Angry Planet - Why An Empire Eats

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comConquest is back baby! Eastern Europe, Taiwan, Greenland, Canada? It’s all on the table—and maybe up for grabs. Here to help us sort through this new age of empire building is University of Chicago political scientist Michael Albertus.As always, climate changeWhither Canada?The coming Canadian century“Territorial ambitions sometimes bite back”The biggest caveats ever uttered on the show“An empire eats”The stories nations tell themselves“Getting more America”Picking the winners and losersA little optimism at the endHow land confers powerThose Were The DaysThe false promise of abundanceThe Coming Age of Territorial ExpansionLand Power: Who Has It, Who Doesn’t, and How That Determines the Fate of SocietiesSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, and welcome back to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. I am Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. Conquest is back, baby.

Eastern Europe, Taiwan, Greenland, Canada. It's all on the table. And here to help us sort through some of this stuff is Michael. Albertus, who wrote an excellent piece in foreign affairs earlier this month that caught our eye. Sir, can you introduce yourself? Yeah, and thanks for having me in the show. It's great to be here. I'm a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. I study how countries allocate opportunity and well-being among their citizens and the consequences that has for society. And that has brought me to

study things like democracy and dictatorship, inequality and redistribution, development, long-run development, and all of that went into writing my new book, Land Power, which gives me this sort of lens for thinking about the future of kind of global territorial expansion and ambition that we're sort of seeing play out in front of us in real time now. So we recently got to see that wonderful tour of Greenland with J.D. Vance had got many wonderful photos of the vice president appearing before very few people in a hostile land. There is a lot of joking and a lot of memeification of Trump's kind of obsession with Greenland. and but there there is like a serious real reason that we would want America would want Greenland and your piece in foreign affairs and your work really I think does a great job of

explaining that so can we start there why Greenland yeah so there is a bigger there is a bigger picture beyond you know the hey this seems like it's coming out of nowhere right this, Canada, and the like, there's a bigger, broader picture. And I think that there are a few different factors that are advancing the sorts of territorial interests. And in the case of Greenland, there are, you know, some of these factors, I think, are coming to a hit. So one of them is certainly climate change.

And, you know, not simply the fact that Greenland is going to be. to become more green over the course of this century, right, and more habitable and alike, which is the case, but probably more relevant is how climate change impacts to other factors for Greenland. Probably the most important is how it will impact northern sea ice, and that northern sea ice will start to melt to a greater extent. And that is going to position Greenland along some of the major shipping routes, global shipping routes, that are going to be opening up in the coming decades. In particular, the shipping routes have run on the northern part of Canada, along the northern

parts of Canada, and along the northern part of Russia. And so those shipping routes are going to now be and pass much closer to Greenland than they previously would have. And one can imagine actually Greenland having waypoints and alike along that route. Those are obviously going to be a major geostrategic importance. And so Greenland is very well situated in that. regard. Another way in which climate change is going to impact Greenland is that it's going to melt ice that is currently on Greenland that's going to make it easier to access minerals. And both on

Greenland and the landmass and in the waters off Greenland, you know, there's increasing concessions that are going on on these minerals. But as is probably apparent, the U.S. is right now on the hunt for sourcing, in particular rare earth metals, but other minerals as well that are important for the transition to not only to greener technologies, things like batteries for electric vehicles and the like, but also, you know, advanced military applications, AI and many other, you know, technologies that are kind of up and coming right now. So climate change is one of the major reasons why Greenland is very much sort of in the focus of the Trump administration. That leads me to two questions.

One is I thought they didn't believe in climate change. Two, why not just buy the stuff? Those are great questions. Let me take them in reverse. So why not buy the stuff? I think that's a very valid question. When it comes to the minerals themselves, you could imagine simply, you know, hey, using our alliance with Denmark, a relationship with Greenland to construct some sort of a deal, right? That would be perhaps even mutually advent changes as opposed to this, you know, zero sum.

We're going to take it no matter what, which is currently what the, you know, U.S. position on this is that we're going to get it one way or another. And we're using threats, you know, we refuse to take force off the table and the like. I think a lot of people are asking that question. I mean, I will say that from the perspective of, you know, if you look at it from the perspective of, let's say, geostrategic advantage or national security terms, which is, you know, one of the principal ways that the Trump administration is trying to advance this claim and couch this claim, right? That is not something that's so neatly kind of divisible, right?

I'll take some of these minerals, we'll give you some of that, et cetera. one could think about, you know, that sort of geostrategic position being one in which if the United States imagines that it's important to, you know, be able to dominate that space entirely, an unfettered manner, that that's not as easily divisible. Whether that couldn't be done through, you know, an alliance with Denmark is a little bit of a separate question. It's pretty easy in my view, or at least it's conceivable in my view, to see how that could happen. The other question about climate change, you know, I think that, look, I think that there are still climate deniers that are out there. But in my view, even the people who are publicly denying climate change are oftentimes privately, you know, acting in ways that are going to position themselves for the reality. I think that, you know, the numbers of climate deniers have certainly declined rapidly in recent years.

