A $30T superpower just revealed its acquisition strategy: browse, click, invade.

Stumbled across this in my LinkedIn feed and thought others my appreciate the digg.

"A $30T superpower just revealed its acquisition strategy: browse, click, invade.

On June 7, 1494, Spanish and Portuguese ambassadors gathered in a small Castilian town called Tordesillas.

They had a problem: Columbus had just returned with gold, slaves, and claims of new lands across the Atlantic. Both kingdoms wanted whatever else was out there.

Their solution was elegant: rather than fight over each discovery as it came, they decided to divide everything in advance.

Draw a vertical line through the Atlantic. Everything west of it: the Americas, the Pacific, the Philippines, belongs to Spain. Everything east: Africa, India, the spice islands of Asia, belongs to Portugal.

The Pope himself blessed the agreement with divine authority.

"The treaty was to continue in force and remain firm, stable, and valid forever and ever," the parchment declared.

5M Aztecs, 10M Incas, the Ming Dynasty in China or Shogunate of Japan: none knew that two small kingdoms at the edge of a continent called Europe had just assigned themselves their rulers.

On Christmas Eve 2024, Eric Trump posted his father's holiday shopping list: an Amazon cart containing Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Canada. "We are so back!!!" the caption read.

On January 3rd, American Delta Force operators dragged Nicolás Maduro from his bed in Caracas.

"It was like watching a television show," he mused to Fox News afterward. "The speed, the violence... an amazing thing."

Venezuela's oil reserves, the largest on Earth, await American investment.

Days later, Trump turned to Greenland. "We are going to do something whether they like it or not. The easy way. But if we don't do it the easy way, we're going to do it the hard way."

85% of Greenlanders reject becoming American. A Danish member of the European Parliament delivered Europe's response with uncharacteristic unparliamentary language: "Mr. Trump, f*ck off."

Putin's war in Ukraine has now lasted longer than the Soviet war against N@zi Germany.

Xi's New Year address declared Taiwan's ‘reunification’ "unstoppable."

The Treaty of Tordesillas lasted until England, France, and the Netherlands grew powerful enough to ignore it.

International law, it turns out, is what the powerful agree to call their arrangements.

What recourse do the weak have when the powerful abandon even the pretense of restraint?

Maybe the shopping cart meme was the most honest moment in American foreign policy in decades.

At least Tordesillas required a Pope.

Now we just need a checkout button."