America Is Already a Large Country. Let’s Not Make It Bigger

One of the themes that seems to be emerging in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term is geography, and specifically cartography. He has already renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, he has floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, and he has also expressed interest in bringing Greenland into the fold.

Suffice it to say, a lot of maps will need to be redrawn if he gets his way.

This isn’t the first time Americans have set their sights on acquiring new territory. Indeed, American history is littered with expansionist schemes, from westward expansion to the Alaska Purchase and so on. It’s apposite that Trump has also changed the official name of Denali back to Mount McKinley, after another expansionist president.

Not everyone is happy with these latest designs, of course. Canadians in particular have mostly balked at the notion of being absorbed by the US. But while the merits and demerits of these proposals can be debated, what’s really interesting about these border conversations is the fact that we’re even having them.

Thinking Outside the Box
National borders have become deeply ingrained in many parts of the modern world. While some borders do change from time to time, many others—such as the Canada/US border—have been the same for decades and have come to be taken for granted. From a young age we learn that this is just the way the world is, and the standard depiction gets reinforced by the thousands of maps we encounter throughout our lives.

But with Trump’s recent moves, people are waking up to the fact that we don’t need to accept the longstanding status quo borders that we’ve inherited. If everyone is on board, we can just change the map if we feel like it. The people who drew the existing lines aren’t in charge anymore; we are, and we have every right to draw different lines if we so choose.

The question then arises: What kind of political borders should we want? What’s the ideal size of a country, and, conversely, how many countries should there be?

At first blush, it seems clear that there’s a Goldilocks zone for country size. A country that’s too big would likely run into problems because it would force all sorts of diverse and geographically dispersed people groups into the same polity. At the same time, a country that’s too small might miss out on economies of scale.

When weighing this idea, it’s important to remember just how wide this spectrum can be. Some of today’s countries are tiny microstates—such as Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco, and Vatican City—and yet by all accounts they seem to be doing fine, if not excelling.

But while these practical considerations are interesting to ponder, there’s a moral component to this question as well.

The Case for Smaller Countries
In the view of America’s Founding Fathers, governments have a very specific role, namely, protecting the rights of the people. The whole point of the institution, in their view, is establishing and enforcing this moral principle.

So maybe the question we should be asking is not so much “What size of country is the most practical?” but rather “What size of country will be the most conducive to the protection of human rights?”

On this question, there’s a good case to be made that having a large number of small countries is better than having a small number of large countries. In his 2022 book Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities, Ryan McMaken outlines some of the primary benefits of political decentralization.

“The first benefit of decentralization is that smaller states and decentralized states allow residents to make more choices as to what sort of regime they wish to live under in order to better meet their needs and protect their rights,” he writes. When a wide variety of other countries are right next door, relocating to a country that’s a better fit for you is a much more realistic option.

Another point McMaken makes is that decentralization tends to limit the power of aggressive states:

On the whole, small and decentralized states are less likely to abuse their power, destroy their economies, and disregard basic human rights. Large, centralized states, on the other hand, are more easily able to abuse their residents and deny their rights, leading also to more dysfunctional economies and diminished economic opportunity.

While pondering these ideas, some may be concerned that breaking up countries would compromise the unity of a territory or people group, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Countries can come together to form military and economic partnerships, just like they currently do. Decentralization is not about breaking people apart. It’s simply about changing the administrative structure of the world to something that will do a better job of fostering freedom and prosperity.

All that to say, now that longstanding borders are suddenly being questioned, this seems like a good time to interrogate the cartographic shibboleths of our age.

This piece originally was posted by the Foundation for Economic Education.