And I do think that, you know, the administration, there are many people in the administration who, you know, whether you agree with their policies or don't, I think are smart people and recognize that climate change is a reality. And they're going to try and situate position in the United States to be at the forefront of sort of taking advantage of what they can in this global changing context. It's funny. We are in this place now in America where it's almost Soviet in a way, where as long as you can deal with the realities, however you need to deal with the realities, as long as you talk about it in the right way. As long as you don't say global warming, as long as we scrub certain aspects from like these military reports, we can deal with the consequences of whatever is coming down the pipe, right? as long as we learn to talk about it in the correct way. And it really struck me reading your piece that we are, it's not like you can put your head in the sand with regards to climate change.

We are living with it every day. The consequences will be dealt with. It's not like we can't just ignore them, but what we can do is just make sure that we talk about it in the right way. Yeah. No, I think that's right. you know, we're in a very unusual position in many ways with this new administration in the sense that it has come out of the gate swinging on many different things and it is generating a environment of

insecurity and on the part of, you know, bureaucrats and the part of officials, fear as well, about the repercussions of crossing, you know, certain red lines and the like. And so people, I think, to a greater degree than, you know, that I can certainly remember to a much greater extent are policing their own sort of talk and are trying to coordinate the ways in which they discuss certain things within an official kind of line, right? That being said, I'm in agreement with, you know, with the first part of what you were saying here, which is that whether you like it or not, I think it's abundantly clear that the climate is changing. And we see that, this is not simply a question of speculation for the future, right? I mean, we see it in the data already, not only in temperatures, but also in sea level rise. and also in supercharged hurricanes or even in things like the L.A. wildfires, right, with a delayed and ever-delayed, you know, rainy season that lines up the dry season

with the Santa Ana winds in ways that generate a greater capacity for the sort of devastation that we saw in the, you know, wildfires in California. Those are all signs and signals of it. You know, we could think of declining agricultural productivity in the U.S. Southwest as well. There are many, many signs. And so I think anyone, and you can see this, if you look at, you know, missives and, you know, memos in the Department of Defense, they are very well aware of this, right? And they're not only well aware of it, but are also trying to position themselves to, and position the United States to try and grapple with and, you know, adjust to this changing environment. And when you think about it from, you know, again, from a strategic perspective, it would be folly to not take that seriously because even if other countries are taking it seriously

and they are taking steps, then we would be behind. Would we not take that reality seriously, right? And so, you know, I think Greenland is one example of this. You can think about this in other contexts too, but countries that are jockeying for influence in this changing, you know, kind of, this changing environment, this changing, you know,

power dynamic at the global. level and one that is also trying to reckon with climate change, if you are the last actor to get on board and to take steps that are wrecking with that and try and position yourself for that, then you will be behind. And I don't think that, you know, that this administration or any other administration, frankly, has, you know, has tried to put the U.S. in that sort of lagger position when it comes to this, despite some official rhetoric. So Canada, wither Canada. I mean, it seems like it, what you're saying, Canada makes a fantastic 51st state, except for the fact that there are Canadians living there. And some 35 million of them, I believe, maybe a little more.

Do you have any idea how serious they are down in Washington or I'm in Washington? How serious are they about this? I mean, if you occupied Canada, I got to think you're going to have one hell of an insurgency, if nothing else, right? How much arable land is going to appear in Canada over the next 10, 20 years? It's going to be a lot more space soon. Yeah, that's right. You don't necessarily have to push people aside so much. And we know that they can fight, right?

Anybody who's a hockey fan knows that they can fight. You know, I grew up playing hockey. And I grew up just across the border, you know, from Canada. And so I remember people, you know, joking about Canada being a 51st state, not in the sense of, you know, them being subjugated to America, but rather than they're very similar to us, right? In many ways, you know, culturally, economically, et cetera, then very similar to us. And so, yeah, I think, look, I would take this one in the short to medium term and perhaps even. in the near long term, I would take this one far less seriously than I would take probably Greenland. You know, I don't see the United States occupying or trying to incorporate Canada very soon,

but it's true that Canada fits into the same bucket as Greenland from the perspective of broader, you know, geostrategic considerations in climate change. And so, you know, as you said, the population of, you know, Canada today is, you know, whether it's 35 million somewhere around there, it's anticipated to grow substantially over the course of this century. And I think Canadians are trying to position themselves to take advantage of the coming changes in the climate, right? There's an initiative known as a century initiative to try and increase the population of Canada to 100 million by the end of this century. And there's considerable support for that amongst, you know, various, even amongst, you know, influential people in various political parties. And so Canada is on a path towards more open migration and

