How a bogus map exposes 'one reason for Trump's obsession with Greenland'

On Monday, September 7, U.S. President Donald Trump published a fictional "map" on his Truth Social platform that depicted Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean as part of the "United States of America." The "map" inspired an angry outcry from Denmark and Iceland. Meanwhile, a different map debate raged in the United Nations World Assembly, and only one country voted against a UN resolution: the United States.

At issue in the "Correct the Map" resolution debate in the UN, according to Bloomberg News, is the "Mercator projection" — which, Bloomberg notes, "makes Africa and other parts of the Global South appear smaller than they are, while Europe and other northern regions appear larger." The Equal Earth projection, approved in the UN vote, shows Africa in its true size relative to other parts of the world.

Bloomberg News opinion columnist Andreas Kluth, known for his heavy focus on national security and geopolitics, examines the "Correct the Map" debate in his September 11 column — explaining why the U.S. voted against the resolution and arguing that it says a lot about the Trump administration's world view.

"The African diplomats who drafted a recent resolution by the United Nations to 'Correct the Map' of the world made a tactical error when they oversold their bit of common sense with flamboyant claims to 'cognitive justice and memorial reparation,'" Kluth argues in his column. "That kind of language, as they should have known, triggers Donald Trump and his MAGA followers. In the American president's worldview, the wording and the resolution provided yet more proof of wokeness to be expunged at the lefty, globalist and risible UN. And so, the world had to behold another embarrassing spectacle this month: As 164 countries voted to pass the map resolution at the UN General Assembly, only one nation voted against: the United States."

Kluth continues, "It fell to Yaryna Ferencevych, an American diplomat, to read out her government's rationale. 'While this initiative is presented as an anodyne effort to update cartographic proportions,' she said, 'it cannot be separated from the much larger and more radical ideological project it belongs to.' Picking on that unfortunate turn of phrase about cognitive justice, Ferencevych called such resolutions 'barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility.' Then, she called on all other countries to reject the text. None did."

Kluth notes that the UN resolution "does not ban any type of map" but rather, "recommends that schools, universities, charities and other institutions consider replacing one of the traditional map types, called the Mercator projection, with a newer one, the Equal Earth projection."

Kluth says of the Mercator map, "Greenland is especially exaggerated: It appears to be 14 times larger than all of Africa, when in fact, it is smaller than Algeria. That seems to be one reason for Trump's obsession with Greenland and his threats to seize it from Denmark, which have elicited a mixture of horror and ridicule among American allies."

"The Mercator distortion may also help explain why Trump, like other European and American statesmen for centuries, shows little interest in Africa, except when using it as a prop for his political memes," Kluth writes. "Many Africans, and others, assume he disdains their continent."

Kluth points out that Trump, on Truth Social, "painted the Stars and Stripes on a map showing countries from Cuba and Mexico to Canada, Greenland and Iceland."

"Reykjavik, far from amused, summoned the U.S. ambassador," Kluth writes. "On another map, Trump labeled the Strait of Hormuz as a 'New U.S. Territory.' All this implies more than mere confusion or ignorance. It suggests — let's use Yaryna Ferencevyc's phrase — a much larger and more radical ideological project: Nothing intellectual, mind you — just a brutish sense that maps had better show the world the way Trump likes to imagine it … It's not that leaders who wield coercive power use maps to shape their understanding of the world. It's that they start using their worldview to shape the maps."