Premise· normative
“Great powers have the right to expand territory when strategic interests demand it”
Scrutiny Score
22
The descriptive observation that great powers expand territory is historically accurate, but the normative claim that they have the right to do so is contradicted by the international legal framework the US itself established, applied selectively rather than consistently, and provides no limiting principle to prevent the logic from legitimizing every territorial claim by any great power.
Hidden Dependencies
- Strategic interest is a sufficient justification for territorial acquisition, overriding the sovereignty of the target state or territory
- The post-1945 international order prohibiting territorial conquest is either invalid or selectively enforced to the point of meaninglessness
- Great powers are qualitatively different from other states in their rights and prerogatives
Supporting Evidence
- The United States itself was built through territorial expansion: the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Mexican-American War cession (1848), the Alaska Purchase (1867), and the annexation of Hawaii (1898) all involved acquisition of territory for strategic or economic reasons
- China's construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea and Russia's annexation of Crimea (2014) demonstrate that great powers continue to expand territorial control in practice, regardless of international law
- Realist international relations theory (Mearsheimer, Morgenthau) holds that states pursue power maximization in an anarchic system, and territorial control is a primary form of power - might does not make right, but it makes reality
- The US maintains de facto control over territories acquired through conquest or coercion (Guam, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa) with no serious movement toward relinquishing them
Challenging Evidence
- The UN Charter (Article 2.4) prohibits the acquisition of territory by force, and this prohibition has been the foundation of the post-1945 international order that the US itself constructed and enforced
- The US condemned Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and led international sanctions, and condemned China's South China Sea claims - endorsing territorial expansion by the US would destroy the legal and moral basis for those objections
- International recognition is near-unanimous that territorial conquest is illegitimate: the UN General Assembly voted 143-5 against Russia's annexation of Ukrainian territory in 2022
- The post-1945 norm against territorial conquest has contributed to the most peaceful period of interstate relations in modern history; abandoning it risks returning to pre-1945 patterns of great power territorial competition
- Greenland's population of approximately 56,000 people, mostly Inuit, has expressed no desire to become part of the United States - the premise requires overriding their self-determination
Logical Vulnerabilities
- The premise is selectively applied: proponents who support US territorial expansion typically condemn Russian or Chinese expansion, revealing that the principle is not 'great powers may expand' but 'our great power may expand'
- It conflates descriptive claims (great powers do expand) with normative claims (great powers should be allowed to expand) - the fact that it happens does not establish that it is right
- The premise undermines the very international order the US built and benefits from: if territorial expansion by strategic necessity is legitimate, Russia's annexation of Crimea and China's South China Sea claims become equally legitimate
- It provides no limiting principle: if strategic interest justifies territorial expansion, there is no logical stopping point - any territory adjacent to a great power can be claimed as strategically necessary
- Historical US territorial expansion occurred largely before the post-1945 international order; citing 19th-century precedent to justify 21st-century acquisition ignores the normative framework that changed in between
Held by
John Mearsheimer
“Great powers expand when the cost is low enough - Trump sees Greenland as achievable 'on the cheap' because Denmark cannot resist”
Mearsheimer does not endorse this normatively but describes it as how great powers behave: the structural opportunity (massive power asymmetry, minimal resistance cost) predicts the action regardless of international law
Marco Rubio
“The United States has historically expanded its territory and strategic reach when national security demanded it - Alaska, the Panama Canal Zone, military basing agreements worldwide”
Rubio employs a more diplomatic version of Trump's territorial expansion argument, emphasizing precedent and security necessity rather than raw transactional acquisition. However, the underlying premise is the same: great powers have the right to extend their strategic control when they determine it serves their interests
Ben Shapiro
“Territorial expansion for strategic reasons is unnecessary when defense agreements already serve those interests”
Shapiro implicitly rejects this premise by calling the acquisition 'silly' - he does not argue it is immoral, but rather that it is strategically unnecessary and therefore a waste of political capital
Donald Trump
“When a great power needs territory for its security, it takes it. That's how the world works. We bought Alaska, we bought Louisiana. This is no different”
Trump explicitly invokes historical territorial acquisitions as precedent, treating sovereignty as transactional rather than inviolable. This premise directly contradicts the sovereignty norms he invokes when opposing international constraints on US domestic policy
Why no rejection list?
This tool tracks positions commentators are known to hold, not positions they reject. Listing who “rejects” a premise would require a confidence we don’t have — rejection can be partial, contextual, or simply unaddressed. A commentator may disagree with part of this claim while accepting another part, or may never have addressed it at all.
Holding an incompatible premise (shown below) indicates a point of tension, but not necessarily wholesale rejection. Accurately modelling what someone does not believe is harder than modelling what they do, and we’d rather leave it absent than get it wrong.
Incompatible premises
held by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Aaron Bastani, Joe Biden, Stephen Colbert, Destiny (Steven Bonnell), Lindsey Graham, Nikki Haley, Jimmy Kimmel, Piers Morgan, John Oliver, Jordan Peterson, Marco Rubio, Bernie Sanders, Richard Spencer, Jon Stewart