economic development in that sense. So, you know, Canada is also well positioned from the perspective of simply the changing climate. You know, there is about 4 million square kilometers more of arable land that are going to open up in Canada by about 2080. And, you know, whether all that land is going to become, you know, farmland or the like, certainly not all of it. You know, who knows what part of it would depend a lot on the choices that are made in the intervening time period. But one can imagine with, you know, an increasing population, you know, climate that is going to be an environment that is in many ways positioned to take advantage of, you know, a warming climate, you know, and increases to things like airability and land. China is pretty well situated, actually, from that there's a lot of sense. perspective of this. And of course, like Greenland, China's going to be host to, you know,

new northern shipping routes and they're like. And so I can see how the United States is concerned about or is considering, you know, the changing role that Canada is going to play in this new world. And, you know, from my view, again, why couldn't we take a more cooperative stance towards that, right? It's very easy to imagine on the basis of the last two, hundred years how you could make Canada part as opposed to a foe. But, you know, this administration is not obviously talking in those terms. The population, by the way, I looked it up is 40 million. So I'm 5 million behind the times. Plenty of room for Americans is what you're saying. Yeah. Well, at least I hope my application will be viewed favorably. Canada also one of the largest uranium reserves in the world. And I think one of the biggest,

one of the biggest producers, I think it was overtaken by Kazakhstan recently, but at a time when everyone is building more nuclear weapons, and the United States is looking to try to build a whole bunch of nuclear power plants, kind of reversing an anti-nuclear power trend in this country. We need a lot of uranium to do that. America has uranium, but not as much as Canada does. So there's some of those rare minerals up there for us too. Yeah, and that's, you know, what Justin Trudeau has pointed to in his conversations with Trump. I mean, his takeaway is that Trump is serious, you know, about the threat to Canadian sovereignty and that a lot of that stems from the desire to get access to these rare earth metals and minerals, right? So, you know, over the course of the last, you know, 15 or 20 years, China has in many ways cornered the market for the production and processing of many rare earth metals that are, again, critical for things like advanced semiconductors and batteries for electric vehicles and all sorts of new technologies, right? And, you know, the U.S. is worried about bottlenecks in, you know, in advancing these technologies because of an inability to access these rare earth.

minerals and Canada is and does indeed have, you know, a lot of deposits of a variety of valuable minerals. And so I think there is certainly a strong desire on the part of the administration to get a hand on more of those minerals. Is world conquest ever a good idea? I mean, and I... It's certainly a practical one. Well, but is it? You know, I mean, for every attempt to conquer the world. It built America, right? Westward expansion. We're all about this country's built on...

Technological imbalance. You know, I mean, biological warfare. I mean, but I guess I'm just wondering how this can possibly be worth it when, you know, I mean, we couldn't conquer Vietnam. You know, I mean, and Russia is having a huge problem with Ukraine. I mean, at least partially because of... us, but you've got to think that Canada might have a couple of friends somewhere. Right. There's no question that, you know, territorial acquisition sometimes bites back. So, you know, I think, Matthew, your, you know, suggestion about the U.S. being in some sense

of success kicks, right? I mean, Western expansion in the United States certainly was never peeled back. I mean, obviously it had. grave implications for indigenous peoples in the West and the like, but it did help to create a political and economic powerhouse, right? So there are examples, you know, or the construction of the British Empire or, you know, or the French or the Portuguese and Brazil. I mean, one can point to a lot of examples of territorial conquest that goes well, at least for a time. You know, sometimes it goes well, like in the United States so far, you know, westward expansion. mansion on balance for the winners has still felt like a good deal, right? But if you start to

think a little bit more carefully about a lot of the consequences in certain cases, you start to think actually, you know, maybe there are certainly limits to this, right? And there are many problematic cases of territorial conquest. So Russia is paying an enormous price in Ukraine right now, right, in terms of blood and treasure. Is that a conquest that is. going to come off in the better for the long term. You know, I don't know, but it's it's conquered Ukraine before and here it is trying to do it again, right? You know, if you think about the UK, how much, you know, treasure and to a lesser degree, well, blood too, right? But certainly treasure has the UK lost in Ireland, right? I mean, you know, slowly asserted control over

Ireland, starting really in the, you know, 1500s and 1600s, incorporated much of it into the kingdom, you know, and then had to fight off a revolution on the part of Ireland, right? That, you know, left the island partitioned and then generated the troubles, which the country again, you know, struggled with in the, you know, the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s. And then, you know, Brexit and things like Brexit, they're turning on this question about customs unions in Northern Ireland and the like. So in that sense, Britain is still paying a price for its attempt to acquire Ireland, right? And you can tell that same story about, you know, the acquisition of, you know, other British territories as well, right?

