• Geopolitics
• United States

Everybody has their favorite examples of contested territories, at land or sea. South Korea uses the East Sea instead of the Sea of Japan, much as many Arab countries refer to the Arabian rather than Persian Gulf. Moroccan maps, it turns out, not only claim Western Sahara for the country but an undefined chunk of Algeria as well. Argentine maps include the Falkland Islands, refer to them as the Malvinas, and feature a pie-slice of Antarctica for good measure.

These disputes vary in intensity. Argentina launched a war over the Falklands. China has steadily increased its military presence within the nine-dash line. Korea, by contrast, has been less aggressive, leaving its Foreign Ministry to lay out its case against Japan with some well-illustrated pamphlets.

As a rule, though, wherever countries are waging a one-sided cartographic battle against the world, it reflects a deeper grievance with the geopolitical status quo. Divergent maps can emerge from military defeat, as with the Falklands, or military victory followed by diplomatic failure, as with Western Sahara.

Name disputes, too, usually reflect either the legacy or threat of war. They are generally pursued most vehemently by smaller countries who feel that the prevailing international nomenclature reflects a dangerous power imbalance with a more dominant or aggressive neighbor. If no one had a problem with China, Japan, or Persia, no one would have a problem with their eponymous seas and gulfs.

For Americans abroad, this whole business used to bring a politely suppressed snicker. After all, two centuries of winning meant that the United States didn’t have to bother with such petty map disputes. Washington’s will has consistently prevailed on the battlefield and in the diplomatic arena. In the 19th century, the United States drew its own expansive borders. In the 20th, it played a central role in defining everyone else’s. As a result of the United States’ unique geopolitical influence, American maps reflected the default reality while the countries that disagreed with the global consensus were left looking a little pathetic.

Not anymore. When it comes to maps, the United States is now behaving like a loser rather than a winner.

President Donald Trump is recasting the United States’ relationship with the international order. Convinced that Washington is the victim, not the beneficiary, of the military, economic, and diplomatic institutions it created or shaped, his administration is consciously going rogue. Prestige has given way to the politics of petulance. Washington is embracing confrontational cartography by renaming bodies of water and threatening to redraw borders. The result is growing cartographic gulf between the United States and world.

Left: The Golfo-Mexicano in a Mercator world map from 1569. Right: An American historical map shows the annexation dates of different formerly Mexican territories.Wikimedia Commons

“The Gulf of Mexico” has appeared on maps as early as the 16th century, when Spain ruled the New World and the United States didn’t exist. But in the subsequent history of U.S.-Mexico relations, the United States was the more dominant, aggressive, and successful neighbor. All the wars and territorial changes over the last 200 years have turned out in Washington’s favor. The annexation of Texas in 1845, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, and the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 all left America bigger and Mexico smaller. If any country was going to engage in the cartography of grievance, it should be Mexico.

But Trump has flipped the script. From the moment he declared his candidacy in 2015, Trump has consistently described Mexico as an enemy. He has accused the country of bringing drugs, crime, and rapists into the United States, and “killing us” economically and at the border. The resulting policy prescriptions, from a border wall to a trade war to drone strikes, all reflect this sense of menace. Viewed on Trump’s terms, the decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico reflects not simple national vanity. Rather, he is leaning into the role of the aggrieved nation: the Philippines to Mexico’s China.

Moreover, since the name change was formally announced on January 20 and the subsequent Super Bowl Sunday declared “Gulf of America Day,” the administration has moved to enforce its new terminology with the undemocratic zeal of an embattled authoritarian regime. The president has the authority to designate how the U.S. government refers to geographic features, but Trump has gone further, barring the Associated Press from White House events until the news organization begins using “Gulf of America.”

Acts of unilateral renaming quickly turn maps into loyalty tests for domestic and international audiences. China, for example, forbids “separatist” maps in which Taiwan is depicted in a different color. Over the years, Beijing has battled with the Marriot hotel chain, the Man Booker International Prize, and several American airlines, seeking – with mixed results – to dictate how they refer to the island.

Domestically, governments usually have the tools to secure compliance. Internationally, though, they often have trouble bringing other countries or institutions in line. In this way, divergent maps can become an ongoing reminder of a country’s isolation. Rather than bringing the world around, they risk simply reinforcing the sense of grievance that led to their creation.

Of course, the stakes get even higher when name disputes expand into boundary clashes, even if those only stay on paper. No one is happy to see their neighbors embrace an overly expansive set of borders. Sometimes the threat is relatively minor. Syrian maps, for example, were never updated to acknowledge the loss of Alexandretta to Turkey in 1939. Ankara always objected, and the matter was a source of ongoing tension between the two countries. But as subsequent events demonstrated, Damascus was never in a position to challenge the status quo, and indeed may now face more pressure from Ankara to update its maps.

For Ukraine, by contrast, Russia’s irredentist maps are a matter of utmost urgency. Putin’s cartographic claims on Ukrainian territory—first Crimea, then the provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson—have kept pace with his military aggression. This is the more dangerous threat lurking behind map disputes. It’s why, for example, when Venezuela revised its national maps to claim Guyana’s Essequibo region, the U.S. responded by holding military drills with Guyana.

In explaining its support of Ukraine and Guyana, Washington has repeatedly invoked the principle that countries should not change international borders by force. While critics of America’s post-war foreign policy have sometimes noted that Washington didn’t always apply this principle with equal zeal, they have generally agreed that, as principles go, it is a good one.

The much-touted liberal international order may not have actually prevented countries from seizing one another’s territory. But it has had real, if more modest, success in ensuring that these conquests remain unrecognized. Which is why even when rogue states realize their territorial ambitions, their new maps are still left looking illegitimate.

This wasn’t selfless idealism on Washington’s part. America emerged from a century of Manifest Destiny with borders of its own making. It took the parts of North America it wanted and left the ones it didn’t. Subsequent victories in World War I, World War II, and the Cold War meant international borders were largely to Washington’s liking as well. As actual events kept evolving in Washington’s favor, the losers were left to nurse revisionist dreams and draw irredentist maps. Meanwhile Americans went home and got rich off stability and trade.

Trump, by contrast, has been far more open to redrawing borders. In 2019, he recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it originally seized in 1967. To drive the point home, he gave Netanyahu a signed map, with an arrow pointing to the Golan reading “Nice.” Then, in 2020, Trump recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. The decision, rewarding Morocco for joining the Abraham Accords, again reversed decades of U.S. policy. Now, expansionist powers are wondering what they might get in Trump’s second term. The Israeli government is hoping Trump will sign off on its annexation of the West Bank, and Moscow is hoping for a peace deal that will recognize Russian rule over large swaths of Ukraine.

Admittedly, the United States courted controversy by recognizing other border changes in the past. When America recognized Kosovo in 2008, for example, not everyone approved. But now over 100 other countries have done so as well. With the Golan Heights, by contrast, the number of countries that have joined America and Israel in updating their maps stands at zero.

And then, of course, there are Trump’s own territorial ambitions, whether in Greenland, Panama, Canada, or Gaza. So far, at least, the only American maps claiming any of these areas are low effort memes. But as the administration doubles down diplomatically, there’s always the possibility it will produce more revisionist cartography. At best, this will further antagonize allies while leaving America looking increasingly weak. At worst, it will lead to war.

The result, in either case, will be a world where everyone—and therefore, no one—is rogue. For America, this means sacrificing the power to shape borders and behavior around the world for the chance to make its own borders look a little bit bigger. There’s a reason great powers don’t play dumb map games. Once they start, there’s no way to win and a lot of ways to lose.