Cut and Paste Anglo-America

So, everybody’s been talking about Trump’s let’s-make-a-deal ideas about Greenland and Canada.  I’ll leave the Panama Canal out of this because that’s more of a strategic situation.  But Canada and Greenland are a very interesting opportunity.  All of that northern real estate really makes a lot of sense if the world really is warming, for whatever reason.  Northern Canada and even Greenland might be the new North American breadbasket.  And the mineral wealth of the north is currently incalculably large.

Now some Canadians have been outraged at Trump’s talk about a 51^st state.  One Canadian legislator took a shot back and said that California, Oregon and Washington would be better off leaving the US and becoming a part of Canada.  Well, that has its advantages for both sides.  And it inspired me to think about the US and Canada getting together and doing some real horse-trading that would better align the red and blue parts of Anglo-America into two more homogeneous groupings.  Basically, I imagined Canada adding the American Northeast, part of the Great Lakes States and the West Coast while America gets the Rocky Mountain, Plains and Arctic provinces and territories from Canada.  Oh, and we paint Greenland red too.

Think of it.  No more wrangling every four years during the elections.  All of the blue states and the blue provinces together feeling smug and virtuous.  While the red states and provinces will be rid of them and free to enjoy life on our own terms without their constant complaining, lunacy and hypocrisy.

Basically, we would lose about a third of our population but double the size of the country.   They would more than triple their population while losing about a third of the area that was Canada.  But there would be so much more temperate climate than in old Canada that I can’t imagine they’d complain much about it.  One slight problem, their territory would no longer be one contiguous area.  There would be East Coast Wokistan and West Coast Wokistan but what’s a few plane flights between friends?  Plus, they’re bound to start a feud between themselves and that will just give them an excuse to break into two pieces anyway.

So, there it is.  A big beautiful deal just waiting to be brokered by the world’s biggest wheeler-dealer.  Come on make it happen.

Below is an ersatz map of what the two new countries would look like.

Below this is the details of the area and populations of the component states and provinces that I used for the calculations above.