Whether it's, you know, Zimbabwe or India or the like, you know, all of which ended up, it ended up losing in the end, right? And the United States has similar, you know, examples of attempts at territorial acquisition that ended up in boondoggles in one way or another, right? if you think about something like the Philippines or Cuba or Haiti, all of which we occupied at some point in the 20th century and all of which we let go at some point, in part because of, you know, opposition and insurgencies and, you know, rising costs and prices of that sort of occupation, clearly that did not end well in those cases. And so, yes, I think it's a very significant or important thing to consider, you know, were we to take a place like Greenland, would you expect, you know, opposition? Yeah, I'd expect opposition not only from Greenlanders, but also probably from Europeans, right?

And even if, even if from Europeans, it doesn't end up in, you know, direct head-to-head conflict or something, one can imagine the ways in which, you know, the alliances would fray that would ultimately be quite costly as well for the United States in its interests. And I would also point out the most successful conquest usually involves some form of genocide or levels of cruelty that usually the U.S. isn't up for. I mean, there are some examples in the Philippines from when Philippines was a colonists of massacres. But in addition to the overall genocide of the main continental mainland. I mean, those are some pretty big caveats. Well, yeah, those are pretty huge.

caveat, so I take it back. But anyway, I'm just saying it's like in order to be successful, the level of brutality you have to be willing to inflict seems pretty high. That's absolutely right. I think that's right. I think, you know, in the, yeah, the quote-unquote success cases come with, you know, severe toll and a severe amount of brutality. And even in those cases, you know, they aren't, even in those cases, oftentimes they're not complete wins, right? I mean, even these campaigns of, you know, of massacre or genocide or the like are often incomplete. And, you know, if we think about, you know, political battles in the West, you know, there are still a lot of unsettled questions and still a lot of conflicts that go on between the U.S. government and between, you know, Native American communities. And so that did in the end survive, right?

And so, you know, they're not like it was not like it was easy in many ways. And there have been a lot of struggles, of course. But yeah, so there are still these residual issues. So I think that's exactly right. The cost is very high and, you know, never completely goes away either. It feels like an empire eats, that's just the nature of an empire. It eats until it dies. in its

long-term survival is contingent on knowing when to cut its losses. In America, up until I would say the last 20 years or so has been pretty good about knowing when to cut its losses. Am I wrong there?

And have things changed? Well, so I would say, you know, I guess there's an open question as to what that means in terms of cutting its losses. You know, one could say, you know, certainly something like Vietnam was obviously a huge, you know, very costly conflict. And, you know, did the United States bite off more than it could chew? I think the answer to that is yes. And, you know, it paid quite a significant cost for that. But at the same time, you know, in general, in the last, you know, in the post-World

War II period, there has been, you know, a rather successful norm against, you know, efforts at territorial acquisition and territorial incursions. You know, first that came through kind of Cold War competition and the like, and then after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the role of the United States on the world stage, I think it had learned some of these lessons. But, you know, that, that instinct. that you have amongst superpowers to try and go further and go further and, you know, muck around not only in other countries' affairs, but also at certain cases to try and acquire territory, that is something that we see repeated again and again and again throughout history.

And I think in many ways this kind of what we're seeing now, what we're trying to reckon with now is the notion that, you know, 1945, 1946 didn't bring us into a new world that will define humanity forever, but rather that that was a bit of an aberration from, you know, longstanding trends in, you know, efforts to acquire land and acquire foreign territory on the part of empires. And so, yeah, I think that we are returning to that earlier stage. And also, I would agree, on the one hand, you know, the acquisition of foreign territory can be a very powerful tool to, you know, whether it's to extract resources or to dominate certain populations politically or what have you. And we see that again and again and again, whether it's the American West or the Spanish colonization of Latin America or, you know, the British colonization of India or what have you.

On the other hand, we have seen many examples of all of that coming unwound, right? And, you know, and backfiring in different ways. And so I would say, you know, when it comes to these efforts at territorial expansion, better beware because a lot of times the long-term costs are, they can be quite significant. And one has to take that into account when you're playing the short-term games here. I think what you were talking about in terms of, you know, the global West, the idea of like we were going to create a whole new world after World War II. and everyone was going to play by rules and everything was going to be great. It was enormously successful, no? I mean, it wasn't that there was no war or any, but nothing on the scale of what we had seen over and over again.

It's like I said during our conversation about, I think, I don't know if it made it to air, but before we talked to Max Reed, like we had a pretty good thing going. Yeah. Yeah. And so did much of the world, right? For all of its faults. And at least it looked like that way. For all of its faults and all the horror that was wrought in our name and in other places, we had a pretty good thing.

