Manifest Destiny Redux
Is the United States divinely ordained to expand?
The current administration appears poised to take control of other countries and their assets. Greenland and Venezuela hold vast oil and mineral reserves — resources that offer leverage, influence, and strategic advantage. The justification offered is familiar: keeping these assets out of other nations’ hands.
But land and property grabs are not new. They have been part of human history for as long as people have had the power to take what others possessed. When Europeans first arrived in North America, they treated the land as theirs for the claiming — and claim it they did. Manifest Destiny provided a moral wrapper around what was, at its core, a vast land grab.
The United States expanded by seizing land that Indigenous nations considered sacred — land that held their history, identity, and spiritual life. Through forced removal, broken treaties, and violence, Native peoples were pushed aside or killed so that others could claim what was theirs.
Without the shield of Manifest Destiny, these actions might have been seen as ill‑conceived or even outrageous. But wrapped in a divine mission, they became justified — even celebrated.
Expansion
As the young nation grew, its appetite for land and resources grew with it. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 secured control of the Mississippi River and vast western farmland, doubling the country’s size almost overnight. The Annexation of Texas in 1845, followed by the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), added half of Mexico’s territory — including what is now California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming.
Once the United States reached the Pacific, expansion simply shifted outward. The country annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii, gaining strategic footholds and valuable resources such as sugar and naval positioning. These were not always framed as land acquisitions, but the underlying purpose was unmistakable: access, influence, and control.
Even smaller, more obscure actions followed the same logic. Under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, Americans claimed dozens of uninhabited islands in the Caribbean and Pacific because they contained valuable fertilizer deposits. It was expansion cloaked in national interest — a pattern that had become familiar.
Until Vietnam, most American conflicts were tied to land, resources, or strategic territory. Vietnam marked a shift: a war fought not for property but for ideology. After that, a period of relative dormancy followed. The United States no longer sought new land, but it continued to expand its reach through economic influence, global markets, and, more recently, control of information and technology.
When nations stop expanding physically, they often find new forms of expansion — ideological, economic, digital, or strategic. The impulse doesn’t disappear; it evolves. For a time, the United States seemed to move away from territorial ambition, focusing instead on markets, alliances, and technological dominance.
But patterns have a way of resurfacing.
Today?
As I read today’s news, I can’t help noticing echoes of these older patterns. The United States is not annexing territory, but it is asserting control over places with strategic value — Venezuela’s oil reserves, Greenland’s minerals, and Arctic position. These moves are framed in terms of national interest, global competition, and security, much as earlier expansions were framed in the language of destiny or necessity.
This raises a question I can’t quite shake.
Are we witnessing a new form of expansion — not territorial, but resource-driven and strategic — that carries the same underlying logic as earlier eras? Is this a modern iteration of the belief that the United States is entitled, or even obligated, to extend its reach when opportunities arise?
I don’t have a definitive answer. But the pattern is familiar, and history suggests that when nations stop expanding in one form, they often find another.
Perhaps the idea of Manifest Destiny never disappeared. Perhaps it simply changed shape.
Yet I can’t help but wonder whether we are, in fact, divinely destined to take over?
I sense this current manifestation of our destiny is less about the continuity of history and more about Trump—the bottomless emptiness of his soul, which can only be temporarily assuaged by money and power. He said recently that the only check on his behavior is his own morality, and since he has none, he's capable of trying anything.
Nancy Pelosi opined that Trump's Greenland push is all at the behest of Putin, who sees that it will drive a wedge in NATO.