Local opinion: How do you draw an ocean boundary line

Turns out Trump’s perceived “turf”, in an ocean of all places, wasn’t the place to try to plant an American flag. How do you mark your turf in an ocean and then try to defend it? Part of Trump’s lasting legacy may turn out to be a “failed” pathetic wet and salty attempt to replace diplomacy with military power. The apparent iron law of dictators who want to become emperors is “never start a war you can’t win”, and never pick a fight in an ocean far from your own turf. A corollary Donald — your perceived Midas touch to aurify everything everywhere doesn’t apply to wet and salty spaces.

President Trump doesn’t read, doesn’t know any history or geography. Elementary school for dictators and emperors teaches that if you are incapable of learning, you will fail at empire building.

Spain’s “Invincible Armada’ was defeated in 1588 by the British navy. It now seems that the Trump naval “Invincible Armada” has been rendered irrelevant in the Strait of Hormuz in 2026. You cannot draw an ocean boundary line and then try to defend it as though it were “turf”.

The struggle for hegemony, especially among the great powers, has now taken a new geopolitical turn as to location. Wars and struggles have always been fought over “turf”, but turf is no longer just “soil”. Turf is now “anywhere space”—as in the heavens, underneath the diminishing polar ice caps, and in the world oceans and ocean passages between landforms.

Before the creation of the “nation-state” system of hegemony and control, and, therefore before the age of monarchs and kings to preside over territory, feudal lords of one kind or another presided over as much “turf” as they could control by force. The more powerful of the feudal lords eventually expanded their territorial acquisitions and consolidated them into large chunks of land, drew boundaries around them, and then fought costly wars to defend them. Nations, thus, were borne out of feudal manors and serfs (slaves) bound in perpetuity to the land. Nations begat kings, or the other way around.

The concept of the nation-state, in a practical formal sense, arrived and is only a few centuries old, but the nation-state-type of governance seems already obsolete in the face of “globalism”, tentacles that threaten to upend established borders and boundaries. Globalism, like water, takes the path of least resistance and pervades all spaces — not just the earthen ones.

I suppose Donald’s “my” part of the ocean amounts to all that the king who claims it can defend. Trump seems to want to take us backward to a past, a European past foreign to the American experience. He acts like a feudal manor-lord trying to create new ocean “turf” to try to defend. Or, perhaps like the early European monarchs in an age of mercantilism, Trump thinks he can try to dominate the world’s oceans in search of the modern equivalent of gold and silver.

England defeated the mighty Spanish Armada in the 16th century for dominance over the oceans. Trump’s folly, his war on Iran, is now a similar humiliating defeat in an ocean passage-way over ocean-turf. Is this not a stunning defeat for the mighty American Armada? Does the defeat suggest severe limits on the usefulness of naval power as a tool of aggression by a great power? History attests that great empires of the past began to crumble seemingly proportional to the attempted expansion of their military reach. It all begins with the excesses of the emperor and the arrogance of power.

If American power is transitory and seasonal, and each season follows another, cannot we not tell that summer is gone? Are we now in the “autumn” of the American empire, or are we now into an American “winter?” But can’t an American winter actually become an American “spring” again?

Perhaps, just perhaps, a renewal of America’s soft power, the sharing and collaborative kind of America’s 20th century dominance, would enable an America-first-among-friends approach to resurrect America’s place in the “globalism” future of planet earth.

American “soft power” underpinning global relationships (among friends and enemies alike), involving investment and finance, trade and tourism, philanthropy and humanitarian aid, delivered with the outstretched hands of diplomacy explains American 20th century global dominance. The mighty guns of American military power were always there but they glistened in silence, when necessary, with the lubricating oil of respect for others.

Global “dominance” carries with it the heavy burden of global “responsibility” to the entire planet and its inhabitants to ensure a manageable and durable future. Singer Lena Horne once said something about burdens: “It’s not the load you carry, it’s how you carry it.”

The world’s oceans are not “turf”. They belong to everyone. And, America’s soft power should be exerted in their defense.