And we seem hell bent now on finding out why we had built the world in the way that we had, the hard way. Yeah, if you compare the first half and the second half of the 20th century in terms of, you know, cost in human lives and conflict in terms of, you know, underdevelopment as a result of competition, you know, foreign incursions and again, war and the like. I mean, it's completely, there's no comparison, right? I mean, the early 20th century was a place that was a, it was a brutal place to live. And, you know, certainly if you're in Europe, but also if you're in many other parts of the world, right, where conflict and conquest are playing up in different ways. And, you know, the second half of the 20th century is really a big departure from all of that. Again, notwithstanding,

you know, a number of conflicts that did transpire, whether domestically or internationally, but the scale was much more contained and at a much smaller scale than anything that came before it. And at the same time, we had also had this, a global order in which, you know, the United States as a superpower was trying to advocate for democracy and development in developing countries, right? And in less developed countries. And that had enormous, that had enormous consequences. I mean, I've talked to, you know, dozens and dozens of people across many different countries whose life trajectories and the trajectories of their families had been fundamentally altered by that different position.

right that different kind of sort of position in and yeah returning to a world in which you know territorial expansion and global superpower competition that can become hot is you know the the modus operandi has a lot of risks it has a lot of risk and and so yes i would agree that you know we had we had something that was good going for us it's less clear to me that this new world is going to be better for you know, for many folks. I think that, you know, maybe a small number of people or at least for certain time periods might, that might be true. But in the longer term, I don't see this being a better place to go. So why are we going this way? Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think it's a valid question. I think it is part of this. I think that there's a lot of domestic reasons why we are going this way politically. So I think that there are international ones and their domestic ones, right? So, from the international side we've already talked about. I think there are these pressures of things like climate change and shifts in technology. And in a more globalized world, the need to kind of access, you know, resources where you can to feed things like, you know, advanced technologies that can compete with China and the like.

So there is an international dynamic to this. And it's not something that occurs in a vacuum, right? you know, the increasing competition with China has been evolving over time. I mean, it was, it was certainly a feature of the Biden administration as well. And so it's been, it's been brewing now for some time. So there is an international component. There's also a domestic component to this, of course, I think, which is part of what led to the rise of Donald Trump and the re-election of Donald Trump, which is the fact that there are many Americans who feel like the system has failed, them in various ways or has left behind in various ways. And those people want an outsider who is going

to shake things up and break things as they currently are. And I think that this is part of that broader kind of political response to that electorate, right, which is that, you know, hey, we're not going to be an, we're not going to be an administration that follows the typical rules, whether it's we're going to follow, you know, what we consider to be, you know, politically correct or, you know, agreed upon, you know, policies or norms, left, right and center over the course of the last several decades, we're charting the new path and independent path. And that's true, not only domestically, but we're doing that on the international stage as well. And that means, hey, you know, no more free launch for Europe when it comes to security arrangements, right?

That means China, you know, we're going to go head to head with you, et cetera. etc. So I think it's part of that political I think it's part of that political response to what has been kind of a growing domestic malaise when it comes to cross and satisfaction with

institutions. This speaks to this thing I've been thinking about a lot lately that I think is tied up in the acquisition of land that nations sustain themselves on a story that they tell themselves and this territorial expansion is a great piece of a lot of stories that nations tell themselves.

See this in Russia with the way that Putin has sold the war in Ukraine. It is, you know, I hate to bring this up, but it was, you know, it was a big part of World War II and why World War II happened in the way that Hitler operated, right? And it does seem like Trump has found a story to tell America. that a lot of Americans believe, and it's tied up in this territorial expansion. Make America great again means getting more America. I agree with that. I agree with that.

I think it fuels or it feeds into this broader narrative of nationalism and what it means to be a member, a proud member of a nation, a proud member of the United States, right? The administration clearly has a, you know, a line that it's, takes on that. And that has implications for a lot of different things. It has implications for how we think about, you know, what constitutes deservingness for social welfare programs. It has implications for how we conduct our national security and our international affairs and everything in between that as well. I think that that's one thing, yes, that unites and that motivates this sort of campaign of Make America Great Again and what exactly does that mean?

You know, I will also say that when it comes to, you know, you could also look at some of this through this lens of, you know, what you might call competitive authoritarianism. Some might call it right-wing populism, you know, if you want to go there. But when you think about the playbook of this administration and some of the actions that it is taken and how that relates to, you know, broader global shifts in the erosion of democracy and the positioning of elected authorities vis-a-vis their constituents, ones that would attempt to try and, you know, consolidate power, kind of break a status quo that has been in place for a long period of time. It also fits in that, I think, in that role of kind of using, in part,

this broader, you know, aggressiveness on the international stage to fuel a domestic message about what it means to be part of the nation and to be proud of the position that it takes or has in the world. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the other, something you described in your article are winners and losers, Canada being a big winner, but also Russia. how is climate going to affect Russia in the coming decades? And how do you see it as a winner? It's going to affect Russia in many of the same ways that it affects Canada, in fact, in the sense that there's a pretty similar impact that climate change will have, let's say, on the airability of land in Russia. About 4 million square kilometers of land in Russia are going to become newly.

arable in the same way that that is true for Canada. So, you know, also in a similar way, the permafrost is going to be fine in Russia in the same way that it is in Canada. And that, you know, and also, you know, northern shipping routes are going to run along the northern coast of Russia in a similar way that they're going to run along the northern coast of Canada. And so both of these countries, I think, are positioned in an analogous fashion. to benefit in different ways from a change of client. That's not to say that all of the changes will necessarily be beneficial. So, you know, things like melting permafrost actually come with a lot of consequences

in terms of infrastructure, right? It's very difficult to maintain, you know, roads, electrical grids, etc. when the ground is freezing and thorn and freezing and thon, when, since time immemorial, it had previously been frozen, and you didn't have to think about that, right? So that's one major, you know, concerning to think about gas pipelines, a lot of other things become problematic when all of a sudden the burner frost starts to thaw. Of course, you know, in environments where there's freezing and thawing, I mean, there are ways to deal with that. And so you have to change.

