To: The People of the United States, January 25, 2026.
“Borders”
By Mark Albertson
“. . . we National Socialists must hold unflinchingly to our aim in foreign policy, namely, to secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled on this earth. . . . State boundaries are made by man and changed by man. . . “ Adolf Hitler[1]
* * * * *
Adolf Hitler’s assertion that borders are made by man and changed by man rings with unswerving truthfulness. In this the Fuhrer is seconded by another of history’s strongmen who was noted for altering his neighbors’ borders when it suited his needs, “. . . whoever occupies a territory also imposes on it his own social system. Everyone imposes his own social system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be any other way.” That man was Joseph Stalin.[2]
Man has been absconding with his neighbors’ land and resources for centuries; and he does so for whatever justifications he may conjure. Indeed, man will break treaties, violate accords, dismiss agreements and even disrespect alliances for self-indulgent agendas, which as history shows, quite often leads to war.
The present occupant of the Oval Office has issued pronouncements as to the fates of Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. The first named he has offered to purchase; but, has raised the military option as well; in particular with regards to Greenland and the Canal. Both Greenland and Denmark, the political overseer of Greenland as well as the Government of Panama, which controls the canal in question, have ruled out their territories from becoming jurisdictions of the United States.
Greenland is a large island rich in resources, such as: iron, uranium, nickel, platinum, tungsten, zinc, lead, titanium, copper, in addition to gold. Greenland is home, too, to oil and gas deposits, to which the Danish Government has ruled as not to be touched as this will despoil the natural beauty and topography of the island. Greenland is seen to contain desired rare earth metals.
The Panama Canal was actually built by the United States as a strategic and economic maritime asset between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It opened in 1913. Militarily it served the United States well, 1917-1918, and again in 1939-1945, including all years in between and following the aforementioned dates. It was President Carter who conferred sovereignty of the Canal to Panama.
Canada is somewhat of a different story. Here Trump would most likely exercise the economic option. Such as the tariffs he has threatened to employ and has employed, and not only against Canada, but Mexico as well. Yet the neighbor to the north boasts the world’s 9th largest economy. One of the few developed nations that is a net exporter of energy, with Alberta seen as having the 4th largest oil reserves in the world.
Canada is a leading exporter of gold, nickel, zinc, iron ore, copper, lead, coking coal, molybdenum, cadmium and, has a solid fishing industry, together with strategic maritime assets such as Baffin Bay, the Northwestern Passages, Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea.
Such a rap sheet of resources renders Canada a ripe plum for the taking. Yet American incursions into Canada have thus far ended in defeat. The Invasion of Quebec in 1775; then, during the War of 1812 there was the attack along the Detroit River in 1812, followed by an attempted incursion along the Niagara frontier and later with Anglo-American actions near Plattsburgh. Then minor border clashes such as the Patriot War, 1837-1838 and the Fenian Raids, 1866 and 1871. And today, in overwhelming numbers, as in times past, Canadians have demonstrated a sharp rebuke at the notion of becoming Americans.
Another area of the globe which can also be included here, . . . Gaza. A future Middle East version of the Rivera? Of course what major news media is not reporting on is the pilfering of the trillions of cubic feet of natural gas lying off the coasts of Palestine and Lebanon. A most obvious target for the Big Powers since the Great Game continues unabated. . . And the Palestinians who live–or who once lived–in Gaza? As is clearly evident and has been since time immemorial, and as history has clearly shown continuously over the centuries, that within the arena of foreign policy and no matter who conducts same, human life is cheap. Such is the Nature of Man.
Then there is Venezuela, again. The present round of unpleasantness conducted by the United States as it has done for many years sees again the energy potential of another of Mother Nature’s gas stations. And it is irrelevant who occupies the Oval Office. For America is addicted to fossil fuel. And that, of course, includes a sizable percentage of the American public who have been weaned on such greed at the expense of their neighbors for more than two centuries. It is a stark reality of Human Nature that a nation and a people cannot become a great power unless it takes from its fellow man. It is real life and how it works. Consult history.
The objective here in Venezuela is many sided:
1. Venezuela is strategically placed, situated as it is on the northern shoulder of South America, lying between Columbia to the west and Guyana to the east while overseeing Brazil to the south. Both Venezuela and Brazil are rife with resources. And Washington is hardly a fan of Chinese and Russian incursions into America’s back yard.[3]
2. Point one is bolstered by history. For note the following:
“In November 1902, the British suggested to the German Government joint action to stop the Venezuelans from interfering with their ships and failing to pay their traders. The Germans not only agreed but persuaded the British to institute a joint blockade; President Theodore Roosevelt thereupon stepped in and demanded that the two nations go to arbitration. The King, in common with his Ministers, was anxious to agree, which led the Kaiser to remark: ‘His Serene Highness is losing his nerve. Grandma (Queen Victoria) would never have talked like this. But Roosevelt told the German Ambassador in Washington that unless Germany behaved like Britain, an American squadron would be dispatched to prevent the seizure of Venezuelan territory. The Ambassador replied that his master, having publically refused to arbitrate, could not be expected to change his mind. Roosevelt replied that he was not arguing but merely transmitting information. A week later the Ambassador called again but made no mention of the matter; on being asked about it, he said he had no instructions from Berlin. Roosevelt said in that case the American fleet would leave a day earlier; he met the Ambassador’s protests by pointing out that nothing had been put on paper. If Germany agreed to arbitrate, he would praise the decision and treat it as a German initiative; if Germany continued to refuse, the fleet would sail. Twelve hours later the time limit expired, the Germans came to heel.”[4]
3) America is in decline, a downward trend that is irreversible, at least at this juncture. The people are hardly supportive of further corporate-serial wars which benefit the few more than the many; especially since it is the many who staff the armies for the few. Income and asset inequality is precipitously growing ever more cavernous. Has the time arrived, therefore, to preserve some of the empire by engaging in spheres of influence, since the America First crowd frowns on maintaining the systems of alliances which emerged victorious in 1918, 1945 and 1991. With the brewing affinity for authoritarianism perhaps a new accord for understanding could be arranged between Russia and China? A new version of the Tri-Partite Pact?[5]
4} Climate change, which is viewed by the present administration as a Chinese hoax, might prove to be the strategic tipping point. The ice sheets are melting in the Arctic and periphery land masses. Could this bring the day of an open Arctic Sea and adjacent bodies of water? Opening new vistas of travel by the world’s merchant marines and naval forces? Hence, perhaps, the current administration’s “interest” in Canada, Greenland and Panama Canal?
