is not for sale; Denmark says it is not for sale; Trump insists that it would be very important to have it.

In the old style of diplomacy, this would mark the start of lengthy negotiations. In the new style, you just need to skip a few steps.

If you can’t buy Greenland, you can always rename it. It’s even cheaper.

No cheque to pay to Denmark, no referendum amongst the Greenlanders, no issues of international law. Nuuk could become Mar-a-Lago North and the ice cap the Trump International Ice Resort.

However, something inevitable would happen: the others would see through the ploy.

And above all, they’d realise that you don’t need aircraft carriers to play. All you need is a felt-tip pen.

Canada might wake up one morning and announce that Mount Rushmore is now to be called Mount Canada.

Mexico could respond to the Gulf of America by transforming the Grand Canyon into the Gran Cañón de México.

At the first threat of tariffs on Champagne, France might remind the Americans that they were the ones who gave them the Statue of Liberty and announce that from that moment on it will be called the Statue of the Republic, with the right to withdraw the gift should new tariffs be imposed.

And then the whole thing would quickly get out of hand.

Because if you didn’t need to own a place to change its name, the world’s geography would suddenly become one huge Wikipedia page open to everyone.

China might decide that Silicon Valley is actually called East Shenzhen.

The United States might respond by turning the Great Wall into the Great American Wall.

Beijing would rename the Pacific the Far East China Sea.

Trump would reply that the Pacific is actually called the Ocean of America.

To ensure it does not fall behind, Europe could call the Atlantic the ‘Western European Sea’.

And that is where the first serious diplomatic problem would arise.

A ship sailing from New York to Lisbon is reportedly crossing the American Ocean, the Western European Sea and, according to a Chinese decree published in the meantime, the Great Western Basin of the Silk Road, all at the same time.

The captain should choose which name to use depending on the territorial waters.

But the real problem is actually something else.

Trump gets into arguments much faster than the planet can produce geographical features, and sooner or later we’d run out of names.

There would be the Gulf of America, Lake America, Mount America, the River America, the Canal of America, Cape America, the Desert of America, the Forest of America, the Ocean of America and the Waterfalls of America.

Probably the American Trench too (the one that until now has been known as the Mariana Trench), because you never know whether some ‘ingrate’ down there might be taking advantage of the United States.

At that point, the issue would no longer be a geopolitical one. It would be a logistical one.

An American would walk into a travel agency.

“I’d like to go to Lake America.”

“Which one?”

“The one near Monte America.”

“The one that flows into the River America?”

“I think so.”

“Near the Gulf of America?”

“No, on the other side.”

“Ah. The one on the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Exactly.”

“The Atlantic or the Pacific?”

“What are they called now?”

“America.”

And here we are, faced with the full extent of‘America First’.

America would be so far ahead of everything else that it would no longer be possible to work out where it is.

It used to work the other way round.

First, you conquered a territory. Then, if you really wanted to, you changed its name.

Alexander founded Alexandria; empires named cities, seas and provinces; and new nations wiped the names of former rulers from the maps.

It was brutal, often. But at least it followed a certain logical order.

With Trump, a more modern and efficient version seems to be emerging: the most expensive step is being eliminated.

There’s no need to conquer Canada, no need to annex Mexico, no need to buy Greenland and no need to reclaim Panama: all you have to do is act as if it’s already happened, buy a felt-tip pen and amend the map.

After all, it’s the perfect foreign policy for the age of social media: if you can’t change reality, change the name under which it appears on screen.

Then click ‘Save’.

And he claims victory.