Jake Auchincloss

And now it has a Western flank issue where it's trying to defend Greenland from American belligerents.

This plays directly into Putin's hands.

And the link, I think, is twofold.

First, that 28-point plan that the president initially proposed for Ukrainian peace, eight of those 28 points were non-starters.

One of those points was joint Russian-United States minerals, mining and oil ventures.

Well, where would those joint ventures happen?

in Greenland.

And that does two things for the Russian government.

One is it ties it back in to a lot of Western trade and commercial exchanges that it had been iced out of after its invasion of Ukraine, and that Russian government needs those sources of revenue.

And two, to your point, it demoralizes, disorients, and distracts NATO from what needs to be its singular focus, which is defending the sovereignty, not just of Ukraine, but of all the Baltic states.

I think in a first order approximation,

You are right that the spheres of influence mentality deeply influences MAGA and this administration.

They view it as the manifestation of their America first mentality.

So the United States has Western hemisphere, as you said, China gets to do Asia Pacific, including Taiwan and potentially Singapore, definitely Hong Kong, all the way through the South China Sea in their nine dash line projections.

If you're the Philippines, a long time US ally, watch out under Donald Trump, because now you're in the Chinese sphere of influence.

And that, you know, Russia gets to have its kind of traditional Slavic empire.

I think that is a first order approximation.

What I think you are not maybe not discounting, but maybe maybe underrepresenting is how much crony capitalism and just downright corruption can influence that.

Like, yeah, the first order of approximation, I think Donald Trump finds that kind of appealing.

But hey, you buy some meme coins from the guy and it's all for sale.