5) The elimination of a potential successful Socialist state as in Venezuela, and let us add Cuba, will conjure images of the 1973 coup in Chile against the socialist Salvadore Allende. The Nixon Administration decided to prevent a socialist government from taking root and spreading its tentacles of such a people’s state throughout South America. And if successful, perhaps even Western Europe? A capitalist’s dilemma no doubt.
Trump, like those before him, have sold themselves as leaders of the people. But the attraction of foreign policy and empire can not only become a distraction, but an addiction. Fomenting successful coups, absconding with neighbors’ resources, stealing strategic slices of territory for empire guarantees one’s entry into the history books. A pattern repeated time and time again. The desire for someone else’s land and resources has been a course of action undertaken by many realms, kingdoms, and nation-states. And, in particular, during the Age of Capitalism, is urged on by large corporations and financial institutions for new markets to command and control.
Ethnic supremacy and nationalism play large roles in the modern era of commercial imperialism. Note here the observation of Reverend Josiah Strong, Pastor of the Central Congregational Church, Cincinnati, Ohio:
It seems to me that God, with infinite wisdom and skill, is training the Anglo-Saxon race for an hour sure to come in the world’s future. Heretofore there has always been in the history of the world a comparatively unoccupied land westward, into which the crowded countries of the East have poured their surplus populations. But the widening waves of migration, which millenniums ago rolled east and west from the valley of the Euphrates, meet today on our Pacific coast. There are no more new worlds. The unoccupied arable lands of the earth are limited, and will soon be taken. The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history—the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled.
Long before the thousand millions are here, the mighty centrifugal tendency, inherent in this stock and strengthened in the United States, will assert itself. Then this race of unequaled energy with all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth behind it—the representative, let us hope, of the largest liberty, the purest Christianity, the highest civilization—having developed peculiarly aggressive traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind, will spread itself over the earth. If I read not amiss, this powerful race will move down upon Mexico, down upon Central and South America, out upon the islands of the sea, over upon Africa and beyond. And can anyone doubt that the result of this competition of races will be the survival of the fittest?
‘Any people,’ says Dr. Bushnell, ‘that is physiologically advanced in culture, though it be only in degree beyond another which is mingled with it on strictly equal terms, is sure to live down and finally live out its inferior. Nothing can save the inferior race but a ready and pliant assimilation. Whether the feebler races are going to be regenerated and raised up, is already much in question. What if it should be God’s plan to people the world with better and finer material?’[6]
Indeed, over the centuries imperialists of many varieties and stripes have used religion to favorably color their actions in order to covet their neighbor’s lands and resources. Should come as no surprise, then, to know, that man made religion, not the Creator.
Endnotes
[1] See pages 652 and 653, Volume Two, The National Socialist Movement, Chapter XIV, “Eastern Orientation of Eastern Policy,” Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.
[2] See page 114, II “Doubts,” Conversations With Stalin, by Milovan Djilas.
[3] N.A.T.O. has been a cause and effect for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, considered an integral piece of real estate in Moscow’s back yard (or front yard depending on your view point); such as it was for Stalin in 1945 when his Red Army served Hitler his eviction notice from Eastern and Central Europe. In addition to the fact, Stalin plugged that causeway of invasion into Russia from Europe; that is, Poland and Ukraine. Hence forth Mr. Putin’s popular justification for invading Ukraine, besides those he has invented for himself.
[4] See pages 243 and 244, Chapter IX, “Nightmare Becomes Reality,” The Kaiser and His Times, by Michael Balfour, 1964.
[5] September 27, 1940, in Berlin, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist Japan signed the Tri-Partite Pact, bringing together the world’s three leading Fascist powers. See page 523, Chapter 11, “Relations with Vichy and Spain,” Their Finest Hour, by Winston S. Churchill, 1949.
[6] See pages 174 and 175, Chapter XIII, “The Anglo-Saxon and the World’s Future,” Our Country, by Rev. Joshiah Strong, 1885.
Bibliography
Balfour, Michael, The Kaiser and His Times, Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1964.
Churchill, Winston S., Vol. 2, The Second World War: Their Finest Hour, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1949.
Djilas, Milovan, Conversations With Stalin, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., New York, 1962.
Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1943. Originally published, by VERLAG FRI KHER NACHF, G.M.B.H., 1925.
Strong, Reverend Josiah, Pastor of the Central Congregational Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, Our Country: Its Possible Future and its Present Crisis, The American Home Missionary Society, Bible House, Astor Place, New York, 1885.