There's a short term of cost in the changing of infrastructure, right? And that might be substantial. But, you know, but there are also these other kind of benefits, right? Of course, there's also, you know, variability in climate, you know, that comes. with climate change, let's say, okay, you've got four million square kilometers of land that are going to become more arable by 2080 roughly. There's still this question of how much of it can be used and what other land might be threatened because of, you know, variability in, again, snowfall or rain patterns or, you know, which generate these kind of extreme weather events.

You might be flooding or the like. So all of that, again, is to say that there are benefits and drawbacks to the climate change picture, but that Russia is situated in a very similar way to Canada. Whether it will take advantage of that in the same ways as Canada, I am far more skeptical with that, unless the political system, you know, unless the political system start to, you know, mirror each other more carefully, I would suspect that Russia is actually going to take a pretty different path to dealing with this than Canada will. And who are the losers? Which regions are going to lose and what will happen to them? So there are going to be both regional losers as well as what you might call local kinds of losers, right?

So you could think of coastal areas as, you know, particularly those that are subject to sea level rise as being losers, right? They're going to suffer from, you know, not only from, you know, sea level rise, but also, you know, all of the variability in storms and storm surges and the like that's associated with that kind of higher sea level rise. So there's those kinds of local considerations, or even in some ways you could think about the example of the LA wildfires, right? Having, you know, the rainy season moved back in time in such a way that it so happens that the dry season now lines up with these, you know, really strong winds that come off this year and Nevada Mountains. So it can cause conflagrations in wildfires. That's kind of a localized thing. You know, but there's a broader picture in California and there's a broader picture elsewhere, you know, in broader. in terms of regions and thinking about who are going to be losers because of whether it's a

more variable climate or a drier climate or a hotter climate or the like. And writ large, you know, some of the biggest losers when it comes to those regions and those factors that I just mentioned are places like sub-Saharan Africa, you know, the American South West, certain parts of, you know, of coastal and even interior China, of the middle, least places where, again, in most of those cases, the biggest concern is, you know, increasing drought conditions and, you know, greater increasing temperatures as well, which makes it more difficult to be, you know, productive and the like, and makes places less habitable. And so that's going to generate its own set of, its own set of pressures in terms of how that impacts this,

this broader picture of territorial competition and conflict. And so think about Africa Ferdinette, right? You know, this, this changing climate picture is going to coincide with increasing populations in Africa. So the highest birth rates in the world are, many of them, are still in African countries. And so a place like Nigeria is positioned to perhaps have over 700 million people by the end of the century. It might even surpass China's population by the end of the century, according to current demographic predictions. And so, you know, that is going to generate a lot of tensions and problems. You know, how can you support 700 million Nigerians with the resources and the territory

that is in current, you know, within the current boundaries of Nigeria? That's going to become very difficult, right? It's hard not to imagine there being, you know, one, big population flows and two, you know, problems with neighbors as, as Nigeria. tries to deal with, you know, resource and territorial constraints and threats in this changing climate. That's interesting because they're already not that far from being a failed state. I mean, certainly in the north. And, yeah, I mean, what in the world happens when you have a failed

state of that size? It's bad enough when you have a failed state the size of Afghanistan. Which is also, I would argue, Afghanistan is somewhat more contained. I mean, you've got lots of mountain ranges and stuff like that, which, anyway, I don't want to get in. And also probably a pretty... Too far above my skis. A pretty complicated, like, internal structure. They're much more concerned with what's going on with their neighbors than they are what's going on across the border in, say, Pakistan, right? Right, right, right.

And, I mean, if Nigeria needs resources, I mean, it does... Oh, my God. what do they do? What does that look like? I mean, are not to spell too much doom and gloom here, right? But, you know, I mean, there are other, of course, there's other factors that are going to be at play in Africa. I mean, I anticipate Africa, you know, economic development in Africa is going to shift dramatically over the course of the next century, right? So while we have increasing populations, we're also going to be, we're also going to have, you know, wealthier societies, more capable states, you know, more sophisticated bureaucracies than the like, nonetheless, it is impossible not to see the growing pains that are going to be associated with that sort of expansion at a time when again, the climate is putting real pressures on these societies, right, in terms of resource scarcity, natural disasters, and the like. And so, yeah, there are going to be, I think, it will be a very challenging place.

