Sibylla Bostoniensis

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Four days ago (2025 Mar 14), NBC News had an article titled "Trump's quest to conquer Canada is confusing everyone". Well, I am most certainly not confused, except by others' confusion.

Lots of people on the American left, broadly construed, have compared Trump to Hitler, but apparently didn't mean it. Or rather, have been so acculturated to an identity politics worldview that sees everything in terms only of identity-based oppression, they solely equate Hitler with the Holocaust, and forget the other thing he's famous for.

You know: starting World War II.

A word you are looking for is lebensraum:

Lebensraum (German pronunciation: [ˈleːbənsˌʁaʊm], living space) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901,[4] Lebensraum became a geopolitical goal of Imperial Germany in World War I (1914–1918), as the core element of the Septemberprogramm of territorial expansion.[5] The most extreme form of this ideology was supported by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, the ultimate goal of which was to establish a Greater German Reich. Lebensraum was a leading motivation of Nazi Germany to initiate World War II, and it would continue this policy until the end of the conflict.[6]

Now, I risk misleading you by gesturing towards lebensraum, because unfortunately I think there is a widespread misunderstanding of lebensraum: there's a tendency to take its proponents, both pre-Nazi and Nazi, a little too much at their words.

The problem is that the doctrine of lebensraum was an excuse for the act of invasion. It was a justification for what they wanted to do. And as justifications go, even if one thinks invading other countries is wrong, one might be tempted to think it is sufficiently plausible, and that the reasons they claimed were wholly adequate to explain what moved them.

The proponents of lebensraum argued it was necessary for reasons of resources, i.e. that they had to conquer other lands because they needed resources those countries had. From the Holocaust Encyclopedia:

Renowned German geographer Friedrich Ratzel coined the term in 1901. He and many others at the turn of the century believed that a nation had to be self-sufficient in terms of resources and territory (a concept known as autarky) to protect itself from external threats.

[...] Ratzel argued that the development of a people was influenced by their geographic situation, and that a society who effectively adapted to one geographic territory would logically expand the borders of their country into other territory. Pointing to the British and French Empires and to American “Manifest Destiny,” Ratzel contended that Germany required overseas colonies to relieve German over-population. The East presented another logical outlet for growth.

I'm not arguing that the Germans didn't believe they "needed" other people's territory and natural resources, and really, really want them. That is a thing. But maybe really, really wanting something isn't actually sufficient explanation for being willing to go to war for it.

Wars are expensive. Munitions don't grow on trees and armies travel on their stomachs. Wars take money and they kill people, including one's own soldiers, and even if one has no ethical qualms about wasting human lives, soldiers are a finite resource, so there's an soullessly economic reason not to.

At the very least, before heading off to conquer one's neighbors for their land and natural resources, one had better have worked out the cost-benefit analysis and found it substantially to one's advantage even when the other side shoots back.

But there's another weight on one side of that scale.

Wars have an effect on the societies that wage them. And tyrants often very much want that effect on their society.

They want the populace to "come together" – a euphemism which means "drop their grievances against the abuses of the government and get in line" – to "support the war effort". They want an excuse to militarize the society: to round up dissidents or foreigners as traitors to the all-important military cause, to put the populace under military law, to impose a draft, to distract the populace from other issues with the urgency of military exigencies, to normalize and promote a belligerent nationalism as the national culture, to justify "austerity" policies, to expropriate resources from the larger society to funnel into the ruling class under the guise of supporting the troops.

Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war, but it was evident that there had been a fairly long interval of peace during his childhood, because one of his early memories was of an air raid which appeared to take everyone by surprise. Perhaps it was the time when the atomic bomb had fallen on Colchester. [...]

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. [...] At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia.

[...] the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

– 1984, Orwell

Going to war is a way of suppressing dissent at home. Going to war is a way of getting legal and normative license to suspend rights. Going to war internationally is a way for the present rulers to consolidate power domestically.

I'm not saying that Trump and his administration don't actually want whatever they could acquire by conquering Canada – the NBC article quotes sources suggesting that Trump wants the Northwest Passage or natural resources – but that is of a secondary consideration to what a glorious thing it would be, as they see it, to put the US on a war footing and reorganize American life around servicing the needs of an adventuresome military.

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