I think in many ways, a lot of parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And Nigeria is not the only one, right? Places like Tanzania, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to grow quite dramatically and to be amongst, you know, the top 10 or 15 most populous countries in the world by the end of a century. And that is really going to change a lot of these dynamics. And you point to a recent example from Africa at the end of your piece in foreign affairs. right? Can you kind of walk us through that? Sure. Yeah. So, you know, currently the M23 rebels with, you know, depending on how you want to, who you ask or how you talk about it, you know, some degree of tacit or outright sort of support by the Burrana government are mucking around in, you know, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and are doing things like getting involved in the extraction of heritage metals.

And the Rwandan government is benefiting from that and even has some rhetoric about how it makes maybe makes sense, actually, for Rwanda to have a greater presence in that part of Africa, you know, and to more formally occupy, you know, some of these other, you know, some of these other kind of border regions. But yeah, one could look at that again through this lens of, you know, a changing climate and changing demand for resources at the forefront of technology that leads. to these deep reaches into, even into, you know, into weak states, into frontiers, into conflict zones and the like in order to try and secure and extract resources from these places to feed these broader economies, right? And these broader technological shifts. And so, yes, I see that, it's hard not to see that in the same way that I see things like, you know, threats to greenland. So how do we conclude a conversation like this

without just saying I feel like I've seen this movie before? Well, this is what we do. We segue into talking about the book. Yeah. Yeah, because we're not going to solve the world's problems. Is that what you're telling me?

No, world's problems are going to keep on churning. In fact, one of the things I really like about this conversation is an important reminder, I think, to everyone looking at the rise of authoritarianism across the planet, looking at climate change and the consequences of it, I think there's a lot,

there's a tendency to really lean into grief and believe that it is the end of the world. And the sad truth is that the world doesn't end. It keeps going and it changes. And sure, things can get worse, but there's also opportunities for change there, dramatic change. And we're certainly shifting into the,

cool zone where all the dice are flying through the air and they could land in all sorts of different ways. Maybe after some pain, it'll be better. Who knows? Short term, though, not good. I could maybe have two pieces of potential optimism, right? In this discussion, you know, perhaps there's probably others too. But here, too, one of them is, okay, so you've got this changing population.

demographic picture, right? I laid that out for Africa, which populations are growing quite substantially. In other parts of the world, that's not going to be the case, right? So global populations are going to peep before the end of the century and that are probably going to decline. And, you know, unless there's big shifts with, in terms of the relationship between, you know, economic development, wealth, and fertility rates, right? But already in places like South Korea and Taiwan, you know, China, Germany, et cetera. The populations are decreasing, not increasing. And so that, the positive upshot of that, I mean, that has potentially a lot of downsides

too. It can generate a lot of political issues, economic issues, and the like. But putting those aside for a minute, when you look at the point or how that impacts with climate, right, you know, it should generate less pressure for resources, right? A competition for resources should ease. populations decline. I mean, now that's, again, if you think about the coming century, not the current. So that's one very long-term piece of the puzzle.

And again, there are other potential consequences of it, too, which we could get into. Perhaps not so rosy, but I think that there's certain aspects of it that are perhaps not so bad. And the second picture is that, look, you know, with the current Trump administration position, these are the, whether it's Ukraine or Greenland or, you know, or their relationship with NATO or the like, I mean, one thing that we're doing is we are pushing Europe farther away and we are making it abundantly clear to Europe that we're, that this longstanding alliance, this tight alliance is becoming afraid. And it's becoming, it will become much more difficult to trust the United States as a partner, not only now, but also in, you know, in the coming years. And I do think that that is going to, you know, force Europe to sort of strengthen its position of a world stage. And I view that position as being a, you know, a force for good, probably.

In the coming years, I think a stronger Europe with the values that Europe, for the most part, holds right now, would be a good thing. You know, there are a lot of tensions within Europe already in a number of, you know, also within a number of countries, right, that are, you know, some of the same threats that are playing out to American democracy are playing out in places like Italy and Germany and the like. But Europe has done so far a pretty good job of, you know, muddling through in the last decade or 15 years against a lot of headwinds in the wake of the great recession and the debt crisis, the pandemic and the like. And so that could also be, you know, a force for good, at least in the coming years. I love the idea, you know, of the rest of the world looking to Europe, which, you know, just with European history around the world.

Doesn't feel good. It's pretty funny. Yeah. That's right. No, that's right. I mean, it's certainly, it's hard to imagine, I mean, from a 20th century perspective, thinking about Europe as a global leader, a united force for, you know, for democracy and peace. That's, you know, inconceivable, right, for thinking about that. 75 years ago or the like.

But I wouldn't take it completely off the table. And I think some of the forces right now are tending towards that in the short term. Whether Europe is able to hang together and pull that off, I think that will, of course, not be easy. But I don't think it's off the table. All right. So zooming way out, even more than we've already zoomed out,

is... Are we going into space, Matthew? Going into space. Yeah, going to space... And looking at the planet from up above, like we're playing Civ 7 or something. something spinning the globe around. Your book land power, which, as far as I can tell from the very brief time that I've

zoomed around reviews and read the Amazon summary while we were having this call, I'm very embarrassed. It's a bad podcast preparation, and I apologize, is kind of a history of the way people reshuffle land. And what land means politically, socially, how it confers power to people, right? That's right. Yeah.

You know, the main thesis is that, you know, the relationship between humans and land has really tightened over, ever since, you know, humans really settled in permanent settlements on the land, you know, from about 10,000, you know, BC, but certainly by 5,000 BC when there were permanent agricultural towns and people were living off the land and creating agricultural surplus, since that moment, that surplus has been appropriated by some and used to control power, control society, and to project power and, you know, to frontiers.

And that has been happening, you know, for, so again, for the last 7,000 years since 5,000 BC to give our time and again, because land is power, it generates, you know, it generates these forms of social and economic and political power such that those who own land come to dominate, those forms of power and those who don't become dominated. And we see that theme playing out again and again. So looking at what's happening now, does it rhyme with any of the history that you studied? So, yes, I would say that it does. I mean, I would say that, again, we see these, you know, since the time of 2000 or 3,000 BC, there's evidence of, you know, groups in ancient Mesopotamia that are trying to kind of, you know, or neighboring lands, right, and that are disputing neighboring territories. I mean, we, we have that evidence, and then we have, you know, quite a lot of human history since that time period,

in which we see this going on again and again, such that, you know, again, in the post-World War II period, from that perspective, seems more like an aberration or an outlier, as opposed to that, right? You know, there are also a lot of internal, you know, in the book, I cover a lot of these internal land reshuffles as well, that's kind of domestic reshuffles of land. right you might think about that happening you know let's say after um you know china um during china civil war right and under the period the early period of communist uh ruled in china between 1940 and 1953 you know the mass seizure of land across the entire country and then ultimately you know forcing you know over 400 million people into cooperatives and like i mean that's a domestic

land reshuffle or post bolshevik revolution or the like but we also see these this international competition playing out and for land and the, you know, the projection of land power abroad. I just have one more thought and you tell me because it's actually the most depressing thought I think I've ever had, which is... I don't believe that for a second. No, no, no, you're going to listen, listen, okay. Is it possible that the last 70 years are as good as it gets? that is a depressing thought. It has crossed my mind.

It's possible that some version of that is true. It's possible that some version of that is true. You know, can we get back there? Maybe. We're not heading that way now, though. And, you know, I'm concerned, you know, a couple more years of whether, even if it's rattling the saber,

but certainly if we were to take it further in terms of, you know, extending, you know, attempts to, you know, extend American territorial control elsewhere. And, you know, and other countries are learning from this, right? Their attempts to extend territorial territorial control elsewhere. Once that genie comes out of the bottle, it's very difficult to put it back in. And so reconstructing a world order that is based on a greater degree of kind of peace and security and democracy and the like, it's not an easy thing to put together, as we know from human history. and it may not be an easy thing to quit back together either.

Sorry, not to disabuse you with that depressing notion. That's where we like to go by the end of the show. It's usually somewhere real depressing. I have, you may not have an answer to this or may not have been following it, but it's a snarky question I want to ask anyway. You know, talking about the rise in arable land in Canada and Russia, I was thinking, you know, there is another vision of the future that's out there right now where we're going to build vertical archologies that are filled with synth meat and plants,

and everything will be abundance. And I was wondering if you were following the discussion or have read the Ezra Klein book and have any thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I think there are different versions of that, right? So there's the, hey, we need to get rid of certain, like certain archaic, bureaucratic processes that hold up the ability to provide certain things, whether that's housing or high-speed rail or what have you, and to create a greater, more robust, abundant economy. I think that is a future that I can envision in certain ways, right? On the other hand, some of the more utopian ideas, you know, whether it comes from, you know, vertical farming or producing everything we need to have, you know, from the land with a very small footprint, I don't see that happening very easily.

I mean, I don't see us changing a lot of our consumption patterns when it comes to high land use items, whether that's, you know, beef or the like. I also see us, you know, adopting new technologies that are very land intensive and resource intensive. Things like AI are extremely resource and to a lesser degree, but still a significant degree, land intensive. You know, building these, you know, server centers and the like. So I think that getting to that future, I think, is not going to be an easy and seamless one. And I think that there's not as clear a path there. Michael, thank you so much for coming on to the show and putting up with me. me. The book is land power and the article is in

foreign affairs. It is the coming age of territorial expansion. We will have links to both in the show notes. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on the show. It was a pleasure. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell, who's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, Angry PlanetPod.com, you can sign up to get advanced versions of the mainline episodes, and they are

commercial free as well. We will be back soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.